London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

We went into Evans’s lodging-house, noted as a haunt for thieves. Passing through a group of young women who stood at the doorway, we went downstairs to an apartment below and saw about a dozen of young lads and girls seated around a table at a game of cards. One of these youths was a notorious pickpocket, though young in years, and had twice escaped out of Horsemonger Lane gaol. We were informed there was not a fourth of the persons present who usually frequent the house. After the first panic was over the young people resumed their game, some looking slyly at us, as if not altogether sure of our object. Others were lying extended on the benches along the side of the room. As we were looking on this curious scene the women in the flat above had followed us down and were peering from the staircase into the apartment to try and learn the object of our visit. As we left the house we took a glance over our shoulder and saw them standing at the door, following our movements.

We bent our steps to Kent Street and entered a beershop there. There were a number of thieves and “smashers” (utterers of base coin) hovering round the bar. The “smashers” were ordinary-looking men and women of the lower orders. We saw a party of thieves in the adjoining tap-room, and seated ourselves for a short time among them. One of them was a dexterous swell-mobsman, who has been several times convicted and imprisoned. A dark-complexioned little man, about twenty-one years of age, an utterer of base coin, was lounging in the seat beside us. The swell-mobsman was evidently the leading man among them. He was a good-looking fair-haired youth, about twenty years of age, smart and decided in his movements, and with a good appearance, very unlike a criminal. He occasionally dresses in high style, in a superfine black suit, with white hat and crape, and occasionally drives out in fashionable vehicles.

We also visited Market Street, a narrow by-street off the Borough Road, a well-known rookery of prostitutes. A great number of simple, thoughtless young girls, from various parts of London and the country, leave their homes and settle down here and live on prostitution. Here we saw an organist performing in the street, surrounded by a dense crowd of young prostitutes, middle-aged women, and children of the lower class. Two young women, one with her face painted, and the other a slender girl about seventeen, with an old crownless straw bonnet on her head, and with the crown of it in one hand, and a stick in the other, were dancing in wild frolic to the strains of the organ, amid the merriment of the surrounding crowd, and to the evident amazement of the poor minstrel, while other rough-looking young dames were skipping gaily along the street.

In a brothel in this street an atrocious crime was perpetrated a few days ago by George Philips, a young miscreant, termed the Jew-boy, who resided there. A sailor, recently returned from India, happened to enter this foul den. The inmates consisted of the Jew-boy’s sister, a common prostitute, who cohabited with Richard Pitts, a well-known burglar, recently sentenced to transportation for ten years, another prostitute named Irish Julia, and this young villain, the Jew. After remaining for some time the sailor told them he was to leave their company. On hearing this, Philips’s sister told her brother to stab him to the heart. He instantly took out a knife from his pocket, opened it, and stabbed the sailor beneath the collar-bone. After committing this atrocious crime he coolly wiped the knife on the cuff of his guernsey, at the same time stating, if the sailor had not got enough he would give him the other end of the knife. The sailor fell, apparently mortally wounded, and was removed to St. Thomas’s Hospital.

His sister, on seeing what her brother had done by her order, desperately seized a bottle of laudanum in the room, and drank off part of the contents, and still lies in a precarious state.

In this portion of Market Street we understand every house, from basement to attic, is occupied by prostitutes and thieves.

We entered an adjoining public-house, where three of these young women followed us to the bar, anxious to know the object of our visiting the district. They called for a pint of stout, which they drank off heartily, and stood loitering beside us to hear our conversation, so that they might have something to gossip about to their companions. The girl who frolicked in the street with the old bonnet was one of them, and had now laid this aside. She was fair-haired, and good-looking, but was very foolish and immodest in her movements. One of her companions was taller and more robust, but her conduct showed she was debased in her character, and lost to all sense of propriety. The other girl was tall and dark-eyed, and more quiet and calculating in her manner as she stood, in a light cotton dress, silently leaning against the door-post.

One evening in September, about eight o’clock, we took another ramble over the criminal district of the Borough.

As we went along Kent Street the lamps were lit, and the shops in the adjoining streets were illuminated with their flaring gas lights. On passing St. George’s church we saw a crowd collected around a drunken middle-aged Irishwoman. It was one of those motley scenes one often meets in the streets of London. Young people and middle-aged, old women and children were clustered together, some well-dressed, others in mechanics’ dress, begrimed with dust and sweat, and others hanging in rags and tatters. They were collected around this woman, who stood on the pavement, while the mass were gathered in the street, many of them looking on anxiously with eyes and mouth open, others grinning with delight, and some with sinister countenance, while she gesticulated wildly, yet in good humour, in a strong Irish accent, amid the applause of the auditory.