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Criminal Manchester Experiences of a Special Correspondent-Anonymous · Criminal Manchester - Experiences of a Special Correspondent

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  Speaker 1: Part one of Criminal Manchester Experiences of a special correspondent,
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  Speaker 1: reprinted from the Manchester Evening News. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. One
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  Speaker 1: Charter Street, Past and Present. The truth of the rather
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  Speaker 1: trite saying that half the world knows not how the
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  Speaker 1: other half lives is so generally acknowledged that ignorance of
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  Speaker 1: certain phases of life in our city can be pleaded
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  Speaker 1: with equanimity by the vast majority of us. We do
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  Speaker 1: not take the trouble to inquire what is going on
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  Speaker 1: in circles very far below us, and are as little
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  Speaker 1: acquainted with the existence led by the poverty stricken or
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  Speaker 1: the vicious in our back streets and courts, as if
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  Speaker 1: a great gulf divided us. Their ways are not our ways.
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  Speaker 1: And it is only when the light shed by policial
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  Speaker 1: or other authority is turned upon this same hidden underworld
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  Speaker 1: that we see aught of its nature. But this light
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  Speaker 1: is in many respects a false one, as it illuminates
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  Speaker 1: but the more salient features and belongings of the scene
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  Speaker 1: it reveals, leaving in greater darkness much that is important
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  Speaker 1: and characteristic. We accept the revelation given and do not
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  Speaker 1: care to venture beyond the circle marked out by this
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  Speaker 1: artificial guide, for we are as little fearful of prying
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  Speaker 1: too deeply into the secret of the minority that is
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  Speaker 1: at times so troublesome and dangerous. In spite of all this,
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  Speaker 1: the maxim that has been applied to the highest class
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  Speaker 1: is applicable to the lowest. You may keep this minority
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  Speaker 1: out of sight and out of mind, but it is
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  Speaker 1: tenacious of life, and is one of the estates of
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  Speaker 1: the realm being. So it is worth examining curiously, and
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  Speaker 1: from the knowledge gained by temporary association with what is
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  Speaker 1: termed low life, I may be able to give some
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  Speaker 1: idea of what is transpiring even now in our midst
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  Speaker 1: among the outcasts pariahs of the community. How the association
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  Speaker 1: has been formed matters not save that it had its
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  Speaker 1: present purpose in view, and was not called into being
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  Speaker 1: by idle curiosity or senseless intrusion piloted by one who
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  Speaker 1: has returned but recently from penal servitude, or as he
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  Speaker 1: would say, from doing a seven stretch. I sank my
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  Speaker 1: identity for a time and gained an insight into crooked life,
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  Speaker 1: which is at once interesting and novel. I must first
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  Speaker 1: explain that in Manchester there are four districts in which
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  Speaker 1: are located our criminal population, which may be enumerated as
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  Speaker 1: Charter Street, part of Deansgate, Ankots and Gaythorn. The first
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  Speaker 1: named is bounded by a portion of Rochdale Road, Angels Street,
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  Speaker 1: Crown Lane, part of Redbank, besex Row, long Mill Gate,
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  Speaker 1: and a number of streets leading up to Smithfield Market.
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  Speaker 1: This is the headquarters practically of the thieving fraternity, and
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  Speaker 1: with it I will first deal, leaving a description of
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  Speaker 1: the other districts to a future article. My guide keeping
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  Speaker 1: his appointment in long mill Gate with marvelous punctuality, we
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  Speaker 1: commenced our wanderings into what was to me an entirely
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  Speaker 1: unknown locality about ten o'clock at night. We struck off
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  Speaker 1: at once in the direction of Charter Street, and on
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  Speaker 1: the way I was entertained with a long and querulous
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  Speaker 1: complaint on the bad state of business, which is worth reproducing.
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  Speaker 1: It was to the old tune of times was then
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  Speaker 1: and contained a vast amount of information as to the
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  Speaker 1: former state of affairs at a period not so very
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  Speaker 1: far distant. He remembered seven or eight years ago, how
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  Speaker 1: the street Charter Street, was just as it should be,
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  Speaker 1: and what could be done in spite of all the
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  Speaker 1: deeds detective police in the city in the middle of
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  Speaker 1: the day for fifty two hundred men known thieves. Every
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  Speaker 1: one of them could be seen loitering at corners, pattering
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  Speaker 1: away in groups of their doings, on their various lays,
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  Speaker 1: and laying plans for their next work. If the face
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  Speaker 1: of a known constable in plain clothes showed itself at
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  Speaker 1: a corner, they were off into entries and houses in
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  Speaker 1: a second, and the street would be as deserted as
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  Speaker 1: if no crowd had been in it. In at the
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  Speaker 1: front door and out at the back, over the yard walls,
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  Speaker 1: as quick as fear could make them scramble, for each
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  Speaker 1: one knew he might have been spotted for some little
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  Speaker 1: job he had done, and it would not be worth
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  Speaker 1: while to wait and be lagged. Not that they went
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  Speaker 1: always quietly, for the street had weapons of its own,
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  Speaker 1: and when a rescue was attempted, it fared ill with
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  Speaker 1: the officers. In many a house was kept hidden a
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  Speaker 1: supply of stones, and these were used with great effect.
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  Speaker 1: Before the disturbance, not half a dozen could have been
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  Speaker 1: found on the roadway, but when all was over they
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  Speaker 1: could be counted by the hundred. Many a hard fight
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  Speaker 1: was waged with the police, who did not always come
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  Speaker 1: off without serious hurt. Joe Hyde then kept the London Tavern,
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  Speaker 1: which was recognized as the great place of resort of
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  Speaker 1: cross men thieves from all parts of the country, and
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  Speaker 1: there the cutest of the fraternity most did congregate. There
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  Speaker 1: were men who could pass muster in a crowd, and
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  Speaker 1: were well dressed, and had plenty of ready coin to spend.
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  Speaker 1: Why I've seen suddenly my companion breaks out a dozen
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  Speaker 1: of them playing cards all night, and the table covered
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  Speaker 1: with sovereigns five pound a corner, and all paid up
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  Speaker 1: at the finish. We could manage it all right then
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  Speaker 1: and come direct to the street. But now we have
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  Speaker 1: to go outside anywhere where we can get a place
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  Speaker 1: for we should get hauled up sharp. If we went
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  Speaker 1: to old Quarters, then there was Teddy and Bob Butterworth's,
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  Speaker 1: but they've got a ten and twelve stretch. While I've
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  Speaker 1: been away. They could sleep twenty or thirty of us
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  Speaker 1: every night, and we put up there as nice as
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  Speaker 1: could be. We used to drop nearly all the stuff
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  Speaker 1: at Bob macfarland's, and a good fence receiver he was.
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  Speaker 1: Then some went to Patsy Reardon's, but he's dead and
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  Speaker 1: his old woman is doing time for taking in some
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  Speaker 1: two three hundred watches from the guns, pickpockets, one arm.
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  Speaker 1: Kitty and Cabby Jan are still here, but it's a
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  Speaker 1: hot shot now. To work in fencing isn't half what
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  Speaker 1: it was before the Act, and getting watches even isn't
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  Speaker 1: worth the trouble. You can't place half of them, and
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  Speaker 1: when you do, it's but a trifle. I might do
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  Speaker 1: a bit of ale and bortering, working and thieving, but
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  Speaker 1: not in Manchester. All the old uns are gone away,
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  Speaker 1: and everything's changed for the bad. This was the burden
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  Speaker 1: of the complaint. And it is true that the Habitual
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  Speaker 1: Criminals Act, generally known to the profession as the Act
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  Speaker 1: or the New Act, has crippled the extensive operation of
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  Speaker 1: convicts immensely. Formerly, the line that divided the thief proper
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  Speaker 1: from the working men and hawkers on the one hand
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  Speaker 1: and vagrants on the other was clearly defined, but now
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  Speaker 1: it can no longer be traced. Thieving alone is too hazardous,
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  Speaker 1: and as my experienced friend put it, aileum portering is
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  Speaker 1: considered most profitable. A little bit of work hawking or
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  Speaker 1: otherwise with a spice of thieving, pays well and can
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  Speaker 1: be pursued with impunity for a time. There are very
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  Speaker 1: few persons at the present time who subsist entirely on
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  Speaker 1: the proceeds of continual and systematic theft. By the time
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  Speaker 1: I had been put in possession of these facts, we
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  Speaker 1: had got well into the street, and a number of
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  Speaker 1: suspicious looking men and youths could be seen standing at
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  Speaker 1: the corners near the public houses that are pretty thickly
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  Speaker 1: scattered about the neighborhood. They were slovenly dressed and had
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  Speaker 1: a listless, heavy look about them that gave an idea
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  Speaker 1: of mental and bodily depression. We looked into several liquor vaults,
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  Speaker 1: and in most of them the counterparts of the men
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  Speaker 1: outside were drinking. They were not particularly noisy, though their
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  Speaker 1: talk was coarse and brutal. As I, of course anticipated,
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  Speaker 1: they were of the usual rough type, and were as
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  Speaker 1: good specimens as could be picked out of any of
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  Speaker 1: our large jails. They seemed to have no object in drinking,
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  Speaker 1: save to while away the time, and many sat smoking
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  Speaker 1: on the low wooden seats, without joining in the conversation
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  Speaker 1: or exhibiting sociability in any way. They were content with
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  Speaker 1: their position in the glare and warmth of the gas light,
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  Speaker 1: and the stolid, unintelligent gaze they turned on their companions
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  Speaker 1: was as purposeless as can be imagined. Thinking it as
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  Speaker 1: well to follow suit in the drinking, we entered a
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  Speaker 1: more pretentious house than we had yet seen, and after
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  Speaker 1: passing a long, well lighted bar with a spacious counter
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  Speaker 1: that would have accommodated some fifty persons, we gained a
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  Speaker 1: small room leading out of an adjoining passage. It was
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  Speaker 1: a decently furnished, snug smoke room, and in it were
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  Speaker 1: four men engaged in a subdued conversation, which they broke
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  Speaker 1: off as soon as we entered. Some money was lying
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  Speaker 1: on the table, and one of them was about to
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  Speaker 1: gather it up when my companion made use of some
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  Speaker 1: backslang which I could not comprehend, and they resumed their
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  Speaker 1: task of apparently dividing the money. Each man eventually got
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  Speaker 1: a couple of sovereigns and some loose silver that was
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  Speaker 1: left spent in glasses of whiskey. They were more respectable
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  Speaker 1: in appearance, and their talk was less slangy than the
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  Speaker 1: men I had seen in the other drinking places. But
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  Speaker 1: all of them had been convicted of felony, and one,
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  Speaker 1: a little stumpy man with a face bespeaking low cunning,
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  Speaker 1: was just out on ticket. With a convict's carelessness, he
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  Speaker 1: was again associating with his old companions in spite of
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  Speaker 1: the risk of being sent back to finish his time.
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  Speaker 1: Two of the others were strangers, but as I learned
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  Speaker 1: from scraps of conversation, they had done the boat, the
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  Speaker 1: slang tone for the now abolished system of transportation from London.
