London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

Robberies from Carts and other Vehicles.—There are many depredations committed over the metropolis from carts, carriers’ waggons, cabs, railway vans, and other vehicles. Many of those people have the appearance of porters at a warehouse, and are a peculiar order.

At one time they may have been porters at warehouses, or connected with railways, or carmen to large commercial firms. Some have corduroy or moleskin jacket and trowsers, and cloth cap; others have a plain frock-coat and cap.

Many of the robberies from carts are done by the connivance of the carters. They are sent by business establishments to dispose of goods over the metropolis; some of them are connected with the worst class of thieves. They connive with those men in stealing their employers’ property, and in rifling other carts, carry the booty away in their own, and always manage to secure a part of the prize.

These carters take thieves occasionally to railway stations to assist them with their work, and when an opportunity occurs, carry off goods from the railway platform, such as bales of bacon, cheese, bags of nails, boxes of tin and copper, and travellers’ luggage, which they dispose of to marine-store dealers and at chandlers’ shops. The wearing apparel in the trunks they sell at second-hand shops, kept by Jews and others in low neighbourhoods, such as Petticoat-lane, Lambeth, Westminster, and the Borough of Southwark.

Many carts are rifled by persons who represent themselves as hawkers or costermongers—men who have no steady industrious mode of livelihood, and are usually in the company of prostitutes and thieves of the worst description. The carter may have occasion to call at a city house, and to leave his horse and cart in the street, when they steal a whip, coat, or horsecloth, the reins from off the horse, or any portable article they can lay their hands on.

Numbers of hay, straw, and store carmen frequently steal a truss of hay, or clover, or straw, from their employer’s cart, and dispose of it to some person who has a horse, or pony, or donkey, for a small sum of money. These dishonest practices are carried on to a far greater extent than the public are aware of, as it is only occasionally they are brought to public notice.

Robberies from cabs and carriages are sometimes effected in the following way: They follow the cab or vehicle with a horse and cart, driving along in its wake—two or three thieves generally in the cart. One of them jumps on the spring of the conveyance while the driver is sitting in front of his vehicle, pulls down the trunk or box, and slips it into the cart, then drives away with the booty.

At other times they run up, and leap on the spring of the conveyance while the driver is proceeding along with his back toward them; lower the trunk or other article from the roof, and walk off with it. These trunks sometimes contain money, silver plate, and other valuable property.

These depredations are always done at night, by experienced thieves, and generally in the winter season. They are common in the fashionable squares of the West-end, at the East-end, toward the Commercial-road and St. George’s-in-the-East, at Ratcliffe Highway, the City, the Borough of Southwark, and Lambeth, along the docks, and at the railway stations around the metropolis.

There are a number of laundresses residing at Chelsea, Uxbridge, Hampstead, Holloway, and other districts in the suburbs, who wash large quantities of clothes for the gentry and nobility in the fashionable streets and squares of the metropolis. After washing and dressing the linen, they pack it up in large wicker baskets, and generally convey it in their own carts to the residences of the owners.