 | OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE,
AND THE FINE ARTS. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 |  |
OF THE FILTH, DISHONESTY, AND IMMORALITY
OF LOW LODGING-HOUSES.
In my former and my present inquiries, I received
many statements on this subject. Some details,
given by coarse men and boys in the grossest
language, are too gross to be more than alluded
to, but the full truth must be manifested, if not
detailed. It was remarked when my prior ac-
count appeared, that the records of gross profli-
gacy on the part of some of the most licentious
of the rich (such as the late Marquis of Hert-
ford and other worthies of the same depraved
habits) were equalled, or nearly equalled, by
the account of the orgies of the lowest lodging-
houses. Sin, in any rank of life, shows the same
features.
And first, as to the want of cleanliness, com-
fort, and decency: "Why, sir," said one man,
who had filled a commercial situation of no
little importance, but had, through intemperance,
been reduced to utter want, "I myself have
slept in the top room of a house not far from
Drury-lane, and you could study the stars, if
you were so minded, through the holes left by
the slates having been blown off the roof. It
was a fine summer's night, and the openings in
the roof were then rather an advantage, for they
admitted air, and the room wasn't so foul as it
might have been without them. I never went
there again, but you may judge what thoughts
went through a man's mind — a man who had
seen prosperous days — as he lay in a place like
that, without being able to sleep, watching the
sky."
The same man told me (and I received abun-
dant corroboration of his statement, besides that
incidental mention of the subject occurs else-
where), that he had scraped together a handful
of bugs from the bed-clothes, and crushed them
under a candlestick, and had done that many a
time, when he could only resort to the lowest
places. He had slept in rooms so crammed
with sleepers — he believed there were 30 where
12 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 par-
tition one from another admitted little more
than the passage of a lodger — were placed
shakes-down, or temporary accommodation for
nightly slumber. In the better lodging-houses
the shake-downs are small palliasses or mat-
tresses; in the worst, they are bundles of rags
of any kind; but loose straw is used only in the
country for shake-downs. One informant saw
a traveller, who had arrived late, eye his shake-
down in one of the worst houses with anything
but a pleased expression of countenance; and
a surly deputy, observing this, told the custo-
mer he had his choice, "which," the deputy
added, "it's not all men as has, or I shouldn't
have been waiting here on you. But you has
your choice, I tell you; — sleep there on that
shake-down, or turn out and be d — ; 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 anything 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 200 have
been accommodated in this way in a large
[Description: 915EAF. Page 255.]
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 accom-
panied 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 pre-paid his last half-
penny 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
meets with; or if he knows it's a vile place, he
very likely says to himself — 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 fa-
tigued, 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 his-self 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 pre-
vent 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 intelli-
gent patterer, for example, will express himself.
The information I obtained in the course of
this inquiry into the condition of low lodging-
houses, afforded a most ample corroboration of
the truth of a remark I have more than once
found it necessary to make before — that persons
of the vagrant class will sacrifice almost any-
thing for warmth, not to say heat. Otherwise,
to sleep, or even sit, in some of the apart-
ments of these establishments would be intoler-
able.
From the frequent state of weariness to which
I have alluded, there is generally less conversa-
tion among the frequenters of the low lodging-
houses than might be expected. Some are busy
cooking, some (in the better houses) are reading,
many are drowsy and nodding, and many are
smoking. In perhaps a dozen places of the
worst and filthiest class, indeed, smoking is per-
mitted even in the sleeping-rooms; but it is far
less common than it was even half-a-dozen years
back, and becomes still less common yearly.
Notwithstanding so dangerous a practice, fires
are and have been very unfrequent in these
places. There is always some one awake, which
is one reason. The lack of conversation, I ought
to add, and the weariness and drowsiness, are
less observable in the lodging-houses patronised
by thieves and women of abandoned character,
whose lives are comparatively idle, and whose
labour a mere nothing. In their houses, if the
conversation be at all general, it is often of the
most unclean character. At other times it is
carried on in groups, with abundance of whis-
pers, shrugs, and slang, by the members of the
respective schools of thieves or lurkers.
I have now to speak of the habitual violation
of all the injunctions of law, of all the obliga-
tions of morality, and of all the restraints of
decency, seen continually in the vilest of the
lodging-houses. I need but cite a few facts, for
to detail minutely might be to disgust. In some
of these lodging-houses, the proprietor — or, I
am told, it might be more correct to say, the
proprietress, as there are more women than
men engaged in the nefarious traffic carried on
in these houses — are "fences," or receivers of
stolen goods in a small way. Their "fencing,"
unless as the very exception, does not extend to
any plate, or jewellery, or articles of value, but
is chiefly confined to provisions, and most of all
to those which are of ready sale to the lodgers.
Of very ready sale are "fish got from the
gate" (stolen from Billingsgate); "sawney"
(thieved bacon), and "flesh found in Leaden-
hall" (butcher's-meat stolen from that market).
I was told by one of the most respectable
tradesmen in Leadenhall-market, that it was
infested — but not now to so great an extent as
it was — with lads and young men, known there
as "finders." They carry bags round their
necks, and pick up bones, or offal, or pieces of
string, or bits of papers, or "anything, sir,
please, that a poor lad, that has neither father
nor mother, and is werry hungry, can make a
ha'penny by to get him a bit of bread, please,
sir." This is often but a cover for stealing
pieces of meat, and the finders, with their prox-
imate market for disposal of their meat in the
lowest lodging-houses in Whitechapel, go boldly
about their work, for the butchers, if the "finder"
be detected, "won't," I was told by a sharp
youth who then was at a low lodging-house in
Keate-street, "go bothering theirselves to a
beak, but gives you a scruff of the neck and a
kick and lets you go. But some of them kicks
[Description: 915EAF. Page 256.]
— and it is a common case enough with the
"prigs" — showed that he regarded hard kick-
ing merely as one of the inconveniences to
which his business-pursuits were unavoidably
subjected; just as a struggling housekeeper
might complain of the unwelcome calls of the
tax-gatherers. These depredations are more
frequent in Leadenhall-market than in any of
the others, on account of its vicinity to White-
chapel. Even the Whitechapel meat-market is
less the scene of prey, for it is a series of shops,
while Leadenhall presents many stalls, and the
finders seem loath to enter shops without some
plausible pretext.
Groceries, tea especially, stolen from the
docks, warehouses, or shops, are things in ex-
cellent demand among the customers of a
lodging-house fence. Tea, known or believed
to have been stolen "genuine" from any dock,
is bought and sold very readily; 1s. 6d., how-
ever, is a not unfrequent price for what is
known as 5s. tea. Sugar, spices, and other
descriptions of stolen grocery, are in much
smaller request.
Wearing-apparel is rarely bought by the
fences I am treating of; but the stealers of it
can and do offer their wares to the lodgers, who
will often, before buying, depreciate the gar-
ment, and say "It's never been nothing better
nor a Moses."
"Hens and chickens" are a favourite theft,
and "go at once to the pot," but in no culinary
sense. The hens and chickens of the roguish
low lodging-houses are the publicans' pewter
measures; the bigger vessels are "hens;" the
smaller are "chickens." Facilities are pro-
vided for the melting of these stolen vessels,
and the metal is sold by the thief — very rarely if
ever, by the lodging-house keeper, who prefers
dealing with the known customers of the
establishment — to marine-store buyers.
A man who at one time was a frequenter of
a thieves' lodging-house, related to me a con-
versation which he chanced to overhear — he
himself being then in what his class would con-
sider a much superior line of business — between
a sharp lad, apparently of twelve or thirteen
years of age, and a lodging-house (female)
fence. But it occurred some three or four
years back. The lad had "found" a piece
of Christmas beef, which he offered for sale to
his landlady, averring that it weighed 6 lbs.
The fence said and swore that it wouldn't
weigh 3 lbs., but she would give him 5d. for it.
It probably weighed above 4 lbs. "Fip-pence!"
exclaimed the lad, indignantly; "you haven't
no fairness. Vy, its sixpun' and Christmas
time. Fip-pence! A tanner and a flag (a
sixpence and a four-penny piece) is the werry
lowest terms." There was then a rapid and
interrupted colloquy, in which the most fre-
quent words were: "Go to blazes!" with
retorts of "You go to blazes!" and after
strong and oathful imputations of dishonest
endeavours on the part of each contracting
party, to over-reach the other, the meat was sold
to the woman for 6d.
Some of the "fences" board, lodge, and
clothe, two or three boys or girls, and send
them out regularly to thieve, the fence usually
taking all the proceeds, and if it be the young
thief has been successful, he is rewarded with
a trifle of pocket-money, and is allowed plenty
of beer and tobacco.
