The Mysteries of London Volume 1

by Reynolds, George W. M.

  The two burglars nodded familiarly to the landlord and his wife, as they passed the bar, and entered a little, low, smoky room, denominated “the parlour.” A tremendous fire burnt in the grate, at which a short, thin, dark man, with a most forbidding countenance, was sitting, agreeably occupied in toasting a sausage. The right hand of this man had lost the two middle fingers, the stumps of which were still covered with plaister, as if the injury had been recent. He was dressed in a complete suit of corduroy: the sleeves of his jacket, the lower part of his waistcoat, and the front of his trowsers, were covered with grease. On the table near him stood a huge piece of bread and a pot of beer.

  This individual was Tom the Cracksman—the most adroit and noted burglar in the metropolis. He kept a complete list of all the gentlemen’s houses in the environs of London, with the numbers of servants and male inhabitants in each. He never attempted any dwelling within a circuit of three miles of the General Post Office; his avocation was invariably exercised in the suburbs of London, where the interference of the police was less probable.

  At the moment when we introduce him to our readers, he was somewhat “down in his luck,” as he himself expressed it, the accident which had happened to his hand, through playing with gunpowder, having completely disabled him for the preceding two months, and the landlord of the “boozing-ken” having made it an invariable rule never to give credit. Thus, though the Cracksman had spent hundreds of pounds in that house, he could not obtain so much as a glass of “all sorts” without the money.

  The Cracksman was alone in the parlour when Dick Flairer and Bill Bolter entered. Having toasted his sausage, the renowned burglar placed it upon the bread, and began eating his supper by means of a formidable clasp-knife, without deigning to cast a glance around.

  At length Bill Bolter burst out into a loud laugh, and exclaimed, “Why, Tom, you’re getting proud all on a sudden: you won’t speak to your friends.”

  “Halloo, Bill, is that you?” ejaculated the burglar. “When did they turn you out of the jug?”

  “This mornin’ at twelve; and with never a brown in my pocket. Luckily the old woman had turned the children to some use during the time I was at the stepper, or else I don’t know what would have become on us.”

  “And I’m as completely stitched up as a man could be if he’d just come out o’ the workus,” said Tom. “I just now spent my last tanner[61] for this here grub. Ah! it’s a d——d hard thing for a man like me to be brought down to cag-mag,”[62] he added, glancing sulkily at the sausage, which he was eating half raw.

  “We all sees ups and downs,” observed Dick Flairer. “My opinion is that we are too free when we have the blunt.”

  “And there’s them as is too close when we haven’t it,” returned the Cracksman bitterly. “There’s the landlord of this crib, won’t give a gen’leman like me tick not for one blessed farden. But things can’t go on so: I’m blowed if I won’t do a crack that shall be worth while; and then I’ll open a ken in opposition to this. You’d see whether I’d refuse a pal tick in the hour of need.”

  “Well, you don’t suppose that we are here just to amuse ourselves,” said Dick: “we come to see you.”

  “Is anythink to be done?” demanded the Cracksman.

  “First answer me this,” cried Dick: “has that crib at Upper Clapton been cracked yet?”

  “What where there’s a young swell——”

  “I don’t know nothing more about it than wot you told me,” interrupted Dick. “Me and you was to have done it; and then you went larking with the davy’s-dust——”

  “I know the crib you mean,” said the Cracksman hastily: “that job is yet to be done. Are you the chaps to have a hand in it.”

  “That’s the very business that we’re come for,” answered Bill.

  “Well,” resumed the Cracksman, “it seems we’re all stumped up, and can’t hold out no longer. We won’t put this thing off—it shall be done to-morrow night. Eleven’s the hour. I will go Dalston way—you two can arrange about the roads you’ll take, so long as you don’t go together; and we’ll all three meet at the gate of Ben Price’s field at eleven o’clock.”

  “So far, so good,” said Dick Flairer. “I’ve got a darkey[63] but we want the kifers[64] and tools.”

  “And a sack,” added Bill.

  “We must get all these things of old Moses Hart, the fence;[65] and give him a share of the swag,” exclaimed the Cracksman. “Don’t bother yourselves about that; I’ll make it all right.”

  “Well, now that’s settled,” said Dick. “I’ve got a bob in my pocket, and we’ll have a rinse of the bingo.”

  The burglar went out to the bar, and returned with some brandy, which he and his companions drank pure.

  “So Crankey Jem’s in quod?” observed the Cracksman, after a pause.

  “Yes—and the Resurrection Man too: but he has chirped, and will be let out after sessions.”

  “You have heard of his freak over in the Borough I s’pose,” said the Cracksman.

  “No I haven’t,” answered Bill. “What was it?”

