he pleaded insanity. This did not avail him, and although the jury in convicting him strongly recommended him to mercy, he was sentenced to death. Another case of still more flagrant contempt of court may fitly be introduced here. At the trial of a woman named Housden for coining at the Old Bailey in 1712, a man named Johnson, an ex-butcher and highwayman by profession, came into court and desired to speak to her. Mr. Spurling, the principal turnkey of Newgate, told him no person could be permitted to speak to the prisoner, whereupon Johnson drew out a pistol and shot Mr. Spurling dead upon the spot, the woman Housden loudly applauding his act. The court did not easily recover from its consternation, but presently the recorder suspended the trial of the woman for coining, and as soon as an indictment could be prepared, Johnson was arraigned for the murder, convicted, and then and there sentenced to death; the woman Housden being also sentenced at the same time as an accessory before and after the fact.
Various causes are given for this great prevalence of crime. The long and impoverishing wars of the early years of the century, which saddled England with the national debt, no doubt produced much distress, and drove thousands who could not or would not find honest work into evil ways. Manners among the highest and the lowest were generally profligate. Innumerable places of public diversion, ridottos, balls, masquerades, tea-gardens,
and wells, offered crowds a ready means for self-indulgence. Classes aped the habits of the classes above their own, and the love of luxurious gratification "reached to the dregs of the people," says Fielding, "who, not being able by the fruits of honest labour to support the state which they affect, they disdain the wages to which their industry would entitle them, and abandoning themselves to idleness, the more simple and poor-spirited betake themselves to a state of starving and beggary, while those of more art and courage became thieves, sharpers, and robbers."
Drunkenness was another terrible vice, even then more rampant and wildly excessive than in later years. While the aristocracy drank deep of Burgundy and port, and every roaring blade disdained all heel-taps, the masses fuddled and besotted themselves with gin. This last-named pernicious fluid was as cheap as dirt. A gin-shop actually had on its sign the notice, "Drunk for 1d.; dead drunk for 2d.; clean straw for nothing," which Hogarth introduced into his caricature of Gin Lane. No pencil could paint, no pen describe the scenes of hideous debauchery hourly enacted in the dens and purlieus of the town. Legislation was powerless to restrain the popular craving. The Gin Act, passed in 1736 amidst the execrations of the mob, which sought to vent its rage upon Sir Joseph Jekyll, the chief promoter of the bill, was generally evaded. The much-loved poisonous spirit was still retailed under fictitious
names, such as "Sangree," "Tow Row," the "Makeshift," and "King Theodore of Corsica." It was prescribed as a medicine for colic, to be taken two or three times a day. Numberless tumults arose out of the prohibition to retail spirituous liquors, and so openly was the law defied, that twelve thousand persons were convicted within two years of having sold them illegally in London. Informers were promptly bought off or intimidated, magistrates "through fear or corruption" would not convict, and the act was repealed in the hope that more moderate duty and stricter enforcement of the law would benefit the revenue and yet lessen consumption. The first was undoubtedly affected, but hardly the latter.
Fielding, writing nearly ten years after the repeal of the act, says that he has reason to believe that "gin is the principal sustenance (if it may be so called) of more than a hundred thousand people in the metropolis," and he attributed to it most of the crimes committed by the wretches with whom he had to deal. "The intoxicating draught itself disqualifies them from any honest means to acquire it, at the same time that it removes sense of fear and shame, and emboldens them to commit every wicked and desperate enterprise."
The passion for gaming, again, "the school in which most highwaymen of great eminence have been bred," was a fruitful source of immoral degeneracy. Every one gambled. In the Gentleman's
Magazine for 1731 there is the following entry: "At night their Majesties played for the benefit of the groom porter, and the king (George II) and queen each won several hundreds, and the Duke of Grafton several thousands of pounds." His Majesty's lieges followed his illustrious example, and all manner of games of chance with cards or dice, such as hazard, Pharaoh, basset, roly-poly, were the universal diversion in clubs, public places, and private gatherings. The law had thundered, but to no purpose, against "this destructive vice," inflicting fines on those who indulged in it, declaring securities won at play void, with other penalties, yet gaming throve and flourished. It was fostered and encouraged by innumerable hells, which the law in vain strove to put down. Nightly raids were made upon them. In the same number of the Gentleman's Magazine as that just quoted it is recorded, that "the High Constable of Holborn searched a notorious gaming-house behind Gray's Inn Road; but the gamesters were fled, only the keeper was arrested and bound over for £200." Again, I find in Wade's "Chronology" that "Justice Fielding, having received information of a rendezvous of gamesters in the Strand, procured a strong party of the Guards, who seized forty-five of the tables, which they broke to pieces, and carried the gamesters before the justice. . . . Under each of the broken tables were observed two iron rollers and two private springs, which those who were in the
secret could touch and stop the turning whenever they had flats to deal with." No wonder these establishments throve. They were systematically organized, and administered by duly appointed officers.
There was the commissioner, who checked the week's accounts and pocketed the takings; a director to superintend the room; an operator to deal the cards, and four to five croupiers, who watched the cards and gathered in the money of the bank. Besides these there were "puffs," who had money given them to decoy people to play; a clerk and a squib, who were spies upon the straight dealings of the puffs; a flasher to swear how often the bank was stripped; a dunner to recover sums lost; a waiter to snuff candles and fill in the wine; and an attorney or "Newgate solicitor." A flash captain was kept to fight gentlemen who were peevish about losing their money; at the door was a porter, "generally a soldier of the foot-guards,"[259:1] who admitted visitors after satisfying himself that they were of the right sort. The porter had aides-de-camp and assistants—an "orderly man," who patrolled the street and gave notice of the approaching constables; a "runner," who watched for the meetings of the justices and brought intelligence of the