A streak of new light thus thrown upon an old subject, which qualified Mary Anne’s fun, and silenced her.
At this moment my assistant came up, and we took the three to the Office, where I brought the young thief to face with Mrs Kerr. The look of relief which played over the grief-worn features of the woman when she saw her four half-crowns and pawn-ticket, can only be understood by those who are, or have been poor, and who know the narrow margin on the verge of which flit the few and desultory illumined figures of their happiness. It did not last long, for it was to give place to the old melancholy; but I believe the feelings with which she looked on the face of the hardened creature to whom she had poured out the simple history of her sorrows, would never pass away.
“I didn’t think, for all I have heard of the wickedness of human creatures,” she said, as she kept her eyes on Mary Anne, who did not seem to feel her situation more than as quite a natural one, “that it was in the heart of a woman to rob one, who might be her mother, of all she had in the world.”
“ ’Twill learn you to look at monkeys again,” replied Mary Anne, with a laugh, which gave so ludicrous a turn to the pathetic, that the Lieutenant himself could scarcely resist it.
She might have profited by the monkey, thought I, for it offered her a lesson which she did not take to heart.
And thus this act of the strange drama ended. The next was the retributive one—the issue or conclusion being proportioned, not to the amount taken, but to the enormity of the hardened depravity which it revealed. The three were tried before the High Court. Mary Anne, as the principal performer, getting ten years’ transportation, and Walker and M‘Guire seven years each. So that, had Mary Anne’s mind not been closed against every good impression, she would have admitted that, if she had never previously obtained anything from that Power she so irreverently maligned, she had at length received a share of the stern and severe reward it invariably bestows upon the vicious and the guilty.
The Child-Strippers.
HOW different are the estimates people form of mankind! Some say that the world is just very much as you take it—the old notion that truth is just as you think it. If you wear a rough glove, you may think all those you shake hands with are rough in the palms; and if you wear a soft one, so in the other way; and no doubt if you grin in a glass, you will get a grin in return—if you smile, you will be repaid with a smile. All very well this in the clever way; but I’ve a notion that there are depths of depravity not to be gauged in this short plumb way, just as there are heights of perfection not to be got at by our own estimates of ourselves. As for the general “top-to-toe rottenness” so congenial to some religious sects, why there’s a little truth there too—at least I would look sharp at a man who could turn his eye in and about his own heart, and just say, with a nice smirk, “Well, I am glad to find that man is an angel after all.” It is as well for me anyhow that I am not given to making a kaleidoscope of my heart, turning up only varieties of beauty, without considering that a few hard pebbles form the elements of the fine display, otherwise how could I have had any belief in the existence of such beings as Kate Lang and Nell Duff. I would as readily have believed in M. Chaillo’s account of the Gorillas; only these optimist gentry do admit, with a smile of satisfaction, that a hungry tiger is not to be trusted with a live infant—no more is Kate Lang, say I.
The practice of child-stripping, which is not so common now, is one of those depths of depravity to which I have alluded. It is not that there is so much cruelty done. It forms a fine subject for very tender people who wail about the poor innocents left shivering in their shirts. But there is more fancy than fact here; they don’t shiver long in a crowded city; nay, the stripping is sometimes productive of good, in so much as the neighbours contrive to get the victim pretty well supplied with even better clothes than those stolen. There is more sympathy due to the case which happens sometimes where a heartless thief makes off with the clothes, shirt and all, of a bather, about the solitary parts of Granton; for here the situation of the victim is really terrible. To run after the thief is nearly out of the question as regards success, even if he could make up his mind to a chase in his very natural condition; nor is his remaining remedy much better—a walk so unlike that of Adam through Paradise to the nearest house, a mile off, where he must knock at a door, drive away the opener with a scream, bolt like a robber into a bed-room, and get a walk home in a suit of clothes in which his friends cannot recognise him. Our feelings depend often upon such strange turns of thought, that a case of this latter kind, so replete with even agony, can scarcely be told without something like a smile working among the gravely-disposed muscles of the face of the hearer; while that of the child, almost always left its skin linen, is viewed with indignation and pity. I cannot explain this difference; but it is not difficult to see how, independently of the rather exaggerated notions we entertain of the condition of the victim, the crime of child-stripping should be visited with the execration it generally meets.
In 1838, and thereabouts, this offence of child-stripping increased to an extent which roused the fears of mothers. The depradators were of course women. My only doubts were, whether there were more than one; for, as I have taken occasion to remark, all such peculiar and out of the way offences are generally the work of some one ingenious artiste; and if more are concerned, they are only parties to a league in which the inventor is the leader. I confess I was more inclined to believe in the single performer, but I was destined in this instance to find myself wrong. I was at least determined to get at the bottom of the mystery, and it wasn’t long until I was gratified. In the month of May of the year mentioned, the cases had accumulated, and as yet my inquiries had been unsuccessful. In the new town the cases had been limited to the narrow streets, and latterly they had increased about the foot of the Canongate. In that quarter, accordingly, I found it necessary to be, though not very expedient to be seen, and I soon got upon my proper scent. One day I observed coming from the Watergate three or four women, all of the lowest section of Conglomerates—not altogether a perfectly applicable name here, in so much as my “clear grits” were not rounded by healthy washings, but sharpened by the abrasion of vice and misery. They were busy tying up a bundle, and after indulging in many stealthy looks to the right and left, they made forward up the Canongate. I might safely have stopped them and made inquiry into the contents of their bundle, but I had something else in view, and was content with noting them, all known to me as they were—cast-off Fancies, not genteel enough for being leagued with respectable thieves, and yet below the summer heat of love—trulls or trollops—troganmongers during day, and troglodytes during night.