  “Oh! a capital joke. The story’s rather long; but it will bear telling. There’s a young fellow of the name of Sam Chisney; and his father died about two year ago leaving two thousand pounds in the funds. The widder was to enjoy the interest during her life; and then it was to come, principal and interest both, to Sam. Well, the old woman gets into debt, and is arrested. She goes over to the Bench, takes the Rules,[66] and hires a nice lodging on the ground floor in Belvidere Place. The young feller wants his money very bad, and doesn’t seem at all disposed to wait for the old lady’s death, particklar as she might live another ten years. Well, he comes across the Resurrection Man, and tells him just how he’s sitivated. The Resurrection Man thinks over the matter; and, being a bit of a scholar, understands the business. Off they goes and consults a lawyer named Mac Chizzle, who lives up in the New Road, somewhere near the Servants’ Arms there.”

  “I know that crib well,” observed Bill. “It’s a wery tidy and respectable one.”

  “So Mac Chizzle, Sam Chisney, and the Resurrection Man lay their heads together, and settle the whole business. The young chap then goes over to the old woman, and tells her what is to be done. She consents: and all’s right. Well, that very day the old lady is taken so bad—so very bad, she thinks she’s a goin’ to die. She won’t have no doctor; but she sends for a nurse as she knows—an old creatur’ up’ards of seventy and nearly in her dotage. Then Sam comes; and he’s so sorry to see his poor dear mother so ill; and she begins to talk very pious, and to bless him, and tell him as how she feels that she can’t live four-and-twenty hours. Sam cries dreadful, and swears he won’t leave his poor dear mother—no, not for all the world. He sits up with her all night, and is so exceedin’ kind; and he goes out and gets a bottle of medicine—which arter all worn’t nothink but gin and peppermint. The old nurse is quite pleased to think that the old woman has got such a attentive son; and he sends out to get a little rum; and the old nurse goes to bed blind drunk.”

  “What the devil was all that for?” demanded Dick.

  “You’ll see in a moment,” resumed the Cracksman. “Next night at about ten o’clock the young fellow says to the nurse—‘Nurse, my poor dear mother is wasting away: she can’t last out the night. I do feel so miserable; and I fancy a drop of the rum that they sell at a partickler public, close up by Westminster Bridge.’ ‘Well, my dear,’ says the nurse, ‘I’ll go and get a bottle there; for I feel that we shall both want someot to cheer us through this blessed night.’ So the old nurse toddles off to get the rum at the place Sam told her. He had sent her away to a good long distance on purpose. The moment she was gone, Mrs. Chisney gets up, dresses herself as quick as she can, and is all ready just as a hackney-coach drives up to the door. Sam runs dow
n: all was as right as the mail. There was the Resurrection Man in the coach, with the dead body of a old woman that had only been buried the day before, and that he’d had up again during the night. So Sam and the Resurrection Man they gets the stiff ’un up stairs, and Mrs. Chisney she jumps into the coach and drives away to a comfortable lodging which Mac Chizzle had got for her up in Somers Town.”

  “Now I begin to twig,”[67] exclaimed Dick Flairer.

  “Presently the old nurse comes back; and Sam meets her on the stairs, whimpering as hard as he could; and says, ‘Oh! nurse—your poor dear missus is gone: your poor dear missus is gone!’ So she was; no mistake about that. Well, the nurse begins to cry; but Sam gets her up stairs, and plies her so heartily with the rum that she got blind drunk once more, without ever thinking of laying the body out; so she didn’t find out it was quite cold. Next day she washed it, and laid it out properly; and as she was nearly blind, she didn’t notice that the features wasn’t altogether the same. The body, too, was a remarkable fresh ’un; and so everything went on as well as could be wished. Sam then stepped over to the Marshal of the Bench, and give him notice of his mother’s death; and as she died in the Rules, there must be an inquest. So a jury of prisoners was called: and the old nurse was examined; and she said how exceedin’ attentive the young man had been, and all that; and then Sam himself was called. Of course he told a good tale; and then the Coroner says, ‘Well, gentlemen, I s’pose you’ll like to look at the body.’ So over they all goes to Belvidere Place, and the foreman of the Jury just pokes his nose in at the door of the room where the corpse was lying; and no one else even went more than half up the staircase. After this, the jury is quite satisfied, and return a verdict of ‘Died from Natural Causes, accelerated by confinement in the Rules of the King’s Bench Prison;’ and to this—as they were prisoners themselves—they added some very severe remarks upon ‘the deceased’s unfeeling and remorseless creditors.’ Then comes the funeral, which was very respectable; and Sam Chisney was chief mourner; and he cried a good deal. All the people who saw it said they never saw a young man so dreadful cut up. In this way they killed the old woman: the son proved her death, got the money, and sold it out every farden; and he and his mother is keeping a public-house together somewhere up Spitalfields way. The Resurrection Man and Mac Chizzle each got a hundred for their share in the business; and the thing passed off as comfortable as possible.”

  “Well, I’m blowed if that isn’t the best lark I ever heard,” ejaculated Dick, when the Cracksman had brought his tale to an end.

  “So it is,” added Bill.

  The parlour of the “boozing-ken” now received some additional guests—all belonging to the profession of roguery, though not all following precisely the same line. Thus there were Cracksmen, Magsmen,[68] Area-sneaks, Public Patterers,[69] Buzgloaks,[70] Dummy-Hunters,[71] Compter-Prigs,[72] Smashers,[73] Flimsy-Kiddies,[74] