"There was one young fellow, who, being rather of a superior education to the rest, was made a junior teacher in the school. Well, do you know the boys of his class would actually frig him as he sat at his desk to hear their lessons, for the head schoolmaster was mostly asleep, and no one else dared say a word. This fairly broke his health down, and he had to go into the infirmary.
"What games there used to be in the kitchen! The head cook was a great, strong woman of about forty, and had another woman almost like herself as assistant, and they were allowed half-a-dozen boys to help them. They were not always the same boys, but every morning the head cook would select those she liked, and march them off to the kitchen, so as, she said, to give every one a turn—and a good turn it was. We had to fuck both the women. They would each of them do the whole half-dozen, and fairly fuck us dry, and I have seen the boys throw them down and slap their fat arses till they screamed for mercy; then we would bugger them and frig them till they almost fainted from exhaustion.
"I don't mean to say that this was done every day, but perhaps once or twice a week, when they knew the governor was gone out. He used to come round first, and then as soon as he was gone the spree was started."
A few days ago George Brown, when a little under the influence of Bacchus, let me partially into another secret of his, which affords a partial clue to how so many unaccountable mysterious disappearances are always being mentioned in the papers.
"Do you know, Jack," he said, "what I do when things are a bit slack? I can always earn a poney (twenty-five pounds) if I take a little girl of about fifteen to a certain house in Paris; in fact, they will give me an extra fiver for every year she is under that age, so that a girl between eleven and twelve is worth forty pounds and all expenses paid. Now and then I get them a boy for a change, as they are in great demand for the rich visitors to Paris, especially for the Americans, who are nearly all sodomites. You heard of the case of General Ney, who shot himself the other day? Well, he was a regular customer to a certain Mme. R—— that I know, but they were too greedy, she and her ponce; always wanting money, and threatening the General to tell his wife and mother-in-law if he didn't shell out, so at last the poor fellow blew his brains out. If the boys or girls turn out obstinate, they are outraged with brutal violence, and then disappear no one knows how, but I have nothing to do with that.
"A fortnight ago I went down Whitechapel way, and dropped on to such a nice, pretty boy. He was a shoeblack, and, although only about thirteen years of age, beautifully formed and well hung with fine light golden hair, blue eyes and cherry lips. I fell in love with him myself. Whilst he was blacking my boots I asked a lot of questions about what he earned, etc., and soon found that he lived in a refuge, where they kept nearly all he brought in every night to pay for his schooling and board, etc., as he had no parents or relatives of any kind.
"Here was a chance for G. B., so I soon got him to promise to meet me near Moses' shop in Aldgate in the evening, and the result was I bought him a rig-out as a page, had his ragged-school livery made up into a parcel and sent back to the refuge, and took him off in triumph to my lodgings, a fresh place I engaged for that purpose that very afternoon. He was my page, and had a little bed made up in an anteroom next my own bedroom.
"I had four rooms en suite at three guineas a week in a nice street in Camden Town.
"Next day I bought him some more clothes, shirts, hose, etc., and had him well bathed; in fact, he made a handsome little gentleman when dressed in mufti.
"He seemed delighted at the change in his prospects, and the jolly blow-out of good things at every meal; so in the evening, after supper, I asked him how he would like to go back to the Ragged School Refuge again, as I did not think I should keep him very long.