"In 1847 it was found that of 4000 examined, 400 confessed that they had been in prison, 660 lived by beggary, 178 were the children of convicts, and 800 had lost one or both their parents. Now, what was the employment of these people? They might be classed as street-sweepers; vendors of lucifer matches, oranges, cigars, tapes, and ballads; they held horses, ran errands, jobbed for 'dealers in marine stores,' that being the euphonious term for receivers of stolen goods—an influential race in the metropolis, but for whose agency a very large proportion of juvenile crime would be extinguished. It might be asked, how did the large number who never slept in bed pass the night? In all manner of places: under dry arches of bridges and viaducts, under porticos, sheds, carts in outhouses, sawpits, or staircases, or in the open air, and some in lodging-houses. Curious, indeed, was their mode of life. One boy, during the inclement period of 1847, passed the greater part of his nights in the large iron roller in the Regent's Park. He climbed over the railings, and crept to the roller, where he lay in comparative security.
"Lord Ashley says, 'many of them were living in the dry arches of houses not finished, inaccessible except by an aperture, only large enough to admit the body of a man. When a lantern was thrust in, six or eight, ten or twelve people might be found lying together. Of those whom we found thus lodged, we invited a great number to come the following day, and there an examination was instituted. The number examined was 33. Their ages varied from 12 to 18, and some were younger. 24 had no parents, 6 had one, 3 had stepmothers, 20 had no shirts, 9 no shoes, 12 had been once in prison, 3 twice, 3 four times, 1 eight times, and 1 (only 14 years old) twelve times. The physical condition of these children was exceedingly bad; they were a prey to vermin, they were troubled with itch, they were begrimed with dirt, not a few were suffering from sickness, and two or three days afterward several died from disease and the effects of starvation. I privately examined eight or ten. I was anxious to obtain from them the truth. I examined them separately, taking them into a room alone. I said, "I am going to ask you a variety of questions, to which I trust you will give me true answers, and I will undertake to answer any question you may put." They thought that a fair bargain. I put to several of them the question, "How often have you slept in a bed during the last three years?" One said, perhaps twelve times, another three times, another could not remember that he ever had. I asked them, how they passed the night in winter. They said, "We lie eight or ten together, to keep ourselves warm." I entered on the subject of their employments and modes of living. They fairly confessed they had no means of subsistence but begging and stealing. The only way of earning a penny in a legitimate way was by picking up old bones. But they fairly acknowledged for themselves and others scattered over the town, with whom they professed themselves acquainted, that they had not and could not have any other means of subsistence than by begging and stealing. A large proportion of these young persons were at a most dangerous age for society. What was the moral condition of those persons? A large proportion of them (it was no fault of theirs) did not recognise the distinctive rights of meum and tuum. Property appeared to them to be only the aggregate of plunder. They held that every thing which was possessed was common stock; that he who got most was the cleverest fellow, and that every one had a right to abstract from that stock what he could by his own ingenuity. Was it matter of surprise that they entertained those notions, which were instilled into their minds from the time they were able to creep on all fours—that not only did they disregard all the rights of property, but gloried in doing so, unless they thought the avowal would bring them within the grasp of the law. To illustrate their low state of morality, and to show how utterly shameless they were in speaking on these subjects, I would, mention what had passed at a ragged school to which fourteen or fifteen boys, having presented themselves on a Sunday evening, were admitted as they came. They sat down, and the lesson proceeded. The clock struck eight. They all rose with the exception of one little boy. The master took him by the arm and said, "You must remain; the lesson is not over." The reply was, "We must go to business." The master inquired what business? "We must all go to catch them as they come out of the chapels." It was necessary for them, according to the remark of this boy, to go at a certain time in pursuit of their calling. They had no remorse or shame, in making the avowal, because they believed that there were no other means of saving themselves from starvation. I recollect a very graphic remark made by one of those children in perfect simplicity, but which yet showed the horrors of their position. The master had been pointing out to him the terrors of punishment in after-life. The remark of the boy was, "That may be so, but I don't think it can be any worse than this world has been to me." Such was the condition of hundreds and thousands.'"
