THE HAUNTS OF CRIME IN LONDON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 340, 16 June 1869, Page 3

THE HAUNTS OF CRIME IN LONDON.

A letter, signed f'N. A. W.," has been addressed on this subject to the editor of the. Times. The following extracts will surprise, possibly startle, the reader : — -"'I had heard much of thieves' houses, and was anxious to see for myself what they were, and what power the police had over them. I therefore, having proper credentials, applied to Scotland-yard for permission for myself and a friend to visit these places with the police. Our application was most courteously acceded to. An inspector of cheap lodging-houses, an inspector of police, and one of the cleverest sergeants of detectives were placed at our disposal to escort us and show where the dens lay. Under their guidance we have just completed our examination, which occupied us three nights and part of one day. When we started I thought I knew London perfectly both by day and night. Now that my exploration is over I see that I knew as little of it as I do now of Bokhara or Samarcand. " I will not weary your readers by taking them as we went ourselves, through penny theatres, music-halls, casual wards, refuges, thieves' haunts, low beer-houses, • leaving shops,' and cheap lodging-houses. The great haunts of crime are the low beer-houses, low lodging-houses, and the * leaving-shops,' ani over these the police, as police, have no control. The penny theatres, the musichalls, or even the infamous neighbourhoods of Tiger Bay and Bluegate Fields are very minor nuisances as compared with these. Let us take the beer-shops first. Over these the police have no power in any wa)\ If a house with a spirit license harbours thieves, or is even what is called a disorderly house — that is, keeps open at all late beyond the usual hours, or serves men and women with liquor when they are already drunk — it is reported on to the bench of magistrates, and the spirit license is refused. Over the beer-license the Excise only lias power, and as long as a man is willing to pay for it he gets it, no matter what his character. Thus it of necessity follows that the beershopkeepers are recruited from those publicans who have been considered not fit to hold a spirit license. The man loses his spirit license for misconduct, but not that for beer. He turns the public-house into a beershop, and his wife opens a greengrocer's next door. On Sunday morning all customers who come ostensibly for their cabbages can also get their beer, and the well-known habitues can, during all church-time, go into the back room behind the shop and get their gin, and rum, too. Of course beginners are now and then found out and punished, but these victims don't form one per cent, of the community, which thrives and grows rich like the night-house keepers of the Haymarket, who act in open defiance of both Excise and police. The supervision of these houses is quite within the capacity of the police, but the law, as it stands at present, has put them beyond their reach. With my companions I visited many of these houses — perhaps more than was essential to learn all i about them, for one was very like another, J and they varied only in grades, or rather degrades of infamy. Take a high-class one, i

for instance. It is near an East-end road. It is brightly lighted, clean, aad comfortable. The landlord and landlady are behind the little bar. Both are known to be convicted thieves, both are known to be lucrative receivers and expert disposers of stolen goods Under a magisterial system these people could not hold their license for a day ; of course, if this license was taken away, there would still be thieves ; but it does not follow that there should be known houses sanctioned by the law over which police have no control, where thieves may meet openly to sell their gains and arrange among themselves for future depredations, iet us pass into the parlour. It is a very wide, well-furnished coffee-room, the walls of which are amply garnished with glaring pictures, and at the tables in it some eight or nine well-dressed men are sitting over their cigars and beer. These were the elite of tlie swell mob. There was nothing about them externally to. distinguish them from the ordinary frequenters of Pall Mall or Sfc James' street, yet there was not one who, as our inspector and sergeant assured us, had not been convicted of ' robberies from the person ' over and over again — indeed, our sergeant rather markedly poiuted out a ' gentleman ' who had only just come out from a six mouths' imprisonment on his (the sergeant's) own arrest, and ; against whom many convictions had been I proved before. Our eutiy, lam sorry to say, I seemed to throw a general damp upon the company. There was an utter silence, and then, at intervals of a few seconds, one after another went out to get a cigar or a glass of * old and bitter,' all of which they must have found it particularly difficult to find, as none of them came back, and - our sergeant laughed at the idea that his coming among them would be likely to keep the house quiet and scatter its customers for a clay or two. The landlord, who had evidently arrived at the same conclusion, was not in so jocose a mood, and scowled at us fiercely as we passed out. " This was a first-class thieves' beershop, and it is quite needless to go through the dirty gradations of them. Let us look into a low-class beershop — that is to say, low-class in the neighbourhood, in its appearance, and its customers. The low beerhouse for the worst class of thieves is generally in an illfavoured ' slum,' ill-looking aud worse smelling, with a group of tawdry women choking up its narrow entrance, and half-naked children playing about barefooted on the slimy flagstones, hiding amid the dustheaps, from among which they only sally out when the older inhabitants of the court have come forth to look upon the phenomenon of a re-spectably-dressed stranger venturing into their district. At the upper end of the court is a broad dim light, to which our party at once made their way and passed through a low bar into a small taproom. Quick as we were, however, we were not quite quick enough to prevent the large party there secreting the cards with which they were practising. I use the word practising advisedly, for most of them were only occupied in attaining perfection in the three card trick, or in ringing the endless variations on the cards, with a view to future and certain profit at race-courses and country fairs. An ill-looking bull-dog, but by no means the most ill-looking of the company, came towards us as we entered, but was at once called off by its master, and then, as in the better class of thieves' house, we sat down in our corner amid a dead silence, broken only by a few muttered words of slang or an occasional spitting on the table to efface the chalk marks by which they had been practising some gambling game. When we had time to look around we found ourselves in a curious place, and in curious society. The room was low, ill-smelling, and very full — full, too, of the lowest description of brokendown fighting men, card and skittle sharpers, and thimble riggers. One is known over half the country fairs and race-courses in England as the very prince of successful swindlers. The others were all known as rogues and vagabonds, who had been convicted as such over and over again. As with the swell thieves' beerhouse, so with this infamous haunt, as soon as our party came in, its regular occupants instantly and silently departed, with the single difference that, while the first-named class affected gentility in their departure, and wished ' Good night,' the latter did not conceal their fear, but slunk away as much as they could unnoticed. Yet both classes were equally criminal, both were known as having lived by crime only, and as certain only to live by crime while they were at large. Yet to neither one class nor the other could the detectives aay a single word, for there was no specific charge against them, and they went out as usual from their beershops to prey upon society at large, whether rich or poor. '• It would be needless iteration to tell your readers how many houses of this kind we visited, some of the very lowest and most infamous class, some of outward respectability, but all we visited — and north, south, and east, we visited some twenty — were alike the recognised and acknowledged head-quarters of the thieves of the district. Occasionally the detectives find a strange face among them, but this can generally be accounted for by the fact that he is a thief who has made his own particular district or beat a Little too hot for his safety, and so he shifts to another quarter till the risk has blown over. In such cases the old adage that there is ' honour among thieves' receives a fresh illustration, for the new-comer under temporary hiding is always sheltered and fed by his colleagues in crime, or, if his offence is serious and he is well known, is sent away to the country, perhaps for months. Among the worst class of beerhouses are those which combine beer-selling with some other trade. These are always able to elude the vigilance of the police, and in these the regular receivers of stolen goods wait for the boy thieves, from whom they will purchase anything — a single shoe, a pewter pot, a waggoner's whip, a horse's nosebag, a piece of bacon, a. brace of pheasants, a watch or I handkerchief — anything and everything, in

fact, on which these insatiable young vagabonds can lay their hands. The amount they receive for each article is almost nominal, probably not more than a tenth of its value, so that a young thief has to pilfer to the value of some 30s before he gets 3s or 4s to pay for his dinner, his place in the gallery of a cheap theatre, and his supper and bed at a cheap lodging-house. These receivers, under the present law, it is almost impossible to get hold of, for the boys themselves will not tell of them — they dare not — and it need hardly be said that tht. receivers don't tell of themselves. With these receivers, worse than any thieves, the very fountain-head and source of more than half the crime in London, the police are almost powerless to deal. " Another crying evil, and one equally out of the ordinary power of the ' force ' to deal with, are the ' leaving shops.' These abound in the north-east and southern districts of London, and there is not a magistrate on the bench but would say that his labours would be lightened by nearly a third if these ' leaving shops ' could be closed, or, at least, placed under the control of the police. These are mostly chandlers' shops, where anyone who is not respectable can leave anything he can 1 iy his hands on aud get an advance of money, varying from a pound to a penny, and no questions asked. The facilities which these shops afford for the disposal of stolen goods are almost incalculable. There is hardly a street in the lowest districts of the Borough, of Ratcliffe-highway, or Spitalfields, which has not one or more of them. The pledges are kept for a month, and interest is charged on advances at the rate of a penny for every sixpence, whether redeemed the same day or at the end of the four weeks." " N.A.W." promises in another letter to show what these "leaving shops" do, and how these thieves' lodging-houses are managed, aud by whom frequented.