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  Speaker 1: They had only been in the town a few days
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  Speaker 1: and were living out in the direction of Queen's Road,
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  Speaker 1: as they would not trust themselves in the lodging houses
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  Speaker 1: of the street, where they might be recognized and watched
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  Speaker 1: by the Slops police. We had only time to drink
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  Speaker 1: our liquor hastily, for it was eleven o'clock and we
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  Speaker 1: were soon out into the street again. At the corner
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  Speaker 1: was standing a couple of men whom I identified as
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  Speaker 1: belonging to our local detective force, and as they moved
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  Speaker 1: towards us, the cockney strangers broke away from our group
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  Speaker 1: and walked rapidly across the street. I felt inclined to follow,
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  Speaker 1: but was pulled back by my guide, and turning sharply round,
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  Speaker 1: we stepped into a dark, narrow entry, and with a
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  Speaker 1: sense of utter helplessness, I stumbled along as best I could,
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  Speaker 1: the ground being rough and uneven, and not a ray
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  Speaker 1: of light visible to show whither I was going. I
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  Speaker 1: nearly came to grief several times in treacherous puddles that
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  Speaker 1: had collected in stray halls, and it was only by
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  Speaker 1: touching either war with my outstretched hands that I could
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  Speaker 1: progress at all. Suddenly I found myself out in the
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  Speaker 1: open air in what was evidently a back court. But
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  Speaker 1: the yard was so small and the night so dark,
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  Speaker 1: that I could see no passage by which we could
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  Speaker 1: make our way out. We mustn't be seen, said my
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  Speaker 1: faithful convict, and stepping cautiously to the door of one
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  Speaker 1: of the houses, he rapped quietly but distinctly. The effect
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  Speaker 1: was anything but encouraging, for a dog inside gave tong immediately,
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  Speaker 1: and to judge from the energy with which he flew
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  Speaker 1: to the door. He would have been a ferocious customer
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  Speaker 1: to deal with. It appeared as if he would get
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  Speaker 1: at us, and as we could hear someone stirring in
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  Speaker 1: the room, we beat a rapid retreat. Follow me sharp
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  Speaker 1: was all the instruction I got, and we were again
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  Speaker 1: off in the darkness through such a devious maze of
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  Speaker 1: courts and passages that I wondered what particular part of
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  Speaker 1: the city we should arrive at. We got out safely,
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  Speaker 1: albeit I was bruised and dirty from falling against such
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  Speaker 1: trifling obstacles as the corners of walls and a few
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  Speaker 1: broken down steps, And to my surprise we were in
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  Speaker 1: Charter Street. All was quiet, and we passed over and
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  Speaker 1: entered one of the houses, which I was told was
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  Speaker 1: the begging Ken. End of Part one, Part two of
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  Speaker 1: Criminal Manchester Experiences of a special Correspondent, reprinted from the
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  Speaker 1: Manchester Evening News. This libryvox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Chapter two, Life in Charter Street. The begging Ken was
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  Speaker 1: gained after passing through a long passage leading into a
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  Speaker 1: room which was large enough to accommodate with comfort the
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  Speaker 1: dozen persons male and female that were sitting on either
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  Speaker 1: side of a large deal table. They were of the
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  Speaker 1: genus Cadja, but wore a very different look to that
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  Speaker 1: put on when pursuing their vocation of pestering well to
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: do people for arms. They were dressed in their ordinary clothes,
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  Speaker 1: to be sure, and their looped and windowed raggedness showed
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  Speaker 1: up strangely in the light of the great fire which
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: roared in the wide grate. They seemed as much at
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  Speaker 1: home as it was possible to imagine, and were smoking
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: filthy clay pipes and exchanging confidences with perfect freedom. There
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: was no whining cant in their voices now, for they
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: had only fellow cheaters to deal with, and they accordingly
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  Speaker 1: appeared in their true colors. They took but very little
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  Speaker 1: notice of us, for supper was very nearly ready, and
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  Speaker 1: a savory odor rose from a huge iron pot that
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  Speaker 1: was simmering and bubbling on the fire. One of the hobs, too,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: was fitted with the kitchen boiler, and the steam was
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: blowing off at an alarming rate. I was curious to
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  Speaker 1: know how these vagabonds dined, for the meal they were
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  Speaker 1: about to take was really dinner, though enjoyed at a
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  Speaker 1: later hour, than even the most aristocratic in the land
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  Speaker 1: would care to fix. Some common earthenware plates, which at
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  Speaker 1: least looked clean in spite of their dilapidated state, were
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  Speaker 1: placed on the bare table, and a knife and fork
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: of exceedingly venerable aspects were assigned to each person. Pipes
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: were put out carefully and even tenderly deposited in the
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  Speaker 1: owner's pockets for strangers, the love of the vagrant for
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  Speaker 1: his soothing comforter, And in another minute the pot was
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: standing on the hearth, and beef steak and onions were
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  Speaker 1: being distributed to each hungry wanderer. A loaf of alder
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Manic proportions graced the center of the board, and giant
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: slices were cut from it and eagerly seized. Having watched
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  Speaker 1: the feed for a short time, until every mouth was full,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and nothing could be heard but the harsh clatter of
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  Speaker 1: steel and platter, varied with the uncouth noises made when
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  Speaker 1: the vulgar eat. We took our leave. This ken has
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  Speaker 1: an immense reputation among the cadging and tramp fraternity, as
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  Speaker 1: they can always ensure good treatment if they have the
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: means of paying a very small charge and it is
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: needless to say they have always these means. Here they
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: arranged the districts in which they shall work, the city
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: and the neighborhood, and map out with wonderful cuteness and sagacity,
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  Speaker 1: the root each shall take. Their organization is not so
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: perfect as in the metropolis, but the method is the same,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and a rough sketch has even been discovered in which
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the mother most prominent features of the suburbs were clearly shown.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Their mendicancy is far too skilled for haphazard begging. The
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  Speaker 1: next house we visited was somewhat different in character to
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: this place, in which vagrants assembled and partook more of
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the genuine nature of a thieve's rendezvous. Entering direct from
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  Speaker 1: the street, we were in a small room, well furnished,
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  Speaker 1: with the walls hung with a number of gaudy engravings
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: and a large quantity of cheap china, ornaments and glassware
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: standing on a sideboard. The fireplace was to our left,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and to the right of it, and in fact, immediately
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: adjoining it was a bedstead in which the proprietor of
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the establishment was sleeping. He rose bolt upright on seeing
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: my guide, whom for convenience I will henceforth call Mac,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: and I had a good chance of seeing his face.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: It was that of a man prematurely old, and the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: grizzled military mustache stood out from the livid and haggard
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  Speaker 1: face with singular effect. There was a blazing fire within
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: a few inches of him. His hand, in fact, if
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: stretched out, could have touched the bars, and yet he
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: shivered and drew the clothes about his shoulders as he
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: asked what's up? He lay down again quietly on hearing
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: that a pal was being shown around, and told us
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: there was somebody in the kitchen. At the foot of
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the bed was a wide doorway, and after a short
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: struggle with a stubborn latch, we had an opportunity of
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  Speaker 1: seeing who this somebody was. The room had nothing very
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  Speaker 1: characteristic in its general outline, the walls being whitewashed and
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: fairly clean, and the ceiling blackened and discolored with smoke.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: A flight of stairs led up to the bedrooms, and
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: on the bottom step I ensconced myself while Mac fraternized
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: with a couple of men who were lounging on a
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: bench with the customary careless and limp bearing that is
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: noticeable about your manner of questionable repute. The place was
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: excessively hot, for a gas jet was flaring away, while
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: the fire, more extensive than than any I had yet seen,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: was roaring up the chimney. It may seem strange to
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: refer so constantly to the presence of these fires, but
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: I was struck with the lavishness with which the coal
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: was used, and the evident pleasure afforded to those who
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: were gathered round them. It is natural, perhaps, that warmth
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: and the comfort inspired by the glow of a reaming
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: fire should be particularly sought after in a profession which
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: drives its votaries into hardship and privation in the open air.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: But whatever the cause may be, the fact remains that
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: thief and vagrant are extravagantly partial to a good, wholesome
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: English coal fire. I sat on the stairs, listening with
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: no particular interest to what was being related of various
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: people of a certain importance I supposed in their several lives,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: until my attention was attracted by two or three coarse
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: expressions addressed to a girl who seemed to be unusually
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: quiet and reserved. She was a mill hand, apparently, and
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: had the typical check shawl of her class over her shoulders.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: She was not above eighteen years of age, and would
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: have been good looking but for two or three ugly
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: scars that disfigured her cheek. She kept turning to a
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: youth about her own age, who was seated at the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: end of the bench nearest the fire, and attempted to
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: raise a laugh by two or three jokes remarkable for
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  Speaker 1: nothing but their breadth of meaning, which embraced more than
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I should like to say. Her man would not be mollified,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: and sulkily smoked his pipe, only opening his lips to
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: use bad language of the highest order. He was a
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: good specimen of his kind, clear sharp face, with marks
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: of manhood before youth had passed away, closely cropped hair
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: almost hidden by a tight fitting cap that showed his
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: ears with uncommon effectiveness, and a wisp of dirty white
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: handkerchief tied loosely round his throat. He rose once to
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: light his pipe, and I could see the gleam of
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: his brass tipped clogs as he shuffled to the fire.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Mac chafed him on his bad temper and suggested he
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: should square up with the gal, but he only got
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: more savage, and swore more continuously, while reflecting on what
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: a splendid Charley Bates he would make if only an
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: artful dodger were forthcoming. I was considerably startled by an
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: inscription in large red letters over the chimney piece. It
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: was so incongruous that I could scarcely believe my eyes,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: But through all the covering of dirt and dust, I
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: read thou shalt not take the name of the Lord
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: thy God in vain. However, the text had reached its
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: position I could not imagine, but I must confess to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: being greatly shocked at hearing the profanity indulged in beneath
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: that commandment of the ten which inculcates chastity of speech,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and thought true that perhaps only myself and my companion
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: could read. But it seemed as if the finger of
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: old that had written Miani Miani had traced in letters
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: of blood the solemn warning against blasphemy, which now looked
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: down upon the reckless beings. I was a moment I
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: hastened to leave the place, for though no purest I
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: could not coolly listen to more cursing with such an
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: eloquent monitor before me, and with a sidelong glance at
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: the scroll, half obliterated with finger marks, smoke and kindred filth,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: yet standing out from the drear wall. With the vitality
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: of inspiration, I made my way into the front room.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Its occupant was again asleep, and the flickering firelight threw
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: strange shadows over his face as he moved uneasily in bed.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: We noiselessly opened the door, and once again were in
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the open, with the reek of tobacco and the stuffiness
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: of the hot rooms still clinging to us. I tried
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: to elicit for mac some information as to the presence
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: of the strange text in the house we had left,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: But he knew nothing of it, and had looked upon
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: it with the callous eye of a man who had
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: sat untouched under prison chaplains, and wondered what the patter
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: was all about. He said he had seen the Diarhar
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: paper which pasted up on the wall, and of which
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: he had a high opinion. This was in allusion to
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the notice issued, I believe by the Lodging House Inspectors,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: which has been circulated extensively in our lowest slums, and
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: has done a certain amount of good in spite of
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the ignorance of many who could not read it sensible directions.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: We left Charter Street and walked quietly along an adjacent thoroughfare,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: which was as silent as if it were one of
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the byways of the city of the dead. Mack told
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: me the houses were respectable, which I interpreted to mean
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of a character superior to common lodging kens, and in
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: this I was confirmed when he added that the fly men,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: who were never lagged lived in them. This means rogues
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: who do their thievings so cleverly and with such precautions
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: against detection, that the police cannot, perhaps for years, convict them,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: although they are morally convinced of their guilt. One of
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the front doors stood wide open, and at the end
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: of the low, narrow passage leading to the back kitchen,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: a brilliant light was shining. We walked in, and there,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: comfortably enjoying their midnight drink and smoke, were two respectably
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: dressed men who might have passed for clerks or warehousemen.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: There was nothing in their appearance to create suspicion, and
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: after resting for a few minutes and joining them in
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a pipe, I left with the impression that they must
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: have retired long ago from public life. I gave utterance
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: to these sentiments, and was pulled up by a sarcastic
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: chuckle for Mac, who disabused my mind of all illusions
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: by stating that they were the two cleverest ooks pickpockets
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: in the city, but had only worked at fairs and races.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: They had been very successful too, he told me, and
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: had had all luck in very seldom being jugged locked up.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: One or two other of these respectable habitations we looked into,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and shortly after we wended our way back to the street,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Cabby Jeans being our destination, and there a surprise awaited
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: us Part three of Criminal Manchester Experiences of a Special Correspondent,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: reprinted from the Manchester Evening News. This liberyvox recording is
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Chapter three. What followed in Charter Street?