A large number of the depraved children live in what are called the "lodging-houses." Most Americans have heard of the "Old Brewery" at the Five Points in New York city, where more than two hundred persons of all ages and sexes were crowded together. Such lodging-houses as this, (which fortunately has been destroyed,) are common in London and the provincial towns of Great Britain. Mr. Mayhew, in his "London Labour and the London Poor," has given us very full information concerning them. He obtained much of it from one who had passed some time among the dens of infamy. He says of these lodging-houses—
"'They have generally a spacious, though often ill-ventilated kitchen, the dirty, dilapidated walls of which are hung with prints, while a shelf or two are generally, though barely, furnished with crockery and kitchen utensils. In some places knives and forks are not provided, unless a penny is left with the "deputy," or manager, till they are returned. A brush of any kind is a stranger, and a looking-glass would be a miracle. The average number of nightly lodgers is in winter seventy, in the summer (when many visit the provinces) from forty to forty-five. The general charge is, if two sleep together, 3d. per night, or 4d. for a single bed. In either case, it is by no means unusual to find eighteen or twenty in one small room, the heat and horrid smell from which are insufferable; and, where there are young children, the staircases are the lodgment of every kind of filth and abomination. In some houses there are rooms for families, where, on a rickety machine, which they dignify by the name of a bedstead, may be found the man, his wife, and a son or daughter, perhaps eighteen years of age; while the younger children, aged from seven to fourteen, sleep on the floor. If they have linen, they take it off to escape vermin, and rise naked, one by one, or sometimes brother and sister together. This is no ideal picture; the subject is too capable of being authenticated to need any meaningless or dishonest assistance called "allowable exaggeration." The amiable and deservedly popular minister of a district church, built among lodging-houses, has stated that he has found twenty-nine human beings in one apartment; and that having with difficulty knelt down between two beds to pray with a dying woman, his legs became so jammed that he could hardly get up again.
"'Out of some fourscore such habitations,' continues my informant, 'I have only found two which had any sort of garden; and, I am happy to add, that in neither of these two was there a single case of cholera. In the others, however, the pestilence raged with terrible fury.'"
There are other lodging-houses still lower in character than those described above, and where there is a total absence of cleanliness and decency. A man who had slept in these places, gave the following account to Mr. Mayhew:—
"He had slept in rooms so crammed with sleepers—he believed there were thirty where twelve would have been a proper number—that their breaths in the dead of night and in the unventilated chamber, rose (I use his own words) 'in one foul, choking steam of stench.' This was the case most frequently a day or two prior to Greenwich Fair or Epsom Races, when the congregation of the wandering classes, who are the supporters of the low lodging-houses, was the thickest. It was not only that two or even three persons jammed themselves into a bed not too large for one full-sized man; but between the beds—and their partition one from another admitted little more than the passage of a lodger—were placed shakedowns, or temporary accommodation for nightly slumber. In the better lodging-houses the shakedowns are small palliasses or mattrasses; in the worst they are bundles of rags of any kind; but loose straw is used only in the country for shakedowns. Our informant saw a traveller, who had arrived late, eye his shakedown in one of the worst houses with any thing but a pleased expression of countenance; and a surly deputy, observing this, told the customer he had his choice, 'which,' the deputy added, 'is not as all men has, or I shouldn't have been waiting here on you. But you has your choice, I tell you;—sleep there on that shakedown, or turn out and be——; that's fair.' At some of the busiest periods, numbers sleep on the kitchen floor, all huddled together, men and women, (when indecencies are common enough,) and without bedding or any thing but their scanty clothes to soften the hardness of the stone or brick floor. A penny is saved to the lodger by this means. More than two hundred have been accommodated in this way in a large house. The Irish, in harvest-time, very often resort to this mode of passing the night.
"I heard from several parties, of the surprise, and even fear or horror, with which a decent mechanic—more especially if he were accompanied by his wife—regarded one of these foul dens, when destitution had driven him there for the first time in his life. Sometimes such a man was seen to leave the place abruptly, though perhaps he had prepaid his last halfpenny for the refreshment of a night's repose. Sometimes he was seized with sickness. I heard also from some educated persons who had 'seen better days,' of the disgust with themselves and with the world, which they felt on first entering such places. 'And I have some reason to believe,' said one man, 'that a person, once well off, who has sunk into the very depths of poverty, often makes his first appearance in one of the worst of those places. Perhaps it is because he keeps away from them as long as he can, and then, in a sort of desperation fit, goes into the cheapest he can meet with; or if he knows it's a vile place, he very likely says to himself—as I did—"I may as well know the worst at once."'
"Another man, who had moved in good society, said, when asked about his resorting to a low lodging-house: 'When a man's lost caste in society, he may as well go the whole hog, bristles and all, and a low lodging-house is the entire pig.'
"Notwithstanding many abominations, I am assured that the lodgers, in even the worst of these habitations, for the most part, sleep soundly. But they have, in all probability, been out in the open air the whole of the day, and all of them may go to their couches, after having walked, perhaps, many miles, exceedingly fatigued, and some of them half drunk. 'Why, in course, sir,' said a 'traveller,' whom I spoke to on this subject, 'if you is in a country town or village, where there's only one lodging-house, perhaps, and that a bad one—an old hand can always suit hisself in London—you must get half drunk, or your money for your bed is wasted. There's so much rest owing to you, after a hard day; and bugs and bad air'll prevent its being paid, if you don't lay in some stock of beer, or liquor of some sort, to sleep on. It's a duty you owes yourself; but, if you haven't the browns, why, then, in course, you can't pay it.' I have before remarked, and, indeed, have given instances, of the odd and sometimes original manner in which an intelligent patterer, for example, will express himself.