“In the morning they used to go to their different haunts over the city, some begging, and others thieving.
“On Sunday evenings the only books read were such as ‘Jack Sheppard,’ ‘Dick Turpin,’ and the ‘Newgate Calendar’ they got out of the neighbouring libraries by depositing 1s. These were read with much interest; the lodgers would sooner have these than any other books. I never saw any of them go to church on Sundays. Sometimes one or two would go to the ragged-school, such as the one in Field Lane near Smithfield.
“It often happened a man left his wife, and she came to the lodging-house and got a livelihood by begging. Some days she would glean 2s. or 3s., and at other times would not get a halfpenny.
“The thieves were seldom in the lodging-house, except to meals and at bedtime. They lived on better fare than the beggars. The pickpocket lives better than the sneaking thief, and the pickpocket is thought more of in the lodging-houses and prisons than the beggar.
“The lowest pickpockets often lived in these low lodging-houses, some of them young lads, and others middle-aged men. The young pickpockets, if clever, soon leave the lodging-houses and take a room in some locality, as at Somers Town, Marylebone, the Burgh, Whitechapel, or Westminster. The pickpockets in lodging-houses, for the most part, are stockbuzzers, i.e., stealers of handkerchiefs.
“I have often seen the boys picking each others’ pockets for diversion in the lodging-houses, many of them from ten to eleven years of age.
“There are a great number of sneaks in the lodging-houses. Two of them go out together to the streets, one of them keeps a look-out while the other steals some article, shoes, vest, or coat, &c., from the shop or stall. I sometimes go out with a mate and take a pair of boots at a shop-door and sell them to the pawnbroker, or to a labouring man passing in the street.
“Sometimes I have known the lodgers make up a packet of sawdust and put in a little piece of tobacco to cover an opening, leaving only the tobacco to be seen looking through, and sell it to persons passing by in the street as a packet of tobacco.
“When I am hard up I have gone out and stolen a loaf at a baker’s shop, or chandler’s shop, and taken it to my lodging. I have often stolen handkerchiefs, silk and cambric, from gentlemen’s pockets.
“I once stole a silver snuff-box from a man’s coat-pocket, and on one occasion took a pocket-book with a lot of papers and postage stamps. I burnt the papers and sold the stamps for about 1s. 6d.