Anonymous

“ Let him take coach upon such occasions; or, if he call not a coach, let him make up his mind to evade those harpies who ply at the corners of avenues, streets, lanes, under the piazzas, at shop doors, and such like. From these dregs of an abject profession, what can be expected but filth, vermin, disease, and death? Their breath is contamination, their touch is infection, their views, in course, plunder, rapine—and even murder follows. By such as these, men have been decoyed away and totally lost, body and goods ”

“ As one test of the truth of what I have said, you will invariably discover in the person whose pocket has been picked while walking singly, something that points him out as a proper object of attack: he is easily to be found out as an unknowing one; he is either a silly looking chap, or an unwieldy one, or a new comer. In making this distinction of walking singly, I beg to claim the full foice of the word; for, as to picking pockets in a crowd, it is quite a different sort of matter,—there, every body goes to wreck. ”

“ But crying as are those evils for redress, they vanish into smoke before the superior magnitude of permitting public houses to be kept by men who have been had up for imputed crimes! Returned lags, though they are the best defined villains, are not more dangerous than those whose doings are known to subject them to the laws. They dare not object to any thing that may be proposed; witness he in High Holborn, who permitted the cart-load of hosiery to be unlade at his house of a Sunday morning, which had that night been stolen from a shop? ”

“ To call a coach for a lady, whoever or whatsoever she may be, is no great piece of service to perform by one of our sex for the other; neither to hand her over the gutter, or across a street; but when, in performing such an act of civility, you receive a squeeze of the hand, a thrust of the elbow, a leer, or a card of address,—learn that no good is intended: it is nothing more or less, than an attack on your purse ”

“ A pickpocket will hustle such an one against his accomplice in the day time; the stranger will be irritated no doubt, and express his indignation, which will be the better for the rogues: in a half-minute's altercation, they get the best of the jaw, because the loudest and most impudent;—a spar or two ensues, in which he who pretends to support the stranger to the ways of town, draws him of his pocket-book, or his watch, if he has either, a fact they take care to ascertain beforehand. Money in the breeches pockets, can only be come at in a crowd, or by flooring the victim ”

“ Of all qualities and all pretensions, they are to be found at every public house, tavern, and dining-house; where, if you tell ever so inane a story, they are the first to commend, and they laugh at what is meant for a joke, although it should be egregious nonsense. Make a display of your purse, and these fellows will lick the dust from your feet; though you mistake so palpable a matter as the hour of the day, they are ready to swear you are right ”

“ This would prevent a great proportion of those shop robberies, which the tradesman feels has been committed, without knowing upon whom to fix the crime, and half distracted at his own suspicions, he robs himself of peace and the people around him of their comfort: and, as prevention shall be better than cure (all to nothing) any time of the day, "such shopmen are guilty (the law ought to say) who are so far derelict in their duty as to hold out the lure to their master's customers—ohmucli confusion in his goods and negligence in shewing them." ”

“ Although we have given this insight of shop-lifting in its most bulky form, it is not to be supposed that the ladies confine their speculations and practices to muslin alone, nor to the poor linen draper's shops exclusively. Haberdasher's shops contain equal fascinations for the leading foible of the female mind, unchastened in the school of philosophy—dress! All-powerful dress, and the over adornment of nature's fairest work, leads even ladies to commit crimes which their own sempstresses would shudder to contemplate. ”

“ People may be found in every rank and station, who do not resist the temptation of buying cheap, without reflecting how the goods were come by; or if the reflection does arise, they stiffle it at the birth in the abundance of their cupidity. Wholesale dealers, too, of high and untouchable character, there are, who do not blush to make purchases at such prices and amounts as can not leave a doubt for what end the goods were obtained. We know of one house in the linen trade, with whom this culpable practice is so palpable, that their conduct has undergone investigation in a court of law. ”

“ But it remained to these times for us to contemplate the officers immediately employed in detection of offenders, actually subornating others, and assisting them in the commission of crime, with no other view on earth, than through conviction to receive the reward, which by statute they are entitled to, who bring capitals to justice. Here we maintain, that they are not culprits themselves who have been set at work by others to commit offences, but those only are so who set them to work. It is no more our inclination than our business here to discuss the abstract question of right and wrong ”

“ So intense are the players at this stupid game, that you may see a couple of decent men, who deserve a better occupation, bestowing the utmost extension of their faculties upon the upshot of a game that deserves, nor shall receive from me other than the bitterest execration, because it is the grave of thought, the extinguisher of every generous sense. Do men meet together to shut their minds up upon a move of timber? ”

“ But I know what I am saying: when a woman ceases to behave like a woman, and assumes the character of the worst description of men, they are no longer women, but brutes. Shall a wonjan be allowed to exercise muscular powers, in aid of her lustful appetites,—to say nothing of meditated robbery—and then plead the weakness of her sex? The proposition is ridiculous, if not monstrous: a foot-pad robbery, then, is to be committed with impunity, because the perpetrator wears petticoats, and ———!
"Hands off!"—"Stand clear, there!"—"Get out, or I'll tip you a floorer!" ”

“ The ardour of the soul outstrips the chastened mind, in the pursuit of criminals, such as those we contemplate, and asks the cool and enquiring hand of justice to lay on without delay its unsparing vengeance. ”

