London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

There are great numbers of expert cracksmen known to the police in different parts of the metropolis. Many of these reside on the Surrey side, about Waterloo Road and Kent Road, in the Borough, Hackney and Kingsland Roads, and other localities. Some of them have a fine appearance, and are fashionably dressed, and would not be known, except by persons personally acquainted with them.

A number of most expert cracksmen belonging to the felon class of Irish cockneys, have learned no trade, and have no fixed occupation. Others come to their ranks who have been carpenters and smiths, brass-finishers, shoemakers, mechanics, and even tailors. Sometimes fast young men have taken to this desperate mode of life. Some pickpockets, daring in disposition, or driven to extremity have become burglars. In a short time they learn to use their tools with great expertness; great numbers have been trained by a few leading burglars; some are as young as sixteen or seventeen years; others as old as forty or forty-five—incorrigible old convicts.

Tools are secretly made for them in London, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, and other places. Some burglars keep a set of fine tools of considerable value. Others have indifferent instruments, and are not so expert.

They find very convenient agents in some of the cab-drivers of the metropolis, who for a piece of money are very ready to assist in conveying them at night to the neighbourhood of the houses where they perpetrate their burglaries, and in carrying off the stolen property, and some of the employers of these cab-drivers are as willing to receive it at an underprice.

They have no difficulty in finding unprincipled people to open their houses to receive the stolen property temporarily or otherwise. There are many houses of well-known receivers; then there are hundreds of low public-houses, beer-shops, coffee-shops, brothels, and other places of bad character, where they can leave it for a few hours, or for days, placing one of their gang in the house for a time, until they have arranged with the receivers to purchase it. There are certain well-known beer-shops and public-houses where the burglars meet with the receivers. They meet them in beer-shops in the purlieus of Whitechapel, and in the quieter public-houses and splendid gin-palaces of the West-end.

There are a number of French burglars in London, who are as ingenious, daring, and expert as the English. There are also some Germans and a few Italians, but who are not considered so clever.

Few of the cracksmen in the metropolis are married—though some are. They often live with prostitutes, or with servants, and other females they have seduced. Some have children whom they send to school, but many of them have none. They frequently train up some of their boys to enter the fanlights or windows, and to assist them in their midnight villanies.

While most of the burglars are city-trained, a number come from Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Bristol. These occasionally work with the London thieves, and the London thieves go occasionally to the provinces to work with them. This is done in the event of their being well known to the police.

For example, a gang of Liverpool thieves might know a house there where valuable property could be conveniently reached. Their being in the neighbourhood might excite suspicion. Under these circumstances they sometimes send to thieves they are acquainted with in London, who proceed thither and plunder the house. Sometimes, in similar circumstances, the London burglars get persons from the provinces to commit robberies in the metropolis—both parties sharing in the booty. In a place where they are not known, they do it themselves.