The Street Prowlers of London.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 4, 1 December 1869, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Street Prowlers of London.

It may bn mentioned as a contribution towards solving the riddle, “ How do these hundred thousand street prowlers contrive to exist ?” that they draw a considerable amount of their sustenance from the markets. And really it would seem that by some miraculous dispensation of Providence, garbage was for their sake robbed of its poisonous properties, and endowed with virtues such as wholesome food possesses. Did the reader ever see the young market-hunters at such a “feed” say in the month of August or September? It is a spectacle only to be witnessed bv early risers who can get as far as Covent Garden by the time that the wholesale dealing in the open falls slack—which will he about eight o’clock ; and it is not to be believed unless it is seen. They will gather about a muck-heap and gobble up plums, a sweltering mass of decay, and oranges and apples that have quite lost their original shape and colour, with the avidity of ducks or pigs. 1 speak according to my knowledge, for I have seen them at it. I have seen one of these gaunt, wolfish little children with his tattered cap full of plums of a sort one of which I would not have permitted a child of mine to eat for all the money in the Mint, and this at a season when the sanitary authorities, in their desperate alarm at the spread of cholera, have turned bill-stickers, and were begging and imploring the people to abstain from this, that,, and the other, and especially to beware of fruit unless perfectly sound and ripe. Judgiug from the earnestness with which this last provision was urged, there must have been cholera enough to have slain a dozen strong men in that little ragamullia’s cap, and yet he munched on till that frowsy receptacle was emptied, filially licking his lingers with a relish. It was not for ins to forcibly dispossess the hoy of a prize that made him the envy of his plumless companions, but I spoke to the market beadle about it, asking him if it would not be possible, knowing the propensities of those poor little wretches, so to dispose of the poisonous olfd that they could not get at it; but he replied that P had nothing to do with him what they ate so long as they kept their hands from picking and stealing ; furthermore he politely intimate 1 that “ unless I had nothing better to do,” there was no call for me to trouble myself about the “little wnnniiut,” whom nothing would hurt- He confided to me his private belief that they were “made insi la something after the orsestrech, and that farriers’ nails wouldn’t come amiss to ’em if they could only get ’em down.” However, and although the evidence was rather in the sagacious market beadle’s favour, I was unconverted from my original opinion, and here take the liberty of urging on any olHcial of Covent Garden or Parringdon market who may happen to read those pages the policy of adopting my suggestion as to the safe bestowal of fruit offal during the sickly season. That great danger is incurred by allowing it to be consumed as it now is there cannot bo a question. Perhaps it is too much to assume that the poor little beings whom hunger prompts to feed off garbage do so with impunity. It is not improbable that, in many cases, they slink home to die in their holes as poisoned rats do. That they are never missed from the market is no proof of the contrary. Their identification is next to impossible, for they are as like each other as apples in a sieve, or peas im a pod Moreover, to teli their number is out of the question. Id is as incomprehensible as is their nature.. They swarm as bees do, and arduous indeed would be the task of the individual who undertook to reckon up the small fry of a single alley of the hundreds that abound in Squalor’s regions. They are of as small account in the public estimation- as- stray street curs; and, like them, it is only where they evince a propensity for barking and biting that their existence is recognised. Should death tomorrow morning make, a clean sweep of the unsightly little scavengers who grovel for a meal amongst the market elml-heaps, next day would see the said heaps just as industriously surrounded. —The Term , Cnrr-rs of London, Ly domes Greenwood, the Amateur Casual,.