No doubt the general level of morality was low. Gambling of all kinds had increased enormously. There were gaming-houses and lottery offices everywhere. Faro banks and E. O. tables, and places where hazard, roulette, and rouge-et-noir could be played, had multiplied exceedingly. Six gaming-houses were kept in one street near the Haymarket, mostly by prize-fighters, and persons stood at the doors inviting passers-by to enter and play. Besides these, there were subscription clubs of presumably a higher class, and even ladies’ gaming-houses. The public lotteries were also a fruitful source of crime, not only in the stimulus they gave to speculation, but in their direct encouragement of fraud. A special class of swindlers was created—the lottery insurers, the sharpers who pretended to help the lottery players against loss by insuring the amount of their stakes. Offices for fraudulent lottery insurance existed all over the town. It was estimated that there were 400 of them, supporting 2,000 agents and clerks, and 7,500 “morocco men,” as they were called—the canvassers who went from door to door soliciting insurances, which they entered in a book covered with red morocco leather. It was said that these unlicensed offices obtained premiums of nearly two millions of money when the English and Irish lotteries were being drawn, on which they made a profit of from 15 to 25 per cent. It was proved by calculating the chances that they were some 33 per cent. in favour of the insurers. Even in those days the principle of profiting by the gambling spirit of the public was strongly condemned, but lotteries survived until 1826, since when the law has dealt severely with any specious attempts to reintroduce them under other names.
RIVER THIEVES.
At this time the plunder of merchandise and naval stores in the River Thames had reached gigantic proportions. Previous to the establishment of the Thames river police in 1798 the commerce of the country, all the operations of merchants and shipowners, were grievously injured by these wholesale depredations, which amounted at a moderate computation to quite half a million per annum. There were, first of all, the river pirates, who boarded unprotected ships in the stream. One gang of them actually weighed a ship’s anchor, hoisted it into their boat with a complete new cable, and rowed away with their spoil. These villains hung about vessels newly arrived and cut away anything within reach—cordage, spars, bags of cargo. They generally went armed, and were prepared to fight for what they seized. There were the “heavy horsemen and the light horsemen,” the “game watermen,” the “game lightermen,” the “mudlarks and the scuffle-hunters,” each of them following a particular line of their own. Some of these, with the connivance of watchmen or without, would cut lighters adrift and lead them to remote places where they could be pillaged and their contents carried away. Cargoes of coal, Russian tallow, hemp, and ashes were often secured in this way. The “light horsemen” did a large business in the spillings, drainings, and sweepings of sugar, coffee, and rum; these gleanings were greatly increased by fraudulent devices, and were carried off with the connivance of the mates, who shared in the profit. The “heavy horsemen” were smuggled on board to steal whatever they could find—coffee, cocoa, pimento, ginger, and so forth, which they carried on shore concealed about their persons in pouches and pockets under their clothes. The
“game watermen” worked by quickly receiving what was handed to them when cargoes were being discharged, and this they conveyed at once to some secret place; the “game lightermen” were of the same class, who used their lighters to conceal stolen parcels of goods which they could afterwards dispose of.
A clever trick is told of one of these thieves, who long did a big business in purloining oil. A merchant who imported great quantities was astonished at the constant deficiency in the amounts landed, far more than could be explained by ordinary leakage. He determined to attend at the wharf when the lighters arrived, and he saw that in one of them all the casks had been stowed with their bungs downwards. He waited until the lighter was unloaded, and then, visiting her, found the hold full of oil. This the lightermen impudently claimed as their perquisite; but the merchant refused to entertain the idea, and, having sent for casks, filled nine of them with the leakage. Still dissatisfied, he ordered the deck to be taken up, and found between the timbers of the lighter enough to fill five casks more. No doubt this robbery had been long practised.
“Mudlarks” were only small fry who hung about the stern quarters of ships at low water to receive and carry on shore any pickings they might secure. The “scuffle-hunters” resorted in large numbers to the wharves where goods were discharged, and laid hands upon any plunder they could find, chiefly the contents of broken packets, for which they fought and “scuffled.”
Before leaving this branch of depredation mention must be made of the plunder levied on his Majesty’s Dockyards, the Naval Victualling and Ordnance Stores, which were perpetually pillaged, as were the warships, transports, and lighters in the Thames, Medway, Solent, and Dart. Over and above the peculations of employees, the frauds and embezzlements in surveys, certificates, and accounts, there was nearly wholesale pillage in such articles as cordage, canvas, hinges, bolts, nails, timber, paint, pitch, casks, beef, pork, biscuit, and indeed all kinds of stores. No definite figures are at hand giving the value of these robberies, but they must have reached an enormous total.