Were the Government, with the consent of the Legislature, to establish lodging-houses for poor but honest persons, an immense benefit would be conferred upon that class, and the fearful progress of immorality would receive a check at least in one point. The respectability of such institutions might be ensured by placing trustworthy married couples at their head, and applying a system of rules which would enforce regular hours, exclude ardent spirits, and only permit a moderate quantity of beer to be brought in for the use of each individual, and likewise empower magistrates to punish those who might be brought before them charged with breaking the regulations, or otherwise subverting the wholesome discipline enjoined.

Thieves, prostitutes, and bad characters would not attempt to obtain admission to establishments if this description:—no more than a person enjoying a competency would endeavour to become the inmate of a workhouse. Scenes of debauchery and unbounded license alone suit abandoned males and females;—and thus every guarantee would exist for the respectable management of those institutions which would save the honest poor from the low lodging-houses of London.[[10]]

[9]. The following is a glossary which will enable the reader to comprehend the flash terms used in the thieves' marriage-service:—

[10]. When Mr. Mills was instructed to draw up his "Report on Prison Discipline," he obtained the necessary information and evidence from a variety of sources. One of the witnesses whom he examined was Inspector Titterton of the Metropolitan Police Force. This intelligent officer deposed as follows:—"St Giles's abounds with low lodging-houses. The most notorious are kept by Grout. He is a rich man, and has elegant private houses at Hampstead, and the lowest sort of lodging-houses in every part of London. He generally visits these dens daily;—keeps his horse and gig. Price of these houses, as all others, threepence or fourpence a night in a room with a score or two of other people. Men and women sleep together anyhow. A man and woman may have a place screened off, which they call a room, for eightpence a night; but they are seldom so delicate. These houses are brothels. Grout is the monopolist of low lodging-houses. The St. Giles's prostitutes commit many robberies upon drunken countrymen whom they entice to those places, and either bully or hocus them. The last is to stupify them with opium or laudanum in their drink. Girls club, and keep a man between them. Inspector has known instances of girls robbing men even of their clothes. In one case the victim had been deprived absolutely of his shirt, because it was a good one: this man the inspector carried home in a policeman's great coat. At the census Grout returned that 140 persons slept in one of his houses in Laurence Lane. His ground landlord is Nugee, the great tailor. The lodging-houses in St. Giles's are like rabbit-burrows: not an inch of ground is lost; and there are stairs and passages, innumerable. While Grout is thus the landlord of hundreds and hundreds of thieves, vagrants, and prostitutes, he lets his beautiful Hampstead villas to genteel and fashionable families."

We have already shown that Thompson was (and perhaps is still) a lodging-house proprietor in a considerable way of business. A person named Southgate is also eminent in the same line. He possesses houses which make up altogether 309 beds. These houses are as follow:—Nos. 2, 3, 4, 8, and 9, Charles Street, Long Acre; seven houses on Saffron Hill; five in Mitre Court, St. John Street, Clerkenwell; No. 11, New Court, Cow Cross, Smithfield; and two in Turnmill Street, Clerkenwell. These last are exclusively occupied by Italian boys and their masters. A man named Elliott has also lodging-houses in Charles Street: namely, Nos. 23, 24, and 45. In Shorts' Gardens, a person called "Lucky Dick" has Nos. 8 and 9.

An officer whom Mr. Mills examined, deposed thus:—"To return to lodging-houses, there are cheap ones in all towns; most of them have two sorts of kitchens. The labourers and hawkers live in a better room, and pay fourpence a night for their bed, halfpenny for coals, halfpenny for the use of plates and hot water, and a halfpenny for the cooking apparatus. Regular beggars, the low sort of cadger fellows, live in the other kitchen, and pay a halfpenny for coals, and have nothing found them. The beggars go on very bad at night in the lodging-houses. They can make 5s. a day in the country by begging, let alone what they make by thieving. They never think of work, unless they can contrive to carry something in hopes of an opportunity to slip off with it."

And it is in such dens as these that honest poverty must seek shelter and a bed!