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

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