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: We passed straightway into the back kitchen, down the customary passage,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: and were in the sanctum of cabbyjan, who is well
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: known to the vast majority of persons on the cross
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: in the whole country. Her fame had reached my ears
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: long before I had ever heard where she was located,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and I was impatient to obtain a glimpse of so
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: notorious a personage. There was a number of women and
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: lads sitting in the room, but the keeper herself of
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the establishment was not there. From the upper regions, however,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: came noises which showed that something unusual was taking place,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: and great was our surprise, when, in answer to her
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: question as to what was up there, one of the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: women surlily jerked out A dead man, if you want
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: to know such indeed was the case for a member
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: of the fraternity eminent as a pickpocket. He might indeed
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: have been called a great gun had died a day
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: or two before, and the wake was now being held
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: with all due honors. I should have liked much to
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: have been at the wake proper, but on proposing to
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Mac that we should go upstairs, he said it would
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: be impossible for me, even with his introduction, to remain
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: in the place. The worthy Anne was aloft superintending the
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: ceremony of waking, and the woman who had vouchsafed the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: information as to the proceedings puffed savagely at a short
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: dudan and eyed us with a disfavor through the rank
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: tobacco smoke. Two or three of the youths not more
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: than sixteen or seventeen years old, were more communicative and
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: said there was plenty of stuff to be had. Stuff
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: is the generic term for drink and food, and I
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: wondered who had provided both so lavishly. The place looked
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: squalid and miserable, and the people in it were of poor,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: miserable appearance, as if they found it hard to live
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: at all. The walls were bare and dirty, and the
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: furniture of the rudest and scantiest kind, a rough wooden
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: form doing duty for half a dozen shares. It did
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: not seem as if much money would be forthcoming in
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: such a barn of a place, And as the youths
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: were mere snowdroppers or linen lifters from clothes lines and hedges,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: it was not to be expected that they could play
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the part of generous donors. Mac had again to play
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: the part of mentor, and the mystery was made clear.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: The money required to inaugurate the wake and sustain it
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: with fitting dignity was solicited in the neighborhood, very few
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: of the crooked community refusing to give something, and a
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: general appeal being made at the various public houses. The
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: result was the raising of some three or four pounds,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: which were spent mostly in drink. It would have been
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: thought that, as the money could be so readily obtained,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: there would have been a big burial. But this is
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: a most absurd notion. However grand might be the wake,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the funeral was quite another thing. Let the parish authorities
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: see after that. And in this particular case I may
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: as well state the parish did have to take charge
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: of the corpse, and it was buried at the expense
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of the ratepayers, after five times as much money as
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: would have paid the undertakers handsomely had been squandered in
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: excesses by the sorrowing friends of the dead man. Of
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: these excesses, the least said the better, as some of
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: the scenes enacted at the wakes, even at the present time,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: are too disgusting and horrible to be related. Murty's lodging
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: house was our next resting place, and it exemplified the
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: truth of the old saying relative to every man's house
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: being his castle. For there was a double door which
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: was barred and bolted, as if to resist an attack
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: from without. After a heavy crossbar had been clanged noisily
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: down upon the floor and the inner door half opened,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: we were admitted. I could see nothing but a little
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: sickly gas flame that almost gave up its puny life
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: as a draft of the cold night air rushed in.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: For the room was filled with dense smoke that choked
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: us with its fumes and made our eyes stream with tears.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: I stood quite still, for I did not know in
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: which direction to move, And as I became accustomed to
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: the partial darkness, I discovered whence the smoke came. At
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the extreme end of the room was a low, open
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: fireplace in which a fire was smoldering, as if it
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: had been damped down. And it was from this that
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: the nuisance arose, for eddying gusts swept down the chimney
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and leapt up to the sooty ceiling with untiring energy.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: There was no one at all to be seen save
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the old woman who had admitted us, and who carried
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: in her hand a primitive candlestick in the shape of
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: an old brown ginger beer bottle in which a solitary
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: dip was struggling to keep a light. She ushered us
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: into a smaller room, cautioning us to mind the steps
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: as we had to descend a couple of feet. Here
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: there was not so much smoke, and half a dozen women,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: all middle aged and looking worn out and disreputable, were
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: gathered together, smoking and gossiping in a subdued manner, as
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: if there had no interest in their own conversation. One
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: suddenly brightened up for a moment as a man emerged
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: from a corner, and mac remarked that he must be
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Brigham young, with so many wives about him. We're more
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: respectable than that sort, she remarked, in a tone meant
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: to convey pride in her own marital relations, whatever they
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: might be, and her companions leered approval, with every indication
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: of admiring the sentiment. By this time, the old woman,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: who had securely fastened the doors, had joined us, and
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: holding her sputtering candle over her head, she proceeded us upstairs,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: where some thirty or forty lodgers were enjoying their night's repose.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: The stairs were narrow and steep, with sharp turnings and
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: landing places in the most unlooked for corners, and several
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: times I lost sight of my guiding star, the glim
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: which appeared to dance about like a will of the wisp.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Once I stumbled in the dark and fell crash against
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: a whitewashed door. A hoarse voice inquired in most uncivil terms,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and even with allusions to a place and personage not
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: very popular, who's there? I replied in a gruff tones
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: that it was all right, and retraced my steps with
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: a morbid fear of finding myself rolling to the bottom
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: of the stairs. Fortune favored me, however, and taking the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: right turn I was without further inconvenience in the main
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: sleeping room. It was one of the strangest places I
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: have ever seen, and yet it would have been hard
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: to improve upon it as regards cleanliness and ventilation. It
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: was a long, wide attic with boxed off sleeping compartments
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: running down either side, having a pretty broad passage along
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: which to walk. Rude deal doors with no hinges were
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: fitted to the compartments, and these had to be lifted
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: and dragged away before admission could be obtained. Every bit
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: of woodwork was as white as snow, for the whole
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: interior had been recently whitewashed, and the cross beams and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: rafters were of the same color. Looking inside several of
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: these sleeping boxes, I saw that a bed was placed
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: in each, and that there was just room for the
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: lodger to undress and no more. As the glare of
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: the candle fell upon the sleeper's eyes, some started up
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: and stared stupidly about, while others blinked and yawned, as
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: if too overcome with sleep to care much about what
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: was going on. The air was as sweet as that
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: of any ordinary dwelling house, and no wonder for the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: sanitary authorities sternly enforced the laws in regard to full
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: accommodation being given to all lodgers. At one end of
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: the dormitory was a low brick archway, as if a
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: petition were had been sometimes broken through, and this led
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: to a further series of beds, each with its occupants.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Married couples althose professing to be included in that category,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: were provided with beds detached from the general sleepers. I
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: suppose that this dormitory contained many characters well known to
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: the police, but they were enjoying good quarters and slept
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: as soundly as if of the just two or three
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: jokes were bawled out by some sleepless individuals, and as
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the speakers were at different ends of the garret, their
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: voices were pitched in no low key. The eyre of
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: the more sedate of the community was aroused at this,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: and as long as the light remained, a babel of
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: oaths and invectives could be heard. This subsided as we
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: picked our way carefully downstairs at Fat Billies, not far distant.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: The accommodation was somewhat similar, though the chambers generally being
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: smaller and more numerous. The wooden partitions were differently arranged.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: In contrast with the whitewash of the walls and ceilings,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: the doors had all been coated with coal tar, and
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the smell of this pervaded the whole house. Its antiseptic
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: qualities are of course well known, and the idea of
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: thus applying them is worthy of encouragement. The floors and
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: beds were scrupulously clean, even though many of the lodgers
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: were far from appreciating the blessings of cleanliness. In the
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: largest room of all were some half dozen beds, and
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: here a curious scene was being enacted. A young Negro,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: with face as black as the tarred doors, was sitting
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: on the side of his couch, holding his face between
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: his hands, and swearing in the most horrible broken English,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: for he was enduring the scourge of toothache with about
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: as much fortitude as a child exhibits when first becoming
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: acquainted with molar teeth. To add to his discomfort, he
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: was made the butt of his companions, who were exercising
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: their wit upon him with merciless severity. The remedies that
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: were suggested to Darkey were as astonishing as unique, and
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: he could scarcely refrain from grinning himself at some of
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the expressions. It was a sight to be remembered. For
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a more powerful picture, it would have been hard to
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: have designed. The low browed room looked weird and desolate
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: in the half light, and the figures of the inmates,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: in every possible attitude and in every variety of motion,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: showed forth strangely in the gloom, restless and with no
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: signs of possible sleep. Here was one sitting straight upright
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: in bed, and there half dozing was another reclining with
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: cheek resting upon his uplifted arm. Others lay at full
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: length with their hands locked between their heads, a favorite
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: position with your outcast, who was often thus to supply
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the want of a pillow when shelterless some few were
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: lying passively with eyes closed, heedless of the tumult, and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: only showing by their uneasy movements that they were not slumbering.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: And in the midst of all the white figures that
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: shifted and swayed in the uncertain twilight, with ghostly shadows
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: lurking in dark corners and dancing on the walls, there
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: reared itself the dark image of the poor man of color,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: as if the unholy genius of the spot had come
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: to mount guard over his subjects. We watched the fun
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: until it appeared as if the nigger would never get
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: to rest at all, and, thinking I would see if
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: he could stand a practical joke, I pulled out a
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: small penknife and proposed to cut his gums. This latest
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: advanced cure was received with rows of delight by the
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: rough spirits in bed, but Darky cried off when I
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: showed him the steel, and suggested that I should put
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: my finger in and feel I had too much respect
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: for my own flesh and blood to tempt the unfortunate
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: contraband to cannibalism, and so left him in his pain
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to solace himself as best he could. My stay in
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: the street had now been protracted to a very early hour,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: but we gave several other cross cribs a call before
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: leaving the district. In one of these only was there
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: anything of interest. Where a dozen men and women were
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: smoking their cheap tobacco with a relish that was absolutely startling,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: for they pulled at their stumpy pipes with such vehemence
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: that their very breath seemed to be converted into dense smoke,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: which hung about their heads and curled lovingly round their necks,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: as if loath to part company. There was one woman
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: who had the dirtiest pipe, their rankest weed, and the
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: most garrulous tongued, and on the pretense of getting a
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: light from her clay, I struck up a brief acquaintance.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: She was a withered, dried up specimen of the hoisting
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: shoplifting sisterhood, with a little puckered up face, expressionless in repose,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: and yet mobile when the eyes peered out sharply at
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: a strange question. Sucking the stem of her pipe with
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: great gusto, she told me how cleverly she had been
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: pinched locked up for lifting cheese. She was running off
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: with a huge piece of the grocer's property. In her
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: arms when she heard an outcry raised behind, and accordingly
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: quietly dropped her booty and walked away. She was caught
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: and stoutly asserted her innocence, but on the buttons of
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: her dress were the marks of her guilt, and the
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: cute slop back slang for a police officer fitted the
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: buttons one by one into the corresponding holes in the cheese.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I thought I was in for a patter committal to
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: the sessions, said Irish Kate in conclusion. But he got
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: off with two months. She laughed and chuckled over the affair,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: as if she had enjoyed the punishment, and I'm not
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: sure that she had not. End of Part three, Part
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: four of Criminal Manchester Experiences of a special Correspondent, reprinted
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: from the Manchester Evening News. This liberyvox recording is in
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: the public Chapter four Deansgate Dens. Before dealing with the
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: criminal population which finds its home in the neighborhood of Deansgate,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: it may be as well to give some idea of
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the number of convicts on license and under police supervision
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: in the city. By the courtesy of the Chief Constable,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: I am enabled to quote the return for the year
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: ending the twenty ninth of September last. From this, it
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: appears that one hundred eighty three convicts on license and
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: one hundred sixty six under police supervision, or a total
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: of three hundred forty nine, have been within what may
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: be termed direct controlled during the past twelve months. Of
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: those on license, about one in every three was a woman,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: while among those under supervision, the sexes were nearly equal,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: there being ninety two males and seventy four females. Out
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: of the total of three hundred forty nine, only twenty
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: seven had been transferred to Manchester from other districts, so
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: that we may claim the other three hundred and twenty
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: two convicted felons as our exclusive property. Of the whole number,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: only one hundred and seventy six remained in the city
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: at the date of the return, the remainder having disposed
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: of themselves or having been disposed of by the authorities
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: in various ways. For instance, twenty nine had been convicted
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: for new offenses, twenty one had not reported themselves at all,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: fifty five had removed or been transferred to other police districts,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: and the licenses of thirty five others had expired. Of
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: those under supervision, twenty six had been punished for neglecting
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: to report. Only seven licenses had been entirely revoked. And
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: this proves how admirably the system of releasing men on
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: ticket works where the local police machinery is sufficiently powerful
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: to keep the most dangerous criminals in awe. As I
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: have before stated, the Deansgate district is an extent and
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: comprising the majority of the smaller streets running at right
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: angles from the main thoroughfare between Bridge Street and Saint
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: John's Street, and many others of the narrow alleys on
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: the opposite side of the street. Under the guidance which
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: had safely initiated me into the mysteries of Charter Street,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: I sought to gain an insight into the life which
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: hides itself in perhaps our closest and most uninviting courts.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: And choosing a Saturday night for my visit, I saw
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: sufficient to sicken and dismay the most ardent philanthropists that
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: ever studied social economy. Upwards of a hundred houses did
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: I enter upon various excuses, and it would be impossible
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: to describe each in detail. They had many features in common,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: and the type of misery and debasement presented by their
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: inmates was generally the same. The distinctive characteristics were in
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: the individual and not in the mode of living. The
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: following were the principal streets. I first of all made
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: acquaintance with and to some of them. I will later
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: on refink more intimately Wood Street, spinning Field, Dolefield, Wilmot Street,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Hardman Street, Royton Street, and Thompson Street. There are very
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: few registered lodging houses in this neighbourhood, as the tenements
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: are mostly small, two story cottages in which three or
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: four men and women live with their children, if they
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: have those encumbrances, and in which the cooperative spirit is
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: largely exercised, for existence is merely of a hand to
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: mouth kind. They are mostly thieves of the lowest order,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: though many clever pickpockets are also turned out, and the
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: place is a very hot bed of social iniquity and vice.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: To deal with this latter phase of crime is hardly
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: possible in articles of this nature. But so intimately is
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: the called social evil connected with actual offenses against the
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: law that it is difficult to dissever them. This assertion
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: is particularly applicable to the Deansgate neighbourhood, as perhaps is
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: only too notorious. The women are of a class whose
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: degradation is utter and whose reclamation as a body is
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: an absolute impossibility. They only commit theft when detection is
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: practically unable to reach them, and their chief victims are
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: drunken men and country at flass backslang flats or greenhorns,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: whom they pick up, rob and rifle pockets with perfect impunity.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: The amount of property thus stolen in twelve months, and
