| Value of property thereby abstracted in the metropolitan districts | £98 | 0 |
| Ditto ditto in the City | 2 | 10 |
| £100 | 10 |
A Ramble Among the Thieves’ Dens in the Borough.
Leaving the police-office at Stones-end, along with a detective-officer, we went one afternoon to Gunn Street, a narrow by-street off the Borough Road, inhabited by costermongers, burglars, and pickpockets.
Here one of the most daring gangs of burglars and pickpockets in London met our eye, most of them in the dress of costermongers. A professional pickpocket, a well-attired young man, was seated on a costermonger’s barrow. He was clothed in a black cloth coat, vest, and trousers, and shining silk hat, and was smoking a pipe, with two or three “pals” by his side. It was then about seven o’clock, P. M., and as clear as mid-day. About forty young men, ranging from seventeen to thirty-five years of age, were engaged around a game of “pitch and toss,” while others were lounging idle in the street.
We went forward through the crowd, and stood for some time alongside. At first they may have fancied we were come to arrest one or more of them, and were evidently prepared to give us a warm reception. On seeing us standing by smiling, they recovered their good-humour, and most of them continued to cluster together, but numbers sneaked off to their houses out of sight.
Here we saw a tall, robust man, with a dissipated and ruffian look, smoking a long pipe, who had been an accomplice in an atrocious midnight murder.
He had narrowly escaped the gallows by turning Queen’s evidence on his companions. He is a determined burglar. We could observe from the brutal, resolute, bull-dog look of the man that he was fit for any deed of heartless villany when inflamed with strong drink.
Three burglars stood in the middle of the crowd, who soon after left it and entered a beershop in the street. One of them was dressed like a respectable mechanic. He was rather beneath the middle height, stout-made, with his nose injured and flattened, possibly done in some broil. Another was more brutal in appearance, and more degraded. The third burglar was not so resolute in character, and appeared to be an associate of the band.
Ten of the persons present had been previously convicted of robberies. The greater part, if not the whole of them, were thieves, or associates of thieves.
We next directed our way to the Mint, a well-known harbour of low characters, passing knots of thieves at the corners of the different streets as we proceeded along. Some were sneaks, and others pickpockets. In the neighbourhood of the Mint we found a number of children gamboling in the streets. One in particular arrested our attention, an interesting little girl of about five years of age, with a sallow complexion, but most engaging countenance, radiant with innocence and hope. Other sweet little girls were playing by her side, possibly the children of some of the abandoned men and women of the locality. How sad to think of these young innocents exposed to the contamination of bad companionships around them, and to the pernicious influence of the bad example of their parents!