“Parliament has attempted to deal with the matter by legislation, as in the ‘Act for Preventing the Adulteration of Articles of Food or Drink’ of 1860; but as the Act is only permissive, little or no effect has been given to it. Even in those places, as in the City of London, where it has been put into operation, and public analysts have been appointed, no good has resulted from it; in fact, it stands upon the statute-book as a dead letter. Speaking of the City, I may say that every inducement has been offered for the effective working of the Act, but nothing has come of it. In olden times, the remedies for such misdemeanours were quick and effectual. In the Assisa panis, for example, as set forth in Liber Albus, there are not only the strictest regulations concerning the manner in which the business of the baker is to be conducted, but there are also penalties for failing in the same. ‘If any default,’ it says, ‘shall be found in the bread of a baker in the city, the first time, let him be drawn upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to his own house through the great streets where there be most people assembled; and through the great streets which are most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging about his neck. If a second time he shall be found committing the same offence, let him be drawn from the Guildhall, through the great street of Chepe in manner aforesaid to the pillory, and let him be put upon the pillory and remain there at least one hour in the day; and the third time that such default shall be found, he shall be drawn, and the oven shall be pulled down, and the baker made to forswear the trade within the city for ever.’ It further tells us, that William de Stratford suffered this punishment for selling bread of short weight, and John de Strode ‘for making bread of filth and cobwebs.’ One hoary-headed offender was excused the hurdle on account of his age and the severity of the season; and it would seem that the last time the punishment was inflicted was in the sixteenth year of the reign of Henry VI., when Simon Frensshe was so drawn. A like punishment was awarded to butchers and vintners for fraudulent dealings; for we are told that a butcher was paraded through the streets with his face to the horse’s tail for selling measly bacon at market, and that the next day he was set in the pillory with two great pieces of his measly bacon over his head, and a writing which set forth his crimes. In the judgments recorded in Liber Albus there are twenty-three cases in which the pillory was awarded for selling putrid meat, fish, or poultry; thirteen for unlawful dealings of bakers, and six for the misdemeanours of vintners and wine dealers. Verily we have degenerated in these matters.”
And while we are on the subject of thieves non-professional, and their easy conversion to the article legally stamped and recognised, it may not be amiss briefly to remark on the odd ideas of honesty entertained and practised by thousands of our hard-fisted, and except for the singular weakness hinted at, quite worthy and decent “journeymen.” It is curious how much of hallucination prevails amongst us on the subject of “common honesty.” It is as though there were several qualities of that virtue, “common,” “middling,” and “superfine,” as there are in household bread; and that, carrying out the simile, although the “superfine” is undoubtedly nicer, and what one would always use if he could afford it, the honesty dubbed “common” is equally wholesome, and on the whole the only sort on which it is possible for a working man to exist.
“I am as honest as I can afford to be,” is an observation common in the mouth of those who really and truly earn their bread and acquire a creditable reputation by the sweat of their brow. It never seems to occur to them that such an admission is equal to a confession of dishonesty, and since it is simply a matter of degree, that the common thief on the same grounds may claim the privilege of shaking them by the hand as their equal. The man who fixes the standard of his honesty at no greater height becomes an easy prey to temptation. “If he is as honest as he can afford to be,” and no more, it simply means that his means not being equal to his necessities he has already admitted the thin end of the wedge of dishonesty to make good the gap, and that should the said gap unhappily widen, the wedge must enter still further in until a total splitting up of the system ensues, and the wedge itself becomes the only steadfast thing to cling to.
That this melancholy consummation is not more frequently attained is the great wonder, and would tend to show that many men adopt a sort of hobbling compromise, walking as it were with one foot on the path of rectitude, and the other in the miry way of petty theft, until they get to the end of life’s tether and both feet slip into the grave.