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: of which the police are never made cognisance is enormous.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I shall not further touch upon an unpalatable subject, and
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: my only apology is that the ground is considered too
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: dangerous to be circumstantially mapped out for the benefit of
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the common public. In Wood Street we were arrested by
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: the sound of music proceeding from what looked like an
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: old beer house, and on entering we came upon a
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: party of a dozen youths and girls assembled in a
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: half furnished room which resembled a tap room, listening to
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: a hurdy gurdyman grinding out a lugubrious waltz and a
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: red faced girl with a glaring red shawl over her shoulders,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: shaking a tambourine. The audience was a small one, but
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: there was enough dirt and old clothes among them to
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: stock a marine store dealer. They were altogether more disreputable
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: looking than the denizens of Charter Street. The women were
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: all bare headed save the strata of cheap oil and
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: the dust of weeaks which covered their hair, and the
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: men were in a chronic state of tight fitting cloth
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: caps and large party colored mufflers. Peter, the master of
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: the house, was out, and it was not until I
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: had passed into an inner room that I was aware
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: that I was not in a public house. I fully
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: expected to come across a bar, but only met a
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: woman with a child in her arms, who looked weak
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: and sickly. I learned that the premises had once been licensed,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: but they had suffered disestablishment some time since. The remnants
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: of their old glory were visible in the presence of
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: innumerable gaudy painting on the walls, representing subjects the most diverse.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Once I was confronted by Caxton pulling a proof with
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: his first rude machine from his wooden type, and in
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: another second I started on discovering two or three pugilistic
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: celebrities in a remarkably airy undress, sparring at me from
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: their tinsel frames. It was as if the spirit of
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: the place dumbly appealed to the inmates not to forget
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: its ancient name and fame. But these are already things
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: of the past, and the short span that marks a
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: generation in these infamous quarters will blot them out altogether.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Coming out of this queer habitation, we passed down the
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: street until opposite a huckster's shop, lighted by an oil
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: lamp stuck among various comestibles in the window. Here, a
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: middle aged man who looked like a costa was cursing
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: a woman seated at the side of the fire in
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the choicest billings gait. She answered him now and again
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: with a sneer, which only enriched him the more, and
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: seeing us, he made a direct appeal out of sheer
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: inability to cope with her tongue. Look here, she says,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: she'll amy binched, locked up for kicking, and yet she's
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: broken her plate on the head. She'll be pinched, not me.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: This was screamed out at the top of his voice,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: with an expletive between every third word. And as he finished,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: he savagely smashed the pieces of the broken plate that
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: were lying on the floor. There was a mark on
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: his forehead, and it was clear that he had been
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: struck with something, and that very recently. We left him
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: literally breathing vengeance, and we could hear the row going
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: long after we were out of sight of the shop.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Several other interiors came under my notice that were of
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: a far superior class, many indeed being as snug as
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: they could be made. Pictures in more than one instance
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: completely covered the walls, leaving scarcely a trace of the
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: paper visible. And in one living room, where the ceiling
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: was so low that my hat almost touched it, a
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: handsome parrot in a gorgeous cage was quietly roosting. The
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: pictures in these domiciles were a study in themselves, and
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: it would be interesting to trace the causes that led
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: to their purchase. Exciting battle scenes, stirring scenes by sea
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: and land are easily accounted for by the strange love
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: for the terrible that is inherent among the lowest and
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: most brutal scriptural subjects. Saints with the golden glory round
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: their holy brows, the Madonna with their infant child. The
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: crucifixion and resurrection are only what might have been expected
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: in this other dwelling peopled by Roman Catholics. But other
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: pictures are far more puzzling. The portrait of the Prince
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: of Wales, for instance, representing him as a rosy cheeked
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: young man with incipient mustache and whiskers in a military
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: habit is an especial favorite, and I was continually encountering it.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Not a single poor trait of her most gracious Majesty
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Victoria did I observe, And yet her eldest son was
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: everywhere visible. Whatever induced these outcasts and offenders against the
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: laws of God and man to adorn their walls with
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: the likeness of England's future king, I know not unless
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: the money was invested to obtain a good property, for
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: the frames were all of pretty solid construction. After a
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: chat with Lizzie O'Neill, whose husband Big Jack is waiting
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: for sessions, and a look into Johnny the Kidd's house,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: we dropped into the residence of Fatan, where half a
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: dozen collier lads from Wiggin were enjoying themselves. Some rude
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: attempts was being made at a song by a half
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: drunken girl, but two or three of her companions drowned
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: her voice by their incessant quarreling. These colliers from a
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: distance are a feature of these haunts on Saturday nights,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: and I saw at least fifty of them during the
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: evening in various cribs. There cleaned out of all the
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: money they think fit to spend, and when they refuse
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: to part with more, they are occasionally bundled out into
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: the street. A row is created, and any portable property
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: they may have on them in the shape of scarf, pins, watches,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: and loose cash, is quickly transferred to other owners. As
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: a precaution, they generally go in threes and fours, and,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: profiting by experience and of late by their improved system
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: of purring, they can defy any of the koshers bullies
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: who may attempt to molest them. Some of these colliers
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: were mere boys, and their stunted growth and the unhealthy
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: look about their shrewd, pale faces showed the viciousness of
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: their lives. They were all clogged, and not a few
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: had brass tips on the sharp wooden toes that would
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: have told fearfully in an up and down fight. They
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: had nothing to recommend them in appearance or speech, and
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: were only one remove above the class they were temporarily
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: associating with. Fat An's neighbor was Lisa Lanki, Lancashire, who
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: deserved some little notice. Stepping into her front room direct
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: from the street, I saw a big, unwieldy woman sitting
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: on an old sofa, with her elbow on the small
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: round table that stood near her. There was a strong
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: smell of whiskey pervading the room, and I perceived that
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: her head was bound round with a wet cloth. She
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: threw herself back on the sofa, and the action disclosed
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: her features, which were bloated and swollen and bore marks
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: of many a brutal blow. She seemed morose and savagely discontented,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: and a more forbidding face. I have seldom seen The
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: damp bandage over her forehead, with the wet trickling down
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: her temples, only made the thick, bushy eyebrows and prominent
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: cheek bones more striking, and the disheveled hair and dress
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: completed the picture. A man came in from her back
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: kitchen with another bandage, and the smell of whiskey was explained.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: As he told us that he thought whisky good for
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: a bad head. She sulkily snarled out that it was,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: and subsided into her ill humored apathy. Once more, A
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: laboring man with a wooden leg was resting upon another sofa,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: and it was evident he was a stranger from the
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: alarmed look he kept casting upon the woman. Who he
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: was and what he wanted in such company. I did
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: not take the trouble to inquire, leaving Lanket to her
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: novel cure for headache, the outward application of alcohol to
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: counteract its inward effects. We made tracks without further delay.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: End of Part four, Part five of Criminal Manchester Experiences
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: of a Special Correspondent, reprinted from the Manchester Evening News.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: This libriyvox recording is in the public domain. Chapter five,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Deansgate Scenes on a Sunday night, narrower Street I had
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: seldom been in, and more repulsive men and women I
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: had never beheld than those who jostled us at corners
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: and brushed up against us with the privilege of the vulgar.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: The rain began to fall, slowly but steadily, and shining
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: puddles in the ill paved roadway gathered quickly as we
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: passed along. Suddenly Mac touched my arm and dived down
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: into what I thought an old cellar, for a wide
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: arched passage gaped before us. I carefully followed, and after
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: going down three or four steps, I was quite in darkness,
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: with the exception of the faint glimmer from a dim
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: street lamp that was reflected from the wet surface of
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: the flags. Set your hats off, said Mac, and mind
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: the top. It was fortunate he had spoken so promptly,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: for I was just raising my head and I found
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I could not stand upright. Groping along with blind confidence,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I followed one of the walls, which was damp and slimy,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: and so we passed on for some twenty yards. Almost
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: as suddenly as we we had entered this miniature tunnel
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: did we emerge, But it was by a series of
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: steps which led into a black court, with the houses
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: grouped in most irregular disorder. The passage was nothing but
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: a subway between the dwellings facing the street. But why
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: such an extraordinary means of communication should have been found necessary,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: I cannot surmise it would afford ample means of escape
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: for any one pursued by strangers, and I am half
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: inclined to believe it had often done good service in
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: that particular direction. In the yard itself, flights of steps
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: guarded by iron hand rails led to some of the doors,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: and below were the sellers that had once served as
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: dwellings for the poorest and most wretched. We looked into
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: several kitchens, but only found women sitting with strange men
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: of the Collier type I have mentioned, singing and indulging
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: in coarse jokes. Passing along a kind of wooden bridge,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: we traversed another dark entry and were once more in
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: the open street, though in quite a different from direction
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: to the thoroughfare from which we had started. Dolfield and
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Wilmot Street were now near at hand, and they were
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: next looked up. Men and women were, as usual thickly
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: clustered together in the front rooms, and most of the
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: doors were wide open, as if inviting the unwary to enter.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Once in the dark, I had got half way upstairs
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: before finding out that I should have turned to the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: left to have entered the proper room. I was soon
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: recalled to a sense of my mistake by the appearance
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: at the top of the stairs of a woman half undressed,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: with a ragged petticoat over her head and a guttering
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: tallow dip in her hand. She inquired, where that are
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: you going? And I went down the steps backwards as
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: rapidly as I could. I slipped out into the street,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: where I found Mac waiting for me. He laughed inordinately
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: when I told him what had happened, and said they
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: always had the stairs opposite the street door for convenience.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: He added, sententiously, you know they can kick her downstairs
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: and straight out into the gutter without any trouble, and
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: it's very useful sometimes. I had not the slightest doubt
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: of this, for I had observed that the stairs faced
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: directly to the street. But I made an inward vow
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: never to go up any more of them, for the
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: virago in full war paint had rather startled me. So
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: closely built of these wretched dwellings that on entering Brocky
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Rose Hands in Wilmot Street, we could distinguish every word
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of a song that was being screeched out by a
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: woman in the adjoining corner house in Doorfield. We turned
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: round the corner to find the vocalist, and we had
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: not long to search. In a miserable apartment, two feet
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: below the street level and almost pitch dark, for the
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: paraffin lamp had been so badly trimmed that the glass
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: was jet black with smoke, we discovered this Dean'sgate nightingale.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: She was sitting on a rickety stool, with her toes
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: almost under the grate. In spite of the good fire
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: that was half scorching her. She turned round defiantly to us.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: It could be seen that she was too drunk to
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: be amenable to the rules of ordinary conversation. Her man
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: was standing by her, and an old woman with a
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: face wrinkled and black with age and dirt, was crouching
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: on her knees to light her pipe with a glowing ember.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: The songstress had the remnants of some good looks still
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: left her, but it was too plain. She was of
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: the wicked, and her language proved it. Her song was
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: singularly enough, a love ditty that I have often heard
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: rendered by street singers with far less power and effectiveness.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: She was almost crooning it as the Irish would say,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: and as the words and I was in my green
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: grass grave and green grass grew all over me came
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: softly forth, for the girl had a voice of fair compass.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: The old woman mumbled and nodded, and her pipe shook
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: in her lips as she looked admiringly at her companion.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: The room was almost devoid of furniture, and the dirty
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: plaster walls, innocent of paint ho paper, formed a fitting
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: frame for the picture. The place was stifling, and the
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: stench from the lamp oil and from other sources was sickening.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: We left them to their music and stepped out once
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: more into the rain. It was a dreary walk, and
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: we were glad to take refuge in an entry to
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: escape the drizzling downpour. We had only been standing beneath
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: the sheltering arch a few minutes when we heard a
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: row in the yard, and we of course hastened up
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: to see what was the cause of the disturbance. It
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: was nothing but Bradley's Court. Wood Street had often seen
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: a drunken woman behaving like a mad creature, and Sphinx's
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: gal was now only raving at the top of her voice,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: for the police had been round, and their presence had
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: reminded her of poor Bill, who was, I think, doing
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: a stretch. The door of the room in which she
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: lived was open, and through the smoke that filled the place,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: we could see her gesticulating in the wildest fury. Two
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: or three neighbors tried to calm her, but without avail,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: for she he would not be appeased. On the low
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: iron fender, a child of seven or eight years of
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: age was sitting, but in such a state of dirt,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: blackened and beground with smoke and other impurities, that his
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: features were scarcely distinguishable. He was a mere pigmy of
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: a lad. And yet he remained quiet and never uttered
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: a cry. While the woman was so noisily demonstrative, he
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: seemed not the slightest alarmed, and gazed now into the
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: fire and then at the person's in the doorway, with
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: no interest at all expressed in his face. He had
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: been used to this sort of thing, I supposed, from
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: his earliest years, and took it as a matter of course,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: no doubt his training will have good effects in after life.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: After hearing sufficient vile expressions to last an ordinary being
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: for the term of his natural life. We betook ourselves
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: to the street again, but it was only an escape
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: from Scylla to fall into Charibdis, For we soon perceived
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: that a battle royal was being carried on between two
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: women who were involved in a hopeless struggle to remove
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: the hair from each other's heads. They were watched by
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: an appreciative circle of friends, male and female, who now
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: and again quarreled among themselves to bear the combatant's company.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: The result was what might have been expected the commencement
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: of a free fight. But it was soon put a
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: stop to by the appearance on the scene of a
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: man whom I could see at once had more power
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: over these unruly mobs than they would like to confess.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: He was of average build, but broadly set, and he
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: went forward the crowd instantly with a quiet determination that
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: was in keeping with what followed. He had no stick
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: or anything to protect himself, but he parted the women,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: thrust one among the crowd, and gripping the arm of
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: the other, pushed her into one of the houses. Then,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: turning to the men who were still quarreling, he sharply
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: spoke to them by name and told them to be off.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: One who had been engaged in the fight called out, menacingly,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: orry you Jerome, But before he could say more. He
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: was seized by the collar, run barrow fashioned down the street,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: shoved into his own residence, and told to remain inside
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: to ensure compliance with his orders. This man of prompt
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: and energetic action pulled the door smartly to and ordered
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: the few stragglers to disperse. They tailed off in various
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: directions without further disturbance, and the street was as quiet
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: as before. The whole affair had transpired so rapidly that
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: I could scarce believe my senses when I saw a
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: crowd of apparently the lowest ruffians of Wood Street slinking off,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: cowed by a single man. This proves how well order
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: can be preserved by a good detective officer who knows
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: his work thoroughly and does it without fear or favor.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: There are several men of the kind in our local force,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: and their names are more powerful in the dangerous districts
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: than the presence of any number of men in uniform.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: After this little sin, we continued our excursion, and we
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: found many evidences that the elite of the district were
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: spending Saturday night in the most approved English fashion, that
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: is to say, they were recklessly getting rid of all
