London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

The elder boys were then asked what they thought would be the best mode of effecting their deliverance from their present degraded position. Some thought emigration the best means, for if they started afresh in a new colony, they said they would leave behind them their bad characters, which closed every avenue to employment against them at home. Others thought there would be difficulties in obtaining work in the colonies in sufficient time to prevent their being driven to support themselves by their old practices. Many again thought the temptations which surrounded them in England rendered their reformation impossible; whilst many more considered that the same temptations would assail them abroad which existed at home.

Mr. Mayhew then addressed them on another point. He said he had seen many notorious thieves in the course of his investigations. Since then he had received them at all hours into his house—men of the most desperate and women of the most abandoned characters—but he had never lost a 6d. worth of his property by them. One thief he had entrusted with a sovereign to get changed, and the lad returned and gave him back the full amount in silver. He had since gone out to America. Now he would ask all those present whether, if he were to give them a sovereign, they would do the same? [Several voices here called out that they would, and others that they would not. Others, again, said that they would to him, but to no one else.]

Here one of the most desperate characters present, a boy who had been twenty-six times in prison, was singled out from the rest, and a sovereign given to him to get changed, in order to make the experiment whether he would have the honesty to return the change or abscond with it in his possession. He was informed, on receiving it, that if he chose to decamp with it, no proceedings should be taken against him. He left the room amid the cheers of his companions, and when he had been absent a few moments all eyes were turned towards the door each time it opened, anxiously expecting his arrival, to prove his trustworthiness. Never was such interest displayed by any body of individuals. They mounted the forms in their eagerness to obtain the first glimpse of his return. It was clear that their honour was at stake; and several said they would kill the lad in the morning if he made off with the money. Many minutes elapsed in almost painful suspense, and some of his companions began to fear that so large a sum of money had proved too great a temptation for the boy. At last, however, a tremendous burst of cheering announced the lad’s return. The delight of his companions broke forth again and again, in long and loud peals of applause, and the youth advanced amidst triumphant shouts to the platform, and gave up the money in full.

The assemblage was then interrogated as to the effect of flogging as a punishment; and the general feeling appeared to be that it hardened the criminal instead of checking his depravity, and excited the deadliest enmity in his bosom at the time towards the person inflicting it. When asked whether they had seen any public executions, they almost all cried out that they had seen Manning and his wife hung; others said that they had seen Rush and Sarah Thomas executed. They stated that they liked to go a “death-hunting,” after seeing one or two executed. It hardened them to it, and at last they all got to thieve under the gallows. They felt rather shocked at the sight of an execution at first; but, after a few repetitions, it soon wore off.

Before the meeting broke up several other lads expressed a strong desire to make statements.

A young man, 18 years of age, and of a miserable and ragged appearance, said he first left home from bad usage; and could not say whether it was the same with his sister or not, but she left her home about nine months ago, when he met her while he was getting his living as a costermonger. With the stock-money that he had, rather than she should be driven to prostitution and the streets, he bought as many things as he could to furnish a room. This exhausted his stock-money, and then his furniture had to go a little at a time to support him and his sister in food. After this he was obliged to take a furnished room, which put him to greater expense. To keep her off the streets, he was compelled to thieve. His father, if he ever had the feeling of a Christian, would never have treated him as he had done. Could a father (he asked) have any feeling, who chained his son up by the leg in a shed, as his father had done to him, and fed him on bread and water for one entire month: and then, after chaining him up all day, still chain him in bed at night. This it was that drove him into the streets at first. It was after his mother died, and he had a step-mother, that his father treated him thus. His mother-in-law ill-treated him as well as his father. If he had been a transport he could not have been treated worse. He told his father that he was driving him on the road to transportation, but he took no notice of it; and he was obliged to leave his roof. He had been in Newgate since.

A little boy, dressed in the garb of a sailor, came up to Mr. Mayhew crying bitterly, and implored him to allow him to say a word. He stated—I am here starving all my time. Last night I was out in the cold and nearly froze to death. When I got up I was quite stiff and could hardly walk. I slept in Whitechapel under a form where they sell meat. I was an apprentice on board of a fishing smack, and ran away because I was ill-treated. After I ran away I broke into my master’s house because I was hungry. He gave me twelve months, and now he is in the union himself; he failed in business and got broken up. I have been out of prison three months, starving; and I would rather do anything than thieve. If I see a little thing I take it, because I can’t get anything to eat without it. [Here the child, still weeping piteously, uncovered his breast, and showed his bones starting through his skin. He said he was anxious to get out of the country.]

The following statement respecting the lodging-houses was made, after the others had left, by another lad. He left home when about thirteen, and never thieved before that. His father was dead, and his mother was unable to keep him. He got a situation and held it for three years and nine months, until he picked up with a man from a lodging-house, and through keeping late hours he was obliged to leave his place and sleep in a lodging-house himself. The lodging-house is in Short’s-gardens. This he considered to have been the commencement of his downfall. About forty thieves lived in the house, and they brought in stolen property of every description, and the deputies received it and took it to other people to sell it again, and get the price and pay the thieves. They got double as much as the thieves did, or else they would have nothing to do with it. Several housebreakers lived at the house, and he heard them there plan the robbery of Bull and Wilson, the woollen-drapers in St. Martin’s-lane. One of the men secreted himself in the house in the daytime, and the other two were admitted by him at night. If he had stated this at the meeting the persons present would have killed him. He was sure that more might be done by giving proper encouragement to virtue, and by reforming the criminal, than by rigorous prosecution. He said (with tears in his eyes) that he should be very willing and happy to work for an honest living if he could only get it to do. He showed a letter of recommendation for good conduct to his former master, and a Bible; both of which had been given him by the chaplain of the gaol which he had just left, after undergoing an imprisonment of twelve months. It was useless (he said) for a young man like him to apply to the parish for relief; he might just as well stand in the street and talk to a lamp-post. Then what was a man to do after he left prison? He must go a thieving to live. He was persuaded that if there was an institution to give employment to the homeless, the friendless, and the penniless, after being liberated from prison, it would be the means of rescuing thousands.

The proceedings then terminated. The assemblage, which had become more rational and manageable towards the close, dispersed, quite peaceably it should be added, and the boys were evidently sincerely grateful for the efforts being made to bring their misfortunes before the notice of those in whose power it may be to alleviate them.

Before they were dismissed, as much money was dispensed to each as would defray his night’s lodging.