Many of these people buy other articles besides clothes. They are in the habit of receiving articles left with them, and charge 2d. or 3d. a shilling on the articles, if redeemed in a week. If not redeemed for a week, or other specified time, they sell the articles, and dispose of them, having given the party a miserably small sum, perhaps only a sixth or eighth part of their value. These shops are frequented by common thieves, and by poor dissipated creatures living in the dark slums and alleys in the vicinity, or residing in low lodging-houses. The persons who keep them often conceal the articles deposited with them from the knowledge of the police, and get punished as receivers of stolen property. Numbers of such cases occur over the metropolis in low neighbourhoods. For this reason the keepers of these shops are often compelled to remove to other localities.
The articles they receive, such as old male and female wearing apparel, are also resetted by keepers of low coffee-houses and lodging-houses, and are occasionally bought by chandlers, low hairdressers, and others.
They also receive workmen’s tools of an inferior quality, and cheap articles of household furniture, books, &c., from poor dissipated people, beggars, and thieves; many of which would be rejected by the licensed pawnbrokers.
They are frequently visited by the wives and daughters of the poorest labouring people, and others, who deposit wearing apparel, or bed-linen, with them for a small piece of money when they are in want of food, or when they wish to get some intoxicating liquor, in which many of them indulge too freely. They are also haunted by the lowest prostitutes on like errands. The keepers of dolly shops give more indulgence to their regular customers than they do to strangers. They charge a less sum from them, and keep their articles longer before disposing of them.
It frequently occurs that these low traders are very unscrupulous, and sell the property deposited with them, when they can make a small piece of money thereby.
There is a pretty extensive traffic carried on in the numerous dolly-shops scattered over the metropolis, as we may find from the extensive stores heaped up in their apartments, in many cases in such dense piles as almost to exclude the light of day, and from the groups of wretched creatures who frequent them—particularly in the evenings.
The principal trade in old clothes is in the East-end of the metropolis—in Rosemary Lane, Petticoat Lane, and the dark by-streets and alleys in the neighbourhood, but chiefly at the Old Clothes Exchange, where huge bales are sold in small quantities to crowds of traders, and sent off to various parts of Scotland, England, and Ireland, and exported abroad. The average weekly trade has been estimated at about 1,500l.
Pawnbrokers, &c.—A great amount of valuable stolen property passes into the hands of pawnbrokers and private receivers. The pawnbrokers often give only a third or fourth of the value of the article deposited with them, which lies secure in their hands for twelve months.
A good many of them deal honestly in their way, and are termed respectable dealers; but some of them deal in an illegal manner, and are punished as receivers. Many of those who are reputed as the most respectable pawnbrokers, receive stolen plate, jewellery, watches, &c.
When plate is stolen, it is sometimes carried away on the night of the robbery in a cab, or other conveyance, to the house of the burglars. Some thieves take it to a low beershop, where they lodge for the night; others to coffee-shops; others to persons living in private houses, pretending possibly to be bootmakers, watchmakers, copper-plate printers, tailors, marine store-dealers, &c. Such parties are private receivers well-known to the burglars. The doors of their houses are opened at any time of the night.