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: their spare cash and receiving in return. Various forms of drink, song,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: and dance were added to give piquancy to the amusement.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: For in one house, the inevitable hurdy gurdy was grinding
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: forth a lively tune, while a man in shirt sleeves
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: danced a hornpipe with spirit and energy. To see the
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: pleasure with which the limited audience watched his uncouth motions,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: one would have imagined he was best man in the
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: district at a breakdown. But I have seen many a
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: ladd at a street corner doing a double shuffle to
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: warm his clogged feet. Who could have beaten him with ease.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: The songs were of a very diverse character, For in
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: one place a respectable house by the way, though in
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: a disreputable neighborhood, a strong, well built fellow was quavering
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: out on the banks of the nile while mending a
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: dilapid d waistcoat. He was a tailor, but his physique
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: was that of a navvy, and it was strange to
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: observe his huge hand plying the needle so dexterously. He
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: was as bashful while singing as a girl, And as
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: the chorus was taken up by five or six men
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: as powerful looking as himself. He seemed wonderfully relieved to
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: find his own voice drowned. He was loudly applauded at
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: the finish, and was as pleased as the greatest tenor
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: that ever responded to an encore. Very different in sentiment
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: and character was another effusion, a verse of which is
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: worth appending for its originality. It was howled forth in
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: a shrill treble by a youth who might have been
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: the hero of the song itself, as near as I
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: can recollect it ran thus, Oh, I'm a bloke that
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: gets me a living by taking things what isn't given
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: with me and with me, fist with me, Duke with me, Marula.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: I wish there was no bobbies. I do I do
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: for the treadmill. It does make me ill, And I
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: only say deals my belly to fill with my hand,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: with my fist, with Maduke, with my Marula. Oh Downey
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: on the blue andes. End of Part five, Part six
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: of Criminal Manchester Experiences of a Special Correspondent, reprinted from
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: the Manchester Evening News. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: public domain. Chapter six, Gambling and Prize Fighting, The Deansgate
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: district is such an extensive one that I found it
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: impossible to perambulate all its bypaths and indirect crooked ways
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: in the course of a single evening, and thus my
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: steps were led to it. Our second Saturday night, passing
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: into back Dolefield, we looked into Thornley's crib, as disreputable
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: as any in the city, and I had the pleasure
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: of seeing the veteran, a genuine Eccles, with a face
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: that would Rivaldolph's, reclining on the sofa with a couple
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: of old women to bear him company. He had made
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: his own room tolerably comfortable, and there was the usual
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: display of cheap and gaudy ornamentation. Lord Palmerston's jolly face
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: looked straight into mine, and the well known features of
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: the popular actor mister J. L. Toole came also under
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: my direct gaze. It may be that the celebrated comedian
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: never imagined he would come so low as this, but
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: he must be willing to pay for his popularity in
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: more ways than one. We also beat up the quarters
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: of Doggie Duff, but he was unfortunately out, and the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: only occupant of his diggings was a girl who was
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: half asleep on a couch. Doggie is rather a slippery customer,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Mac told me, and he is so careless about his
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: supervision that he occasionally gets into trouble through his memory,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: playing him false in the matter of reporting himself to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: the slops. After a little further investigation of the neighborhood
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: of Cumberland Street, where I was glad to learn had
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: been done by the owners of recently erected factories in
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: purchasing of a good deal of cottage property and letting
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: it only to working people, who, as Mac put it,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: were poor but square. We turned into Byron Street, facing
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: the field at the end. Further from Key Street was
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: a narrow entry sloping at an angle of some thirty degrees,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: and this was the route which led us into Butterworth's
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Court and to the residence of Country Pole, a woman
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: of middle age and with a vacancy in her face
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: caused by the loss of an eye which had been
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: kicked out by her pal puffer Bill. She was gossiping
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: with a couple of women of the same stamp as herself,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: and one of these had a large piece of sticking
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: plaster over her forehead, as if her particular bill had
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: been attempting a similar experiment to that maid. In the
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: case of the landlady, they were surly enough to have
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: satisfied Mark Tapley himself, and on our gently inquiring for Puffer,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: we were told with an oath that he hadn't been
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: there for some months, and good hias shut to him.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: I very much questioned whether Puffer's heart was true to
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: pole still, but fearful of provoking the wrath of that
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: bird of prey, I refrained from gratifying my curiosity. Close
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: to this place was a similar establishment, the occupier of
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: which had done a drag three months imprisonment, but had
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: thrown up crosswork for the more lucrative profession of betting,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: in which he had been nabbed and put in for
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: the modest sum of seventy five pound, which was devoted
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: to her my justy's service. There were many working people
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: living in this same court, but the proximity of these
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: questionable houses must have a bad effect, and in one
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: square house we saw that this was so, for a
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: girl of eighteen years of age was lying dead drunk
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: across two chairs. Her feet touched the ground at one
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: end of this hard bed, and a head was hanging
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: down with her hair streaming on to the bricks. At
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: the other several women were in the same place with
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: two or three children, but they took the whole business
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: as a matter of course. I went on with their supper,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: as if drunkenness was nothing more than an everyday occurrence,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: as I suppose it really was. The children had a
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: good example set them, certainly by the scene. There was
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: a dirty bed with tumbled clothes near the fireplace, and
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: it was used in place of chairs by several of
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: those present. Living and bedroom all in one is the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: best description, and that details can be readily sketched in
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: such an arrangement is by no means uncommon. For in
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: another court, in the spinning Field vicinity, I had before
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: seen a large bed occupying half the living room and
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: coming flush with the fireplace. On that bed two children
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: were sleeping, undressed and with the blankets pulled over them.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: And upon the same couch two men and a woman
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: were sitting with their feet on the fender, making their
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: midnight meal. The children turned uneasily in their sleep, and
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: the dirty brown bedclothes redolent of humanity. The odour is
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: so peculiar I cannot otherwise convey my meaning were tossed
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: about in all directions. How many creatures slept nightly in
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: that bed, I shudder to think, but used his second nature,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: and no doubt they had become inured to any little
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: disagreeable incident that might arise. In Little Key Street. The
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: class of persons also appeared to be of the lowest
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: of the hard working population, and in some of the courts,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: the scanty furniture and the squalid appearance of the kitchens
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: showed how hard was the struggle for existence. Being Saturday night,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: many of the women were washing linen for the Sabbath,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: and across the rooms were stretched clothes lines, and which
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: ragged shirts and well worn underclothing were slowly drying. We
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: made our way into one of the houses, and, hearing
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: voices at the end of the passage, we went forward
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: and came upon eight or nine lads gamboling in the
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: back washing house. They were gathered round a small barrel
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: in a hole in which was stuck a candle, and
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: for a minute or so we watched them without being perceived.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: The youngest was about twelve years old, and the ages
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: of the others would not exceed fifteen or sixteen, and
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: yet they were gamboling with all the eagerness of most
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: accomplished and inveterate gamesters. The game was turned by them
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: speaking or spin hapney, and is a very simple one.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: A member of the circle puts his coin down in
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: the center, covering it with his hand, and the others
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: fly their coins and speak in turn. Those who guess
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: rightly receive a hapning from the centerman. Those who are
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: wrong pay him a similar amount. Suddenly, a youth, who
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: had exhibited the true gambler's instinct in showing heads every time,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: caught sight of us, and seeing strange faces, he gave
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: the alarm. The barrel was kicked over, the candle doused,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: and the juvenile ruees were scampering off in the dark.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: They fell pell mell over each other in getting to
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: the back door, colliding with the barrel, which rolled towards us,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: And in another minute the clatter of small clogs resounded
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: in the back entry, which led into another street. We
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: were greatly amused at witnessing the stampede, for it was
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: plain that they suspected we were going forcibly to interfere
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: with their amusement. Only Fancy laughed Mack. The kids stuck
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: us for the Blues police. The idea was certainly a
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: ludicrous one. We were by this time in Key Street itself,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: and in passing along we called at a lodging house
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: in which were two shady characters playing at drafts, and
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: a third acting the part of critic and spectator. It
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: was a dull place and had no noticeable features worthy
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: of remark. It had, however, once been a beer house,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: and under the title of the Red, White and Blue,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: had been notorious all over the country. It has suffered disestablishment,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: like many of its brethren, and fame no longer records
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: its glories. The last place we visited on the Wood
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: Street side of Deansgate was a large rambling corner house
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: at the junction of Tickle and Longworth Streets, kept by
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: a notable dog fancier, an exponent of the noble art
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: which is dying out with the suppression of the p r.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: It is a house with a history, and the back
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: kitchen could tell many a tale of battles fought and
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: won within its narrow precincts. This kitchen is only some
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: ten feet square, and a sofa runs along one side,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: and a wooden seat along the two other walls, while
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: the fireplace occupies the fourth side. The ceiling is not
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: very high, and a wooden beam near the door makes
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: it appear still lower. From this beam stretches a small
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: gas bracket which gives light to the apartment. I had
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: heard of some famous ancient rendezvous of the stars of
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: the ring in bygone days, and I questioned Mac, who
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I knew was one of the prettiest men with the
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: gloves that ever stepped inside the ropes. Why you've no idea,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: Sir Mac, volubly commenced at what's taken place here? Years ago,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: many a smart lad has towed the mark here, pointing
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: to the middle of the brick floor, as some of
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: the best in the country of been licked by the
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: old uns. I've seen it myself, when the kitchen's being
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: full up, and all on us had to stand on
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: the sofa and benches all round. You see off the floor,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: for we had no ring. One second was down there
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: in the corner of the fireplace, and the other in
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: the opposite corner. He was sharp and quick, for there
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: was no funking or getting away excepting to the fireplace.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: It was all up and down, rough and tumble and
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: beautiful slogging work. It was too You can't get anything
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: like it now they've stopped it all together. Been one lately,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: did you say? Well? About two years ago Tabby Edwards
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: and Brocky Bill had a set two for a couple
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: of quid two pound aside. It wasn't bad, but they
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: were both lushed drunk before they began, and they got
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: cut up heavily. Yes, Tabby won, though he'd got the gravel, rash,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: cut face and the bricks there. When he was down there.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Upstairs was a regular ring, stakes and ropes and all
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: in the top room a big place, and some of
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: the spryest men with the gloves have stripped up there
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: that I've ever seen many. A big benefit has been
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: brought off When young Cheer and Wareham's lot were about.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: It was kept by a pro fighting man then, but
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: it's all up now. The story seemed incredible, for the
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: house is not fifty yards from Deansgate itself, but the
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: truth is too well known to many to require corroboration.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: I was not sorry to hear that it was at
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: an end, though I could sympathize with the old pugilist
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: in his keen regret that the present age was so
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: degenerate as scarcely to recognize the necessity of legitimate boxing.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: Being one of the first attainments of our youth. I
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: met several fighting men, but they all agreed that the
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: ring is now quite out of date, and even glove
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: fights are looked after by the police as much as
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: the genuine battles used to be. One big hulking fellow
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: with a face as hard as wood, and cut and
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: scarred all over wherein deep dints of old wounds did
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: remain was particularly indignant. What's a man like me to do?
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: He asked. I was trained up to it and made
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: heaps of thickens sovereigns whenever I fought, and I didn't
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: care a kiss my hand for a thrashing, for I
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: was nusted like a kid. I've stripped one day and
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: got a smasher on my ribs and spike through foot,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: but I never let on. Told his second the peelers
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: drove us off, and I went at it again next
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: day and licked my man, though my ribs had gone stiff.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: Then you could do something without being made a fuss
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: about in papers but now I only go round to
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: Gaff's fairs and spa we want, or two dummies for
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: a trifle that won't keep me? And what can I
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: do but go crooked? If I butter bloke up? Grotter Man,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: can you blame me? I didn't think it worthwhile to
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: preach morality to this untutored savage, so standing him a
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: soothing drink, I left him to his meditations. Having finished
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: the Wood Street district, we crossed over and commenced an
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: inspection of the Peter Street side of Dean's Gate. End
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: of Part six Criminal Manchester Experiences of a special correspondent,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: reprinted from the Manchester Evening News. This LibriVox recording is
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Chapter seven, Women and their Masters.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: The Peter Street side of Deansgate one shared with the
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Wood Street neighbourhood the questionable notoriety of being the most
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: dangerous district in the city. But of late years a
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: determined course of action has been pursued by the police,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: which has resulted in thinning to a very large extent
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: the ranks of the worst offenders. The beer houses in
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: which nightly assembled lawless characters of the worst type have
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: one by one been deprived of their licenses, and they
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: now do duty as lodging houses, the large open rooms
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: being peculiarly adapted for affording sleeping accommodation to persons who
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: were not particularly fastidious as to the nature of the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: couch they occupy. Entering one of these places in Jackson's Row,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: we marched along a passage and came upon what had
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: been the old tap room, a long, low room with
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: benches and rough wooden tables, at which a few men
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: of dirty and unkempt aspects were sitting, smoking short pipes.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: They had, to all intents and purposes, nothing to occupy
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: themselves with, not even cards or dominoes. But they listened
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: to a mechanical organ near the door that was grinding
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: out a lively melody at the top of its pitch.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: The room was fairly comfortable, and if its occupants were
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: rather uncivilized in appearance and had as much dirt as
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: shirt to their backs, none of them were of so
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: low a cast as the Charter Street or Wood Street roofs.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: Men of the order who have been convicted and wished
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: to work for a living, in preference to resorting to
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: their old practices, often locate themselves on this side of Deanis,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: instead of joining their friends over the way. Hence, it
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: might be argued that the pick of the timid and
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: irresolute congregate on one side of this populous street, and
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: thoroughgoing thieves on the other. Bootle Street and lad Lane
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: were taken next. But in the matter of meeting people
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: of notoriety, we were singularly unfortunate. Mac tried house after
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: house to see if he could come across any pals,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: but he was disgusted on discovering that the old order
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: had changed, giving place to the new, and that where
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: years ago he could have fraternized with a dozen crossmen,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: he had now only the dubious pleasure of greeting square folk.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: These were poor enough, certainly, and their abodes were far
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: from being attractive, for squalor and misery reigned supreme in
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: many of them. There was a lack of cleanliness and
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: comfort in the interior of the houses that was very shocking,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: but this was perhaps only the natural result of people
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: living and sleeping in the same small room, whom In
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: one house, three women were crouching in the dark round
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: a fire, the blaze from which alone afforded light to
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: guide us, and one of them was sobbing bitterly. We
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: thought at first she was crying on account of a
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: child she was holding to her breast, and who looked
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: sick onto death. But we rapidly found out our mistake.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: She was not lamenting her own trials, but those of
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: a sister, a fine handsome woman, but whose features were
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: for the time so fearfully bruised that I could scarcely
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: trace their outline. Both eyes were blackened and almost closed,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: Her cheek was cut and discolored, her lips bleeding and swollen,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: and in her hair were traces of blood, as if
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: she had been beaten on the head. She must have
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: been suffering great physical pain, but she never spoke a word,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: only drawing her shawl closer over her head and sinking
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: down nearer to the fire, as if seeking comfort. In
