We sincerely trust that the accused may be able to prove his innocence to the satisfaction of a British jury.
At the same time, it may not be thought out of place to call attention to the crying evil involved in the existence of a class of persons—quite independently of individuals—who, although shrewdly suspected by the police to be buyers of stolen goods, are left undisturbed to their mischievous avocations.
Stolen goods are habitually disposed of through the medium of the pawnbroker, the leaving-shop, the marine-store dealer, the assayer or dealer in gold or silver, and the professional “fence,” the last of whom has reduced his calling to a regulated system, and has his agents in different parts of the country and on the Continent, to whom he consigns parcels of stolen property with all the forms of regular commerce.
If the police could be induced to speak they might recount the histories of individuals who, after long careers of moral infamy in this line of business, have blossomed into respectable retirement in surburban mansions.
They are among the most difficult sort of criminals to convict. The transactions of the firm are generally managed by a strong-minded, subtle rogue, who keeps the majority of those to whom he disposes of his ill-gotten gains in ignorance of his and their true character.
The pawnbroker is generally more sinned against than sinning; for, if stolen property can be traced to his possession, he is forced by law to restore it to the right owner without compensation.
While, however, the pawnbroker is licensed and subject to many disabilities in the prosecution of his calling, the keeper of the leaving shop is a mere unlicensed usurer in a small way, generally ready to advance petty sums on all sorts of portable property without asking questions as to its rightful possession.
Even when this sort of person is not a regular “fence” for the lowest class of thieves, he robs the very poor by taking exorbitant interest. He should be suppressed and eradicated root and branch.
When lead is stolen from the roofs of buildings, or metal fittings purloined from uninhabited houses, such plunder almost invariably finds its way to the den of the marine-store dealer, who also encourages servants to acts of wilful extravagance in the choice and rending down of fat meat by purchasing the residue, without comment or inquiry, as “kitchen stuff.”
The pretended assayer and dealer in gold and silver usually has his shop in some respectable part of the town, and in the neighbourhood of bonâ-fide establishments for the purchase and sale of the precious metals.