One man, who keeps three low lodging-
houses (one of which is a beer-shop), not long
ago received from a lodger a valuable great-
coat, which the man said he had taken from a
gig. The fence (who was in a larger way of
business than others of his class, and is reputed
rich,) gave 10s. for the garment, asking at the
same time, "Who was minding the gig?" "A
charity kid," was the answer. "Give him a
deuce" (2d.), "and stall him off" (send him
an errand), said the fence, "and bring the
horse and gig, and I'll buy it." It was done,
and the property was traced in two hours, but
only as regarded the gig, which had already had
a new pair of wheels attached to it, and was so
metamorphosed, that the owner, a medical gen-
tleman, though he had no moral doubt on the
subject, could not swear to his own vehicle.
The thief received only 4l. for gig and horse;
the horse was never traced.
The licentiousness of the frequenters, and
more especially of the juvenile frequenters, of
the low lodging-houses, must be even more
briefly alluded to. In some of these establish-
ments, men and women, boys and girls, — but
perhaps in no case, or in very rare cases, un-
less they are themselves consenting parties,
herd together promiscuously. The informa-
tion which I have given from a reverend infor-
mant indicates the nature of the proceedings,
when the sexes are herded indiscriminately,
and it is impossible to present to the reader,
in full particularity, the records of the vice
practised.
Boys have boastfully carried on loud conver-
sations, and from distant parts of the room, of
their triumphs over the virtue of girls, and girls
have laughed at and encouraged the recital.
Three, four, five, six, and even more boys and
girls have been packed, head and feet, into one
small bed; some of them perhaps never met
before. On such occasions any clothing seems
often enough to be regarded as merely an in-
cumbrance. Sometimes there are loud quarrels
and revilings from the jealousy of boys and girls,
and more especially of girls whose "chaps" have
deserted or been inveigled from them. At others,
there is an amicable interchange of partners,
and next day a resumption of their former com-
panionship. One girl, then fifteen or sixteen,
who had been leading this vicious kind of life
for nearly three years, and had been repeatedly
in prison, and twice in hospitals — and who ex-
pressed a strong desire to "get out of the life"
by emigration — said: "Whatever that's bad
and wicked, that any one can fancy could be
[Description: 915EAF. Page 257.]
never been taught, or won't be taught, better, is done, and night after night." In these haunts
of low iniquity, or rather in the room into which
the children are put, there are seldom persons
above twenty. The younger lodgers in such
places live by thieving and pocket-picking, or
by prositution. The charge for a night's lodg-
ing is generally 2d., but smaller children have
often been admitted for 1d. If a boy or girl
resort to one of these dens at night without the
means of defraying the charge for accommoda-
tion, the "mot of the ken" (mistress of the
house) will pack them off, telling them plainly
that it will be no use their returning until they
have stolen something worth 2d. If a boy or
girl do not return in the evening, and have not
been heard to express their intention of going
elsewhere, the first conclusion arrived at by
their mates is that they have "got into trouble"
(prison).
The indiscriminate admixture of the sexes
among adults, in many of these places, is an-
other evil. Even in some houses considered of
the better sort, men and women, husbands and
wives, old and young, strangers and acquaint-
ances, sleep in the same apartment, and if they
choose, in the same bed. Any remonstrance at
some act of gross depravity, or impropriety on the
part of a woman not so utterly hardened as the
others, is met with abuse and derision. One man
who described these scenes to me, and had long
witnessed them, said that almost the only
women who ever hid their faces or manifested
dislike of the proceedings they could not but
notice (as far as he saw), were poor Irishwomen,
generally those who live by begging: "But for
all that," the man added, "an Irishman or
Irishwoman of that sort will sleep anywhere, in
any mess, to save a halfpenny, though they may
have often a few shillings, or a good many,
hidden about them."
There is no provision for purposes of decency
in some of the places I have been describing,
into which the sexes are herded indiscriminately;
but to this matter I can only allude. A police-
man, whose duty sometimes called him to enter
one of those houses at night, told me that he
never entered it without feeling sick.
There are now fewer of such filthy receptacles
than there were. Some have been pulled down
— especially for the building of Commercial-
street, in Whitechapel, and of New Oxford-
street — and some have fallen into fresh and
improved management. Of those of the worst
class, however, there may now be at least thirty
in London; while the low lodgings of all de-
scriptions, good or bad, are more frequented
than they were a few years back. A few new
lodging-houses, perhaps half a dozen, have been
recently opened, in expectation of a great influx
of "travellers" and vagrants at the opening
of the Great Exhibition.
| OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE,
AND THE FINE ARTS. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | |