“Both sides of Buckeridge Street abounded in courts, particularly the north side, and these, with the connected backyards and low walls in the rear of the street, afforded an easy escape to any thief when pursued by officers of justice. I remember on one occasion, in 1844, a notorious thief was wanted by a well-known criminal-officer (Restieaux). He was known to associate with some cadgers who used a house in the rear of Paddy Corvan’s, near Church Street, and was believed to be in the house when Restieaux and a serjeant entered it. They went into the kitchen where seven male and five female thieves were seated, along with several cadgers of the most cunning class. One of them made a signal, indicating that some one had escaped by the back of the premises, in which direction the officers proceeded. It was evident the thief had gone over a low wall into an adjoining yard. The pursuers climbed over, passed through the yards and back premises of eleven houses, and secured him in Jones Court. There were about twenty persons present at the time of the arrest, but they offered no resistance to the constables. It would have been a different matter had he been apprehended by strangers.
“In Bainbridge Street, one side of which was nearly occupied by the immense brewery of Meux & Co., were found some of the most intricate and dangerous places in this low locality. The most notorious of these was Jones Court, inhabited by coiners, utterers of base coin, and thieves. In former years a bull terrier was kept here, which gave an alarm on the appearance of a stranger, when the coining was suspended till the course was clear. This dog was at last taken away by Duke and Clement, two police officers, and destroyed by an order from a magistrate.
“The houses in Jones Court were connected by roof, yard, and cellar with those in Bainbridge and Buckeridge streets, and with each other in such a manner that the apprehension of an inmate or refugee in one of them was almost a task of impossibility to a stranger, and difficult to those well acquainted with the interior of the dwellings. In one of the cellars was a large cesspool, covered in such a way that a stranger would likely step into it. In the same cellar was a hole about two feet square, leading to the next cellar, and thence by a similar hole into the cellar of a house in Scott’s Court, Buckeridge Street. These afforded a ready means of escape to a thief, but effectually stopped the pursuers, who would be put to the risk of creeping on his hands and knees through a hole two feet square in a dark cellar in St. Giles’s Rookery, entirely in the power of dangerous characters. Other houses were connected in a similar manner. In some instances there was a communication from one back window to another by means of large spike nails, one row to hold by, and another for the feet to rest on, which were not known to be used at the time we refer to.
“In Church Street were several houses let to men of an honest but poor class, who worked in omnibus and cab-yards, factories, and such other places as did not afford them the means of procuring more expensive lodgings. Their apartments were clean, and their way of living frugal.
“Other houses of a less reputable character were very numerous. One stood at the corner of Church Street and Lawrence Street, occupied by the most infamous characters of the district. On entering the house from Lawrence Lane, and proceeding upstairs, you would find on each floor several rooms connected by a kind of gallery, each room rented by prostitutes. These apartments were open to those girls who had fleeced any poor drunken man who had been induced to accompany them to this den of infamy. When they had plundered the poor dupe, he was ejected without ceremony by the others who resided in the room; often without a coat or hat, sometimes without his trousers, and occasionally left on the staircase naked as he was born. In this house the grossest scenes of profligacy were transacted. In pulling it down a hole was discovered in the wall opening into a timber-yard which fronted High Street—a convenient retreat for any one pursued.
“Opposite to this was the “Rose and Crown” public-house, resorted to by all classes of the light-fingered gentry, from the mobsman and his “Amelia” to the lowest of the street thieves and his “Poll.” In the tap-room might be seen Black Charlie the fiddler, with ten or a dozen lads and lasses enjoying the dance, and singing and smoking over potations of gin-and-water, more or less plentiful according to the proceeds of the previous night—all apparently free from care in their wild carousals. The cheek waxed pale when the policeman opened the door and glanced round the room, but when he departed the merriment would be resumed with vigour.
“The kitchens of some houses in Buckeridge Street afforded a specimen of life in London rarely seen elsewhere even in London, though some in Church Lane do so now on a smaller scale. The kitchen, a long apartment usually on the ground-floor, had a large coke fire, along with a sink, water-tap, one or two tables, several forms, a variety of saucepans, and other cooking utensils, and was lighted with a gas jet. There in the evenings suppers were discussed by the cadgers an alderman might almost have envied—rich steaks and onions, mutton and pork chops, fried potatoes, sausages, cheese, celery, and other articles of fare, with abundance of porter, half-and-half, and tobacco.
“In the morning they often sat down to a breakfast of tea, coffee, eggs, rashers of bacon, dried fish, fresh butter, and other good things which would be considered luxuries by working people, when each discussed his plans for the day’s rambles, and arranged as to the exchange of garments, bandages, &c., considered necessary to prevent recognition in those neighbourhoods recently worked.
“Their dinners were taken in the course of their rounds, consisting generally of the best of the broken victuals given them by the compassionate, and were eaten on one of the door-steps of some respectable street, after which they would resort to some obscure public-house or beer-shop in a back street or alley to partake of some liquor.
“Heaps of good food were brought home and thrown on a side-table, or into a corner, as unfit to be eaten by those “professional” cadgers,—food which thousands of the working men of London would have been thankful for. It was given to the children who visited these lodging-houses. The finer viands, such as pieces of fancy bread, rolls, kidneys, mutton and lamb, the gentlemen of the establishment reserved for their own more fastidious palates.