The houses are old, gloomy, and sombre. Some of them have the upper part, beginning with the first floor, projecting at least three feet over the thoroughfares—for we cannot say over the pavement. Most of the doors stand open, and reveal low, dark, and filthy passages, the mere aspect of which compels the passer-by to get into the middle of the way, for fear of being suddenly dragged into those sinister dens, which seem fitted for crimes of the blackest dye.
This is no exaggeration.
Even in the day-time one shudders at the cut-throat appearance of the places into the full depths of whose gloom the eye cannot entirely penetrate. But, by night, the Mint,—for it is of this district that we are now writing,—is far more calculated to inspire the boldest heart with alarm, than the thickest forest or the wildest heath ever infested by banditti.
The houses in the Mint give one an idea of those dens in which murder may be committed without the least chance of detection. And yet that district swarms with population. But of what kind are its inhabitants? The refuse and the most criminal of the metropolis.
There people follow trades as a blind to avert suspicions relative to their real calling: for they are actually housebreakers or thieves themselves, or else the companions and abettors of such villains.
In passing through the mazes of the Mint—especially in Mint Street itself—you will observe more ill-looking fellows and revolting women in five minutes than you will see either on Saffron Hill or in Bethnal Green in an hour. Take the entire district that is bounded on the north by Peter Street, on the south by Great Suffolk Street, on the east by Blackman Street and High Street, and on the west by the Southwark Bridge Road,—take this small section of the metropolis, and believe us when we state that within those limits there is concentrated more depravity in all its myriad phases, than many persons could suppose to exist in the entire kingdom.
The Mint was once a sanctuary, like Whitefriars; and, although the law has deprived it of its ancient privileges, its inhabitants still maintain them, by a tacit understanding with each other, to the extent of their power. Thus, if a villain, of whom the officers of justice are in search, takes refuge at a lodging in the Mint, the landlord will keep his secret in spite of every inducement. The only danger which he might incur would be at the hands of the lowest description of buzgloaks, dummy-hunters, area-sneaks, and vampers who dwell in that district.
There is no part of Paris that can compare with the Mint in squalor, filth, or moral depravity;—no—not even the street in the Island of the City, where Eugene Sue has placed his celebrated tapis-franc.
Let those who happen to visit the Mint, after reading this description thereof, mark well the countenances of the inhabitants whom they will meet in that gloomy labyrinth. Hardened ruffianism characterises the men;—insolent, leering, and shameless looks express the depravity of the women;—the boys have the sneaking, shuffling manner of juvenile thieves;—the girls, even of a tender age, possess the brazen air of incipient profligacy.
It was about nine o'clock in the evening when the Resurrection Man, wrapped in a thick and capacious pea-coat, the collar of which concealed all the lower part of his countenance, turned hastily from the Southwark Bridge Road into Mint Street.