It is a fact at once humiliating, but there it stands stark and stern, and will not be denied, that there are daily pursuing their ordinary business, and passing as honest, hundreds and thousands of labouring folk, who, if their various malversations were brought to light, and they were prosecuted, would find themselves in prison ere they were a day older. Nor should this startle us very much, as we are well aware of it, and mayhap are in no small degree responsible for it, since it is mainly owing to our indolent disregard that the evil has become so firmly established; at the same time it should be borne in mind, that this no more excuses those who practise and profit on our indifference to small pilferings than a disinclination to prosecute a professional pickpocket mitigates the offence of the delinquent.
The species of dishonesty alluded to, as not coming within the official term “professional,” has many aliases. Ordinarily it is called by the cant name of “perks,” which is a convenient abbreviation of the word “perquisites,” and in the hands of the users of it, it shows itself a word of amazing flexibility. It applies to such unconsidered trifles as wax candle ends, and may be stretched so as to cover the larcenous abstraction by our man-servant of forgotten coats and vests. As has been lately exposed in the newspapers, it is not a rare occurrence for your butler or your cook to conspire with the roguish tradesman, the latter being permitted to charge “his own prices,” on condition that when the monthly bill is paid, the first robber hands over to the second two-shillings or half-a-crown in the pound. It is not, however, these sleek, and well-fed non-professional thieves that I would just now speak of, but rather of the working man—the journeyman tailor for example.
Did anyone ever yet hear of a working tailor who was proof against misappropriation of his neighbour’s goods, or as he playfully designates it, “cabbage?” Is it not a standard joke in the trade this “cabbage?” Did one ever hear of a tailor being shunned by his fellow-workmen, or avoided by his neighbours, on account of his predilection for “cabbage?” Yet what is it but another word for “theft?” If I entrust a builder with so much timber, and so much stone, and so many bricks, to build me a house, and I afterwards discover that by clever dodging and scheming he has contrived to make me believe that all the material I gave him has been employed in my house, whereas he has managed to filch enough to build himself a small cottage, do I accept his humorous explanation that it is only “cabbage,” and forgive him? No. I regard it as my duty to afford him an opportunity of explaining the matter to a magistrate. But if I entrust my tailor with stuff for a suit, and it afterwards comes to my knowledge that he has “screwed” an extra waistcoat out of it, which he keeps or sells for his own benefit, do I regard it as a serious act of robbery? I am ashamed to say that I do not; I may feel angry, and conceive a contempt for tailors, but I take no steps to bring the rogue to justice. I say to myself, “It is a mean trick, but they all do it,” which is most unjust to the community of tailors, because though I may suspect that they all do it, I have no proof of the fact, whereas I have proof that there is a dishonest tailor in their guild, and I have no right to assume but that they would regard it as a favour if I would assist them in weeding him out.
And it is almost as good a joke as the calling downright theft by the comical name of “cabbage,” that the tailor will do this and all the time insist on his right to be classed with honest men. He insists on this because he was never known to steal anything besides such goods as garments are made out of. As he comes along bringing your new suit home he would think it no sin to call at that repository for stolen goods the “piece broker’s,” and sell there a strip of your unused cloth for a shilling, but you may safely trust him in the hall where the hats and umbrellas and overcoats are. He would as soon think of breaking into your house with crowbars and skeleton keys, as of abstracting a handkerchief he saw peeping out of a pocket of one of the said coats.
As with the tailor, so it is with the upholsterer, and the dressmaker, and the paperhanger, and the plumber, and all the rest of them. I don’t say that every time they take a shred of this, or a pound weight of that, that they have before their eyes the enormity of the offence they are about to commit. What they do they see no great harm in. Indeed, point out to them and make it clear that their offence has but to be brought fairly before the criminal authorities to ensure them a month on the treadmill, and they would as a rule be shocked past repeating the delinquency. And well would it be if they were shocked past it, ere misfortune overtake them. It is when “hard up” times set in, and it is difficult indeed to earn an honest penny, that these rudimentary exercises in the art of pillage tell against a man. It is then that he requires his armour of proof against temptation, and lo! it is full of holes and rust-eaten places, and he falls at the first assault of the enemy.