Fights, and fierce fights too, are frequent in them, and I have often been afraid murder would be done.
I never saw a clergyman of any denomination in any one of these places either in town or country.
In London the keepers know very well that stolen property is brought into their house. In some cases they will buy—in others it is disposed of to some of the other inmates.
The influence of the lodging-house society on boys who have run away from home and have got thither, either separately or in company with lads who have joined them in the streets, is this—boys there, after paying for their lodgings, may exercise the same freedom from every restraint as they see persons of maturer years enjoy.
This is often pleasant to a boy, especially if he has been severely treated by his parents or his master. He apes and often outdoes men’s ways, both in swearing and loud talk, and so he gets a relish for that sort of life.
After he has resorted to such places—the sharper boys for three and the duller boys for six months—they are adepts at any thieving or vice.
In the same work the statement of a young girl of sixteen years of age is given.
The narrative is that of a fallen female who was accustomed to sleep in the low lodging-houses where boys and girls were promiscuously huddled together. The account given disclosed a system of depravity, atrocity, and enormity, which certainly could not be paralleled in any nation, however barbarous, nor in any age, however dark.
The facts detailed are gross enough to make us all blush for the land in which such scenes could be daily perpetrated.
Happily for the morality of the lower classes, legislation has done much to abate the evil; the low lodging houses of the present day are under the surpervision of the police, who have done much to abate the evil which was so justly complained of. Nevertheless, the scenes which take place in lodging houses in the courts and alleys of London are, even at the present time, a scandal and disgrace to a Christian land.