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: answer to our questions, the woman with the child soon
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: explained the matter. Her sister was living with a man
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: as his wife, and because she would not go out
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: into the streets, he had struck and kicked her until
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: she had escaped from her own house to the one
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: she was now in. The woman herself told us he'd
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: done it afore, but she would never go out at nights.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: For all his cruelty. He could kill her if he liked,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: but she wouldn't do it. Why didn't she tell the
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: police because she wasn't going to round inform on him
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: for it. He'd done a stretch year once for garotting,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: and she didn't want him to be sent away again. Yes,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: he was all right when he hadn't got the drink
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: in him. He'd be sorry to morrow, and she should
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: go back again. It was only after a great deal
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: of skillful questioning that we managed to elicit this information.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: And I marveled at the forbearance of the woman who
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: could return to a man who had first of all
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: attempted to degrade her and then half killed her because
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: she chose to be faithful to him. I know him,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: said mac, And of all badden he is too, especially
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: to women. He's always living with some girl he's got
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: hold of, and when he's tired of one, he just
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: thrashes her till she'll go on the street, and then
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: if she won't give him money, he finds someone else.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: Why once he met a servant girl, made her drunk
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: and drugged her in one of the Cribs, abused her
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: as much as he liked, and then stole the only
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: two quids sovereigns she'd got in the world. She'd come
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: to town to look for a shop and had sowed her
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: money in a stays, but he ripped them up and
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: got the sobs. Did he clear out after it? Not
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: a bit. He was booked by one of the D's detectives.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: I did a double stretch two years for it. At sessions,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: he's no worse than many of them, only he never
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: cares who he drops on. I fervently hoped that many
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: of them would not cross our path, for it was
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: unpleasant to feel that a ruffian of this breed might
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: take it into his brutal head to drop on one
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: of us. The estimate of women in these quarters is
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: a very low one, for inquiry proved that they are
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: kicked and ill treated as a matter of course, and
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: where they are not the professional companions of thieves, they're
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: something worse. We visited several more houses in back lad
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: Lane and back all Port, and I was shown the
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: runs and means of escape from one street to another.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: The place is almost like a rabbit warren, for each
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: entry leads into another, and each court of butts on
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: its neighbor in the most inexplicable way. In addition to this,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: there are means of through communication from the lodging houses,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: and such a labyrinth of passages that any stranger must
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: inevitably come to grief if once involved in the maize
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: Fustian cutters and other poverty stricken workers live in these courts,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: and if these articles were dealing with other than true criminals,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: some curious information could be given as to the mode
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: of life and experiences of these unfortunate creatures. As poverty
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: is no sin, however, it would be unfair to expose
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: their misfortunes in such bad company as we are now
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: associating with. In Gregson Street, we wandered into another large
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: lodging house which had once been a beer house, And
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: what struck me most in this bare and comfortless tenement
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: was a printed notice stuck up requiring payment in advance.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: There were a few men having supper in different parts
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: of the front room, one discussing a rasher of hamm
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: and a bowl of tea, and another cooking a red
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: herring in a very summary manner. He pushed the fish
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: between the bars after it had sputtered and blazed on
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: the coals, took it out with a pocket knife, which
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: he thrust right through the middle, and placed it smoking
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: on his plate. Two or three live embers adhered to
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: the sides, but he picked them off with his hands,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: licked his fingers to get rid of the superfluous oil,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: and then calmly dissected the dainty morsel with his most
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: useful knife. In an inner room, unusual luxuries were provided
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: in the shape of a bit of looking glass about
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: two inches square, nailed to the wall, and an inch
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: of dirty comb suspended by a string from a hook.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: How many thousand dirty heads that wreck of a comb
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: had done duty upon it would be difficult to say.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: But there it hung in silent sorrow, doubtless bewailing the
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: loss of its teeth through extreme age. In a second
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: and smaller house, two youths were lying on a bench
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: about six feet long by eighteen inches wide. Each lay
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: lengthways with his head upon the other's feet, and the
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: lads had crept so close together for the sake of warmth,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: that it was hard to distinguish to which body the
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: various limbs belonged. They slept as soundly on their hard bed,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: as if comfortably between the sheets had afforded a good
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: example of the impartiality of tired nature's sweet restorer. In
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: a third dwelling, a stout, red faced man with clean
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: shaven cheeks and a bullet head on which the hair
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: was scarcely half an inch long, snored on a small form,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: his head thrown back and supported by the wall. This
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: was the redoubtable fatalet. But he was awfully sad at
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: being shaken up by Mac. I would not keep his
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: eyes open, but swore with them shut, in a manner
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: to alarm anyone unaccustomed to the general literature of blasphemy.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: He is being cut up about the loss of his woman,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: explains Mac. She is doing a seven stretch now, and
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: only began it in the summer. She was fly enough
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: to keep em both, and now he has to do
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: as best he can without her. No wonder this pensioner
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: on a woman's abilities was cast down at the way
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: in which he had been served by luck. Dyer's Lane
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: and Fleet Street were the next on my list, And
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: here again I found many traditions for the good old
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: days had passed, and instead of Ruffianism being rampant, the stern,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: self assertive power of the criminal law is in the ascendant,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: and comparatively few desperate characters can be found. The lodging
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: houses and general dwellings are on a par with those
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: in lad Lane and Gregson Street, but many of them
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: have a history which would startle the staid residence in
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: busy Dean's Gate if the walls could only speak. One
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: of the best things that has happened for the neighborhood
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: is the pulling down of the poor cottage property at
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: the rear of these streets to make way for the
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: new Midland Railway, and the effect will soon make itself
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: apparent in the disappearance of the disreputable and immoral men
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: and women that have so long haunted Wimmill Street and
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: Peter Street. The good work the police began has been
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: completed by the railway company, and the peaceful, law abiding
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: working people who are compelled to hang out in these
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: marked quarters should be thankful that, though they may still
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: be under the ban of poverty, they have no longer
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: the degrading association of thieves to poison their lives. Something
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: of this kind crossed my mind as we were going
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: up Fleet Street, and saw stretching before us, the drear,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: vacant space, eloquent in its desolation of modern improvement and
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: civilizing influences, that was so soon to be covered with
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: the turmoil and life of a great railway station. While
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: in one of the back kitchens, Mac, who had grown
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: more and more downcast at meeting none of his old friends,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: suddenly found his tongue and gave me the benefit of
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: one of his experiences. There was a man lived here once.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: He said he was about the worst I ever fell across,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: and he did a trick which you perhaps won't believe.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: He'd three daughters, and two of them had gone to
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: the bad, but still lived with him as he took
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: all the money they could get. The third was as
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: fine a gal as ever came out of Fleet Street,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: but she was a cut above a lot. I wouldn't
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: have any batter with the men who came to the
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: house One night. The old man was drunk and sold
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: her to one of the fellows who had been drinking
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: with him. At least he took half a dollar half
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: a crown from him, and said he could take the
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: girl altogether and do what he liked with her. Well.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: She was called in from a pub beer house over
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: the way, and the man got hold of her and
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: insulted her. She fought like a cat to get away,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: but he was too strong and they rolled over and
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: over on the floor. The father and a lot of
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: fellows looking on and joined the fun. I came just
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: in time to see the finish, for in the struggle
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: a shovel that was stuck in the fire and was
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: red hot, caught in the girl's dress and was dragged
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: across the bricks. She was frightened at being set on
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: fire and threw the brute offer. He fell with his
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: hands across that shovel and was burnt pretty smart, for
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: he couldn't such a thing with his fingers for weeks. Yes,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: she got away that time, but she went like a
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: sister's though I think she's married now. Before leaving, I
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: was shown Number eleven, now a decent lodging house, but
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: once a den of fearful notoriety and the central place
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: of meeting of hundreds of the most unscrupulous crooked men
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: in England. End of Part seven, Part eight of Criminal
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: Manchester Experiences of a special correspondent reprinted from the Manchester
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: evening news. This Liberyvox recording is in the public domain.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: Chapter eight A dog Fight, Brutality and Poverty. We were
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: working down Deansgate in order to arrive at the Gaythorne district,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: and while in Lombard Street, had a somewhat narrow escape
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: from a vicious bulldog that was ensconced under a sofa
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: in one of the houses we looked into. He would
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: have exercised his talents upon our carves in a very
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: short space of time, had he not been kicked into
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: a corner by his master. I was half afraid of
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: the brute making a second attempt upon the unprotected lower man,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: but he contented himself with growls and snarls, not loud
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: but deep, and his sonorous chest notes furnished a base
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: accompaniment to our conversation. He was full of years, but
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: still had the indomitable pluck of his race, and I
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: learned that he was the hero of at least a
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: hundred fights. Mac knew him and his master well, and
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: over a social pipe, he narrated some of his experiences
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: in the matter of dog fights in the Deansgate locality,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: Seeing that we were his master's friends. The surly bull
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: came into the circle we had formed round the fire
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: and stretched himself across the hearth, But whenever I moved,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: he admonished me by a smothered bark strangled in his
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: throat to remain still and not destroy the effect of
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: the story. It was a thing that was all the
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: go at one time, said mac and every booze shop,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: beer house in wood Street and spinning Field used to
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: have their garrets fitted up for dog fights regular every week.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: It was known well enough when a match was coming off,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: and we used to get many a swelling who didn't
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: mind paying for it. He was always at the top
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: of the house that we brought the fight off, and
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: at night when there was plenty of row in the
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: street to prevent any noise being heard, not from the dogs.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: They had too much to do with each other to
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: kick up any shine. But occasionally the backers would go
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: half mad, excited like, and would scream and hoot to
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: keep up their particular fail One night we had a
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: gathering at the ship for Cockney Charli had got a
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: pup he swore couldn't be licked, and a wiggin Wigan
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: bloke had matched an old and against it for a
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: fiver five pound note. It was a big dew and
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: there were forty or fifty of us packed in garret,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: and coin was laid freely, for both dogs were clippers.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: Just before they were loosed, Cockney Charlie offered long odds
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: on his pup, and to rile him. Some of us
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: said we wouldn't rob him, for he knew his animal
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: would be fair beaten. He was so savage that he
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: cried out by pop loose or smash it, but we
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: never thought he would well. Fight went on and the
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: youngster had the best of it for a bit, but
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: the wiganman was too much for it at finish, and
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: in last set too left it on floor half dead.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: The pup was bitter and frightful on head and shoulders,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: but might have got over it. Cockney Charlie was as
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: good as his word, for he went out, tried pup
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: with another dog, and because it was licked, jumped on
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: his favorite, and he went dead soon after. I inquired
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: if anything of the kind could be seen now, but
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: Max said it had been all over now for years,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: as the houses had been closed where it was carried on.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: Men like Cockney Charlie can no longer enjoy their amusement.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: The action of the police in disestablishing these low drinking
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: shops has evidently done good in more ways than one.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: We struck down Deansgate itself after leaving Lombard Street, and
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: after a few minutes walk we turned into Gaithorne Street,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: which gives the name to a thickly populated district bounded
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: on the one side by a blank wall which fences
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: off the canal and runs from Deansgate right through to
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: Albion Street, and on the other by the railway arches
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: which extend along Hewett Street, as several of which have
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: been converted into dwelling houses, a cow shed, a coal depot,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: et cetera. I was told beforehand that I should meet
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: with few actual thieves in this quarter of the city,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: in in spite of the fact that it was once
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: as notorious as the street, and I found that my
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: information was correct. Criminals have been cleared out, and in
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: this place resides a population rough and turbulent, truly but honest.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: So far as their lives are known. They are as
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: completely poverty stricken as any of the poorest among us,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: and their abodes are, as a rule, without comfort or
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: any of the little home luxuries that the hard working
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: classes can sometimes afford to indulge in. They are a
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: quarrelsome race too, and yet so clannish that when a
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: street route takes place, the police have always a difficult
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: task to restore peace, much less to arrest the leading spirits.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that more
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: assaults upon many in uniform are reported from the Gaythorne
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: streets than any other single quarter. It is like putting
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: one's hand into a bag of snakes to draw out
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: and eel for a constable to take into custody the
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: leader of one of the drunken broils that are so
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: frequent occurrence here. I had only the address of one
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: celebrity in this new field, and that was Auntie Mary,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: who was said to be keeping a disorderly house in
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: Abraham's Court, Gilbert Street. To the court we repaired. But
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: upon entering the house where I had understood she could
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: be found, we discovered that our bird had flown a
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: few days before. Two decent looking women peered at us
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: suspiciously over the solitary candle on the table, and told
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: us that Auntie's carryings on had given such offense to
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: the neighbors that a complaint had been lodged, and after
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: receiving a gentle admonition from the police, she had deemed
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: it best to flit. The women were eager to unfold
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: the tale of Auntie's wrongdoings, and with a volubility that
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: only the love of scandal could have created, poured forth
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: how she had been sent to prison for bad conduct
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: when living near Campfield Library, how she had no business
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: to have come into the court at all. In short,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: how wicked she was in all her doings. I was
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: so sorry I could not meet Auntie, as I was
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: in hopes of gaining some valuable knowledge from her as
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: to the haunts of the few friends she had in Gaythorne.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: But being disappointed in this, I asked Mac to guide
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: me through the worst streets on Speck to see what
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: was the character of the inhabitants and if, as reports stated,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: there were any cellar dwellings still in existence. Our first
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: place of corn was a huckster's shop in Commercial Street,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: but we were most positively assured that they were all
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: workers who lived in the adjoining streets, and if poor
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: were honest. This was unsatisfactory from one point of view,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: as my object was crime and not poverty. But having
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: no choice, I thought I would for once sacrifice Barabbas
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: for Lazarus, and give up my search for the thief
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: for the sake of his brother, the poor man. Before
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: leaving the shop, I'd gained an insight into the mysteries
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: of Gaythorne book keeping. For on the black leaded mantelpiece
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: were chalked a number of hieroglyphics, as puzzling to the
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: out cider and to the uninitiated as the characters on
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: the moabite stone itself. Ciphers and crosses were abundant, but
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: few plain figures could I see. Rows of ciphers straggled
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: across the bricks, colliding with others that had wandered from
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: their proper course, and struggling with the crosses which seemed
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: to have been dropped about wherever the fancy of this
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: artist in chalk had willed. And yet, as Max sagely whispered,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: every knaut means something, and many a weary housekeeper must
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: have looked with dismay at seeing the little white circles
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: increasing day by day. I counted fifteen in one row,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: and wondered who the unfortunate victim was who had thus
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: rashly run into debt. The scent of onions, bloatus, sour
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: butter and pickles was too powerful to allow me to
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: solve the problem or of discovering the value of X,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: that unknown quantity, and we departed at once. We passed