“ Such is a tolerably fair account of many men, some of respectable occupations in life, but who are nevertheless Sharpers in the fullest sense of the word,—who will even boast of the money they win at laying quirkish bets. The intention is, to take in the unwary, and is not a bit better than picking of pockets or purloining in a dwelling-house. What appears the most galling part of the business to me is, that those men brag of their honesty, and look down upon their poorer, but more upright neighbour, with disdain. ”

“ Even magistracy itself seldom looks half so glum upon a predatory marauder of this order as he does upon a night robber, a housebreaker, or a highwayman. Whenever the prosecution is brought up to the point of conviction, the prosecutor always leans to the side of mercy; and the capital is "taken off:" one never hears of a pickpocket being hung. ”

“ Informers, who find no real dealers in contraband, are obliged to evince their activity to their employers by creating them. They wheedle themselves into the good graces of some unsuspecting Noodle at the Alehouse; generally a drunkard who has good connections in life. Him, they stuff up with a great idea of what each other is doing in the trade; for there are always two or even six, seven, or eight frequenting the same house. Having primed him in this way, some goods are produced upon the sly, a lamentation is set up that such great beauties, and so cheap, cannot find a sale ”

“ At every inn yard there are a kind of "hangers on," as we mentioned higher up, who are men of the worst character, since they affect an integrity they do not possess, and therefore are sometimes entrusted when they ought not to be. They are vastly familiar with the people really employed; they run of errands, and carry messages; and if there is a thing to be done upon the sly, they get off with impunity, because the person whose immediate business it should be to detect him, is induced to wink at, in hopes of sharing the depredation. ”

“ Every false accusution goes to the utter extinction of character, they include the fear of imprisonment, and nearly all aim at the life of the accused; which there is too good reason to believe they sometimes take away, inasmuch as having once ventured to broach the subject there is no retreat left them. In all cases of false accusation or entrapment, the accusers generally prove too much; acting always with indecent eagerness they overshoot their mark. ”

“ Does it not savour strongly of the Swindler, for a man to sit hours upon the stretch at the Bagatelle board, to learn of a Sharper how to accomplish any given number? So that the next customer that comes to play with him is quite certain of losing, whatever the stakes may be? ”

“ If you once evince symptoms of fear, standing silently horror-struck, at the preposterousness of the imputation, they repeat the blow with redoubled force, and you are lost, at least your money; for it is to obtain your money that the charge is made. ”

“ On the other hand, it is not to be denied, that a great many bargains are met with at auctions of even the worst sort; especially during the late few years of distressed trade, when manufacturers were in the habit of raising the wind, by sending goods to be sold for what they would fetch,—be that much or little. But here double destruction awaited them; the auctioneer proposes to give his acceptances at once for the sum total; or what is still worse, incites the deluded men to go on making more goods, to an immense amount ”

“ If they cannot see light from darkness, or the difference between a cut-throat corner and a dining room, they deserve neither commiseration or help, in their misfortunes.
Low neighbourhoods like those which we have named, have night-houses, where assemble the worst and most unprincipled part of one sex, waiting for prey to be brought in by the other. Woe to the man who ventures among them! The unfledged youth, no more than the veteran upon town, is their peculiar game; all is fish that comes to net ”

“ One general proposal is made to every Newcomer, by these higher classes of Cyprians, which is nothing less, than that he will take her into keeping. This is the rock upon which most persons of warm dispositions split: if they once give ear to her representations of its advantages and cheapness, of her love and attachment, he is ruined. It does not signify to her, that she is already in keeping of one, two, or more; she will turn them up one after another, under the impression that she is clever in selecting, or with a worse motive. The purse waxes empty, or its strings become rigid with use. ”

“ A good dinner, an agreeable companion, and two dull friends to give audience to all you may utter, could not be unacceptable to a young gentleman full of spirit, who was almost alone, except when visited by the lawyers concerning the family property which, by the deaths of his elder brother and father, had devolved upon him to manage. ”

“ Bad goods disgust the public, and that with short measure, hastens the ruin of the suffering publican; hence the great number of moves (removals) that happen daily, to the great surprise of every one who does not trace effects up to their sources; and to the advantage chiefly of the brokers of spirits, and the appraisers of goods—who alone reap the harvest that is produced by bad beer. Moreover, that brewing concern, however rich, is sure to go to wreck, sooner or later, which serves the public with a bad article, behaves harshly to its retailers, or disingenuously to their fellow brewers. ”

“ If there is a riot on account of provisions, this class of people, women as well as men, are the most clamorous, although they never buy any; when the cheese and bacon dealers were visited so often, some twelve to sixteen years ago, these fellows stole the money in the shops at Clare market, Chiswell Street, and Cow-cross; but it is worthy of remark, that when one of them was recognised, he had the address to say, he took money to keep the people quiet outside, who threatened to pull the house down: no less so is it, that the sufferer put up with his loss silently, for fear of that very man! ”

“ Many men can climb the front of a house as easily as others can go up a pair of stairs: I have seen M———n, the binder, go it in this manner, so as to astonish even the knowing ones; but as he is only an occasional thief, much evil cannot be expected from his acquirements in this way, for some length of time, at least, a parcel of cutlery, or a till-box being his highest aim yet awhile. ”

“ He will pimp for you, while talking of his independence; he will brush your coat, or carry your umbrella, while boasting of his connections, and exult that "he enjoys a moderate competency, in which he feels more real happiness, than with the comparative splendour of former days, accompanied by the shackles of his relations' narrow prejudices." ”