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: from Jordan Street to Mount Street, and in the latter
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: the thoroughfare we found cellar dwellings still in vogue. Down
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: about half a score of steps, we picked our way
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: into a kind of area with small arches formed by
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: the steps leading from the footpath to the houses overhead,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: causing us to stoop. Every other minute. Light shone from
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: crevices in the window shutters, and at last we entered
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: one cellar, wherein we could hear voices. It was like
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: stepping into an oven, for the confined air was superheated
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: by a large fire in an extensive grate in the
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: right hand wall, and apparently there were no means of ventilation.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: A man, who, to judge from his clothes and blackened face,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: was an engineer, was talking to his wife, and a
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: child was sitting near them. The walls were bare and
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: damp looking, and the ceiling, brown with smoke and dust,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: was so low that my hat almost touched it. A
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: small table and a few chairs with a low, uninviting
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: bed constituted the furniture. That it was the old story
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: of living and sleeping in the same room, and that
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: some eight feet below the street level, it was close
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: and uncomfortably enough for october. But what it would be
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: in cold weather, when every chink and cranny would be
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: carefully stopped to keep out the cold, fresh air, I
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: should not like to say. Coming up again to the
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: street level, we turned into an entry and were soon
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: in a small yard with two story cottage tenements of
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: the meanest kind. At the door of one of these,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: an urchin of tender years was standing in a state
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: of nakedness bar a dozen square inches of dirty calico
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: that served him as a tuney. His little body was
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: kept warm with the thin coat of dirt of a
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: tint between black and brown, that covered him from top
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: to toe with admirable impartiality. We could only catch a
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: glimpse of the kitchen, for there was no light, but
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: the prospect did not tempt me to enter. In the
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: corner of the yard to the left was a small
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: house that seemed to have been built to fill in
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: the space, and for no other reason, for there was
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: really no room for it properly. In the yard, the
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: flickering of a flame from the fire shot across the window,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: and looking in we saw a child seated on the
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: hearth stone, warming himself and watching the blaze as it
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: leapt fitfully up the chimney. As I opened the door,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: another lad came down with a candle, and we could
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: then note how wretched was this apology for a dwelling.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: The plastered walls were honeycombed with holes, and the dirt
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: and smoke of years encrusted them. There were three small
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: tables and two chairs in the place, and so small
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: was the room that these alone almost filled it. Noticing
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: a bundle in the corner, I asked one of the
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: lads if it was a bed, and he answered yes.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: Father sleeps there and mother and us upstairs. More complete
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: poverty I had never beheld, and yet the parents were
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: not drunken or improvident, for the children said they were
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: then away at a teetotal meeting. This house I found
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: to be typical of many more, for in one the
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: door could not be opened more than a foot as
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: I came in contact with the poles of the bed,
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: across which a thin veil was hung to prevent aught
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: being seen from outside. And in another two children, both
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: very ill, were sleeping on a sofa, while the mother
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: herself sat upon the bed, waiting till a husband should
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: come in for the night. Along Cheatham Street, with the
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: railway viaduct frowning down on us, we proceeded and thence
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: into Backsmith Street, with its disused cellar dwellings with areas
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: six or eight feet wide and deep, guarded with strong
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: iron railings, and with long narrow bridges leading to the
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: adjoining houses, as queer a place to look at as
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: any in Manchester, for it is unique in construction and
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: has almost the appearance of a skeleton stockade. An old
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: irishwoman does woodcutting in one of the cellars, and we
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: literally dropped in upon her and had a chat. She
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: had not much to say and was rather frightened, so
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: we took our leave pretty quickly. I had had enough
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: of poverty by this time, and finished I ramble by
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: walking up Gaythorne Street and calling in at number fifty.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: Once a fearful den under the reign of fat Helen
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: away in servitude, but now occupied by honest tenants. Half
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: the houses have been turned into workshops, and every haunt
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: of crooked persons done away with. End of Part eight.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: Part nine of Criminal Manchester Experiences of a special correspondent
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: reprinted from the Manchester Evening News. This libriyvox recording is
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Chapter nine Under the Lash a
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: Garotta's Confession. By a singular chance, I have been able
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: to meet with a man who has been under the
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: lash for a Garote robbery, and who has recently returned
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: from the term of penal servitude which followed the infliction
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: of the cat. This will serve to indicate that it
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: is some times since he underwent the severe sentence passed
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: upon him. But I may state that the offense for
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: which he was convicted was committed in wood Street, and
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: that the actual scratching took place in the County jail.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: Strange ways, as the man, since his return, is earning
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: his living honestly, and as it can serve no purpose
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: to give his name, address or present occupation, I shall
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: refrain from entering into such details. His story was told
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: under circumstances which did away with any inducement to exaggerate
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: or to give a false account of the whole business,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: and I pledge myself to detail, as far as possible,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: in his own words, the history of what has been
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: to him the greatest trial in his life. He is
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: still comparatively young, and on meeting him, I was surprised
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: to find that he was like the brutal beings who
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: are believed to be the terrors of our dark nights
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: and darker bypaths, as little as a jail is like
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: a church. He speaks fluently, and as a rule correctly,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: though his speech is of course consider darably embellished with
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: the slang patter which is almost a second language to him.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: Slim of build and rather below the average height, he
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: possesses apparently none of the strength or nerve that should
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: mark a thief who has to pursue the most hazardous
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: line in his profession. But still there is a determination
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: in his face which goes far to prove that he
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: would not be easily daunted in any enterprise he might undertake.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: The face is an intelligent one, with quick, uneasy eyes,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: but the features are clean cut and there is nothing
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: sensual in them. The forehead, particularly being good so much
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: for his general appearance, which is far from being unprepossessing.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: The following is his narrative. Some years ago, I'd been
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: working all round Scotland with the Gaffes, Fares, et cetera,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: and had done well at Breech, buzzing pocket picking at
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: most of the towns from Dunfrees to Aberdeen, how as
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: with a good mob gang, and we lifted many a
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: book pocket book without once being put in. At Aberdeen,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: I heard my mother was ill, and I came straight
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: away down here, and as I'd done so well, I
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: thought i'd throw up crooked work, marry a certain party
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: and settled down. I meant to do it, but I
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: got in a row in wood Street and I was
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: lagged for what I'd never done. It was a put
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: up job, for I never screwed garrotted the man who
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: was robbed, and at the sizes I fancied I must
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: get clean off. I was surprised when the jury found
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: me guilty, and then I knew I was in for
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: something hot, for i'd done a drag three months and
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: four years besides two or three six months. I never
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: expected to hear what I did and when the judge
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: said I was to get a seven stretch, seven years
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: penal servitude and two dozen lashes, I funked it. I
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: can tell you he knocked me over completely, and I
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: scarcely knew what to think about. I was awfully wild,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: for I considered I didn't deserve such a severe sentence
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: for what I'd never done. But it must come off.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: I knew I was in for it proper, and I
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: made up my mind to bear all and say nothing.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: I was sentenced on the Monday, but not till the
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: next Tuesday, but one that I was told I should
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: have my bashing flogging. I was in a state all
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: the days I was in the cells, thinking on what
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: I should get if it had come straight off. I
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have minded, but it was thinking over it. I
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: kept trying to feel what the strokes of the lash
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: would be like, whether it would hurt me very much
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: after the first half dozen. But I could never get
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: past one point, and that was that it would be
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: smart if anyone had come and told me I could
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: get off by having another five stretch. But on the
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: seven I should have jumped at it. Not a word
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: of a lie I'm telling for I was safe, I
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: should catch it warm, and I'd heard that the strongest
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: men couldn't stand it. I was always weak, though I
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: had nothing the matter with me anytime, and I was
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: sure it had kill me out and out. I felt
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: as certain of that as anything, and I couldn't sleep
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: a bit waiting for it. What settles you? But at
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: last one morning I was told I was to be scrapped.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: I was led from selling to the yard and stripped
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: to me trousers. It was as cold as could be,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: for it was in December, and I shivered and felt
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: just as bad as ever I did in my life.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: I was taken to a wall and saw two rings
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: in the bricks about as high as my shoulders, and
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: two posts of wood standing a bit apart and away
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: from the rings, with a cross piece that seemed as
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: if it could slide up and down. At the bottom
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: of the post was a kind of box with two
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: round holes in the top. They opened this like you
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: might pull a drawer out of a cupboard, and I
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: was made to stand in it. My feet were fitted
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: into the corners, and then they closed it and screwed
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: it up. My legs were just fixed in the holes.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: Now up to over the knee, and I was as
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: fast as in avice. My hands were put into the
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: rings and the cross piece of wood fitted across my
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: chest by the doctor. I was as tight as a drum,
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: and my back was a little bent and forced out,
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: and my arms stretched full length. I couldn't bend my
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: knees or shift about in any way, for everything was
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: fixed up so as to keep me in that same
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: state till I'd got my dose. There was something wanting
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: at first, So after I'd been tied up some minutes,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: I was half frozen, and they undid me and put
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: something over my shoulders. My back was stiff with cold
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: even in that time, and I had to wait a
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: bit longer. It was cruel for I like suffered twice.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: But at last they put me up again. One of
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: the screws turnkeys had got the cat in his hand,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: and he was a big fellow, but not half a baden.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: He said to me. I hoped I shouldn't think any
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: worse of him for it, But if he didn't do it,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: someone else would. Of course, it was his duty, but
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: he did lay it on. The doctor stood by with
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: his chronometer in his hand, counting I'm sure he was
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: a chronometer, for I had handled many one in my time.
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: And then I got my bashing. The fir stroke went
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: right across my shoulders, and it was something awful. I'd
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: never felt anything like it before, and I howled out
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: sharp and roared as loud as I could just where
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: the lash went. It seemed to burn right into me,
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: and the skin felt as if it had swelled up
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: and was going to burst. He went through me like
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: and if a hot iron had scorched me, it wouldn't
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: have been half as sharp. I'd been told by the
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: old ones in the jail that it was best to shout,
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: as the doctor would think it was hurting me bad
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: and I might get off with half the dose. And
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: I kept on all the time it lasted. I could
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: have said to the doctor, you pig, as quiet as
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: I'm saying it to you now, for crying didn't ease
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: me a bit. It was only a bit of kidmund
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: deception to scheme the doctor, but it didn't work. It
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: was slow time, for I counted thirty before I got
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: number two, and that came as sharp as the first.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: I cursed and called them everything I get off my tongue,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: for I felt savage at being shoved in for what
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: I didn't deserve. The doctor stood close by and pointed
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: out where every stroke was to drop, and the screw
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: put it down just where he showed he was a
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: bad and that doctor, for every cut was as bad
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: as the others, and the pain was just like dying
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: over and over again. What did I think of between
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: the lashes, I don't know, for I was cursing as
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: hard as I could. You see, I did think I'd
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: done many times things that I ought to have got
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: to lash him for, But now I was innocent. I
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: couldn't help that coming into my head during the half
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: minute between the lashes. But the hardest pull was trying
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: to make out where the next would drop. The doctor
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: would point, and I waited, so I heard the whip coming,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: and then I cried out louder every time. Sometimes it
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: would drop on one of the cuts that had gone before,
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: and it was bad. Then I could have sworn My
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: back was as big again as it should be, for
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: after the cat was pulled sharp back, the flesh went
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: after it and rose up till I knew I was
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: bleeding and that the skin had burst. The blood ran
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: down into my trousers, thick, no cheese mistake about it.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: How did it hurt me? Why? Every now and then
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: the cat lapped round my chest, And that was worst
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: of all. It knocked me out to wind. My breath
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: went as if I jumped into cold water, choking like,
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: and me mouth as dry as could be, had nothing
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: to chew. So I hung onto the rings with my
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: hands as hard as I could, and this only pulled
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: my chest across the wood and made me back tighter.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: I bled a good deal, but I got the two dozen,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: and I felt every oddun each one. The last was
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: as bad as the first, every bit of it, if
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: not a trifle smarter. But I shouldn't have minded if
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: it laid it on quicker. It was the slow time
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: that licked me. And if I'd had the regulation three dozen,
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: I think it would have done for me. It's all
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: stupid about not feeling it after the first five or six.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: Your back don't grow dead numb, that's all. It only
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: gets tender as you get more of it. Is there
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: anything else like a bashing? Nothing that I know of.
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: I've had most kinds of knocking about, but it licks all.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: There's no punishment comes anywhere near it. It's as bad
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: while you're waiting as when you're getting it, and both
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: as smart. When I was taken down, I was properly
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: done over, and me back was bleeding in a dozen places.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: I was swelled all round too, in a way you
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: couldn't believe. And I couldn't button me trousers or put
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: me braces on, although before I was scraped I could
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: have wrapped me trousers band half a dozen inches over.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: There were prison clothes, and they throw them at you,
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: and ain't particular about the fit. I was sore for
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: a good many days, but I wouldn't go to hospital
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: or see the doctor. I knew I had to go
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: through the mill, and I meant to do every bit
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: of it without flinching. I gave my head to it,
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: and when one of the screws came round and asked
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: me if my back had done bleeding, I told him
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: I was all right. I went to chapel the day
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: after the bashing, for I wouldn't give in, though I
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: needn't have gone unless I liked. I stayed in jail
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: thirteen weeks and was then sent to the bank Mill
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: Brank Prison. My back was heeled then, but the marks
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: were there, and when I got in the bath with
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: the others, they made some remarks about it, but I
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: didn't care. There were a dozen of us from Manchester
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: and we were such thin, poor looking devils. The doctor
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: said we must be badly off in this part of
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: the country. I was put to the tailoring, but I
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: didn't know which finger to put the thimble on until
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: I was shown it was only prison work, and I
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: managed in time to do pretty well. There was a
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: navvy put to the same work, but he couldn't do
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: it at all. Yes, we were treated well, but the
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: legs low fee with the dirtiest lot I ever met.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: They do anything to get in favor with the screws,
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: or even to get a smile from the big men.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: You see, some few of us couldn't eat our food,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: and we'd give our loaf to a pall who could.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: One of these legs would think I can't get it myself,
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: and nobody else shall, so he goes and peaches in
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: forms and gets us three days solitary, stuck in a
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: dark cell with boards to lie on and a rug
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: to cover us. After I'd been at the bank for
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: ten months I went to Dartmoor after getting the doctor
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: to examine my chest. I said I wanted to go,
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: but he told me it would finish me. I went though,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: and the other doctor there said a little field work
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: would do me good. It was in the summer, and
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: I thought i'd touched. Being fortunate. We went out on
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: the moor and had to cut turf with the warders
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: with us, and the other guard with guns always in sight.
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: I found it was hard work cutting turf with our
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: big knives, for they make each one do the same
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: amount of cuttings, so that the weakest has to keep
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: up with the strongest. They work against each other there,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: and it was so hot that we'd have pulled our
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: shirts off if they'd have let us with little sheet
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: iron cells to sleep in and to eat our meals
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: in not above seven feet long by five feet wide,
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: all running up the middle of the big yard, with
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: doors facing opposite weighs. The officials were always down severe
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: upon us. If you looked at another man, you'd be spotted,
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: and if you spoke, you were brought and tried before
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: the governor, just like sizes, only no jurry. They punish
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: your sharp and if you try to escape. They shoot
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: at you as long as they can see you. Three
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: got shot while I was there, and one took it
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: stiffly and got two or three slugs into him. If
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: I had be time over again, I'd sooner do it
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: at Bellevue, grinding air, turning the cranks so many thousand
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: times per day. Then down there? What are the guns
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: thieves think of a bashing? Anyone who puts up a
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: man for anything under a book with two or three
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: hundred pounds in it is a dunce, a regular flat.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: It ain't worth a doing when you know what's waiting
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: for you and you're certainly getting a bashing. No good
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: crossman would think of it. It's only these greenan's, these
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: laborers who say I'm starving. There's two or three bob.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: If I butt this bloke up and turn him over,
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: ransack his pockets, I'll do it. That's the sort of
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: flats who do it, and sometimes it settles the man
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: clean off. But none of us fly mobs will do
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: the grip. Now, he had got so excited while talking
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: that he had jumped off his seat, and with the
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: enthusiasm of his craft, was suiting the action to the
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: word by showing me how the hug was done in
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: putting up any unfortunate who might be spotted. He gripped
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: his left wrist with his right hand, threw his left
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: elbow outwards and upwards, and then, tightening every muscle, depressed
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: both elbows, and drew his left towards his The movement
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: was quick as could be, and I recognized in a
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: minute how futile resistance would have been if a man's
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: neck had been enclosed in such a powerful grip. The
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: garret is unquestionably supreme as a means to induce rapid
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: insensibility in a victim. Such was the tale as related
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: to me, almost as coherently as they have given it,
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: though it required many questions carefully framed and put to
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: elicit the information. In no case have I used language
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: that was not actually uttered. And if many of the
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: words seem strange as issuing from a convict's mouth, they
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: are truly his own, and not of my choosing. End
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: of Part nine, Part ten of Criminal Manchester Experiences of
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: a special correspondence reprinted from the Manchester Evening News. This
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: libryvox record is in the public domain. Chapter ten Canal
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: Street Ginger Liz and Cockney Jim. I've described a life
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: that hides itself in Charter Street, Deansgate and Gaythorne, and
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: in this my concluding article, I shall cover the remaining
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: ground that can properly be dealt with. Though it is
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: scarcely so prolific as the districts that have already been
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: under notice. Its area is much wider, however, though its
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: special criminality is decidedly of an inferior order, and is
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: so scattered that it loses much of the dangerous character
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: which is developed when its component parts are comprehensively grouped together.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: It has many features peculiarly its own, and as it
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: consists of three detached localities, these features are pretty distinctly
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: marked in each the districts at Canal Street, Ankots and
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: London Road. The first mentioned as the worst of the three,
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: and is of the wood Street type, than which very
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: few gres raids of life are lower. It is perhaps
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: a terror incognita to nine tenths of the inhabitants of
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: the city, and yet there is included within its limits
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: enough fis to start any ordinarily sized civilized town. It
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: lies within a few yards of one of our principal thoroughfares,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: but is as far removed from it socially as the
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: deepest crime from the most exalted honesty, lying at the
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: back of the woodyard in Oxford Street, which is almost
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: opposite the railway station. Canal Street has really, for some
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: distance only one side composed of houses. As the canal
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: runs flush with the roadway, from which it is separated
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: by a low brick wall. The level of the canal
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: is considerably lower than that of the street, and two
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: or three locks mark the steep descent of the waters.
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: The single row of houses mentioned are, with one or
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: two exceptions, thoroughly is reputable, and their open doors are
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: at night time thronged with men and women who sit
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: on the steps and chafe any strange passer by in
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: a manner more pointed than polite. I was initiated into
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: the mysteries of several of these places. An Irish pole
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: was introduced to me in an incoherent state of intoxication.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: Her residence was a fair specimen of many others, being
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: decently furnished, though without elaboration, and it afforded a striking
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: contrast to that of dirty alf the front room of
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: which was gorgeous, with mirrors, mahogany and mixed materials, from
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: the gilded chandelier to the fanciful china ornaments. Curtains of
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: richest coloring were festooned over the window, and a soft
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: yielding carpet invitingly sank under my feet. Luxury itself could
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: not have asked for more, and every attention had been
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: paid to the minutest details. The walls of the passage
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: or hall, perhaps as the proprietor would prefer it to
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: be called, being fancifully lined with a classic pattern in
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: subdued chocolate color. The gas lights lit up all with
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: their rich blaze, and a more perfect whited sepulcher I
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: never saw, for vice reigns triumphant here, criminality that can
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: scarcely be touched upon, and yet a more productive center
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: of crime it would be hard to find. For here
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: finds its way the money stolen from employer or other victim,
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: and viciousness reproduces itself in many shapes. Men may enter
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: the street honest and may leave it thieves for money
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: that was not their own they have recklessly squandered, And
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: the harpies have effected a change that too often leads
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: direct to further roguery. I instance, this house, as it
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: is only one of many others that are for some
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: reason tolerated as part of our social fabric, and as
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: affording a means of solution to the mystery of how
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: respectable men, young men especially become thieves, apparently spontaneously, not
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: professional thieves stealing for the sake of getting a living
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: without working, but secret pilferers from till or safe obtain
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: means to gratify their sensual appetites. On the surface, all
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: this plain sailing for a long time, but at last
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: comes detection and the master, to his horror, finds his
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: clerk or warehousemen. Is as despicable a felon as the
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: poor wretch who makes Charter Street his home when not
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: provided for by a beneficent government in a comfortable jail.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: If the thousand upon thousand patient inquiries by the police
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: as to where the culprit has resorted and who were
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: his companions were but published, this Canal Street Palace of
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: sin and its facsimiles dotted over the face of our city,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: thick as plague spots, would show what a terrible agency
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: is at work among us. Recruiting year by year the
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: ranks of the dangerous classes from our middle class population.
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: Passing a glaring vault which is doing a roaring trade.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: I found myself in Sackville Street and mac ushered me
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: into the habitation of one of our most noted characters
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: in certain circles, who has a connection with crooked persons
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: that is exceedingly remunerative. Ginger Liz, as she is euphoniously
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: called on account of her blonde hair, is a woman
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: of middle age, still quick and active in her movements,
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: and with a certain cunning and suspicious look about her
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: face which baffles description. There was nothing to attract attention
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: in the room we entered, two or three women and
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: a man who looked like a well to do mechanic,
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: being its sole occupants. There was drink upon the table,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: and all present were taking toothfuls of whiskey out of wineglasses.
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: Ginger herself was seated on the sofa, holding converse with
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: the man, and as nothing of interest seemed likely to transpire,
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: I was quickly back into the street again. I was
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: curious to hear about the redd uns doings, and mac
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: let on at once. Ginger, you see, sir, he said,
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: is a real cleveron, and you ought me to equal
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: all over the city. She's as fly and knowing as
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: the whole boiling of us. Many a bloke down on
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: his look as she pulled up all square again. She's
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: a perfect godsend too when we jugged locked up, and
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: knows every move of the court as well as Scotti himself,
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: the slang name of one of our leading detective officers.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: When a good crossman is taken in and is dragged
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: up at Minshall Street, she sees him as a visitor
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: ascends one of her women, and no matter what he wants,
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: she'll let him have it. She'll find two or three
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: quid sovereigns for a lawyer and she'll square the prosecutor
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: abounce him. If he wants to alibi, she'll manage at
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: first rate. And if there's any stuff stolen property to
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: be got rid of while he's in, she's the woman
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: to do the trick. She knows it's all right with them,
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: for they'll pay a double when they're out, and she
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: mostly pulls them off. Even if they go to sessions
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: as sizes, She'll get the best patterers counsel money can
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: fetch as she can put things together straight as a
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: line if she's let alone. The days have been down
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: on her once or twice, but she ain't been stopped yet.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: It'll be hard lines for many a portman when she's shifted.
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: She's genuine metal, no kid mistake. Max sang the praises
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: of this genius of Minschell Street with a fervency that
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: was in keeping with the subject, and no doubt Ginger
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: is an invaluable ally to the thieves who find work
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: for our worthy justices. Richmond Street, narrow and squalid, runs
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: at right angles to Sackville Street and parallel with Canal Street,
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: and the dwellers in it are of the lowest class.
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: The houses are poorly fitted up, and many women live
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: in the same place. The visitors to these dens are
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: colliers from outside and hard working laborers from within the city,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: who think drink and debaucher it the only true pleasures
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: provided for them, and behave accordingly. I will only mention
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: one of these, and that is where Cockney Jim reigns
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: supreme when he is in town. In the back kitchen
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: furnished with the custom, her sofa, table and chairs far
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: too numerous in proportion to the size of the room,
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: with three women and the inevitable man, in this case
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: an outsider on the drunk. A quart bottle nearly full
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: of dark British brandy graced the middle of the table,
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: and a drunken, sodden wretch clad in tawdry finery, with
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: bleared eyes and scrufulous features, was pouring a glass of
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: neat spirit down her throat. She drank the poison without winking,
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: and helped herself to another, replenishing the glasses of her
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: companions at the same time. For these women can drink
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: with the confidence begotten of long practice, and never dream
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: of spoiling their taste by polluting their mouths with water.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: Their male friend was subdued and maudling, but he seemed
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: perfectly content with these philistines, and glared jealously at us,
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: as if expecting we were about to deprive him of
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: the comfort derived from the drunken endearments of these representatives
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: of the gentler sex. We left him to his fate,
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: and as I could not see Cockney, I again requested
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: information from mac. It appears that Cockney attends races and
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: various other meetings all over the country. At which he
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: picks up a satisfactory living. But one of his means
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: of obtaining the needful is by one of the cleverest
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: tricks that has ever been in vogue. It is known
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: as ring dropping, and it is generally very successful when tried.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: Many will have been made familiar with it through newspaper reports,
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: But for those who are still blissfully ignorant, I will
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: unfold its mysteries. Provided with cheap gold rings worth a
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: few shillings, but stamped with a forged mark, and to
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: an inexperienced eye of some value, A sharp and his
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: confederate start out into the public streets, patiently waiting until
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: a likely victim approaches. The sharp walks past him and
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: suddenly stops and pretends eagerly to pick something up. He
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: has a ring in his hand, and rising quickly examines
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: it with well affected pleasure. The victim either stops out
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: of curiosity or else is detained by a direct appeal
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: to congratulate the finder. The confederate comes up, and, as
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: an innocent passer by, also stops, asks to look at
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: the ring, finds that it's marked, prizes it at ten
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: pounds or twenty pound, and offers to buy it for
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: that money if the lucky man will accompany him to
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: his house. The said lucky man can't, as he's got
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: to go to his work and will lose his place
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: if he's late. He's an honest man, he is, and
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: must want to make money out of the ring, so
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: he'll sell it there and then for a couple of pounds.
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: The confederate is annoyed that he has not the amount
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: on him and expresses vexation that he should lose so
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: good a bargain. The victim, meanwhile, has had his cupidity excited.
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: He examines the ring, sees it's all right, thinks what
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: an ass the fellow must be to sell it for
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: a mere song, and after a little parley, pays the
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: two pound and makes off with his treasure. The state
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: of his mind after visiting a jeweler can be readily imagined.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: Some twenty or thirty streets in the neighborhood of Ankots
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: and in the district lying to the left of London Road,
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: very near to the railway station, were visited by us,
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: but it was rather hard to find thieves, though we
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: did come across a few scattered in courts and stray houses.
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: In Ancots there is a contingent of foreign adventurers, Italian
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: organ grinders, et cetera, who live in one or two
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: large lodging houses that are well kept and have few
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: undesirable features. The poverty of the residence in these quarters
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: is very great, and, as Mac put it, where there's
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: poor people as thieves. This is true of many streets
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: I inspected. But the proportion of dishonest persons to respectable
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: workers is so small that practically in Ancoats and London
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: Road crime is being strangled by its intimate association with
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: elements inimical to it. Men who work hard all day
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: and earn little feel savage at seeing good for nothing
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: rogues with plenty of money hanging about the public houses,
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: doing nothing but enjoying themselves, And accordingly they round on
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: their neighbors and put the police in possession of valuable
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: information as often as possible. Ale and porter work, stealing
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: and working is the mode of life followed by hundreds
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: in these poor streets, and many a wretch finds his
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: way to jail for petty larceny in spite of the
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: character his unwary employer may be induced to give him.
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: After many nights wanderings, I considered that I had at
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: last come to the end of my tether, and in
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: the slums off London Road, I closed my acquaintance with
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: the phases of life I had been studying. The impression
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: derived from my extended visits is that so completely has
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: the police organization gained a mastery over the classes which
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: live by nefarious transactions, that the city has been cleared
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: of the shit arpist and most dangerous thieves, who have
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: sought fresh fields and pastures knew where the hand of
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: the Manchester detective cannot reach them. That this is true
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: is proved by the very few robberies of any importance
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: that of late years have taken place in our midst
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: and that when a more usually daring attempt is made
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: on life or property, it is made by strangers and
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: not by genuine residents. There are indeed few large cities
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: that can compete with our own in the systematic suppression
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: of viciousness in all its forms, has shown in the
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: sketches of Criminal Manchester. End of Criminal Manchester Experiences of
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: a special correspondence read by Phil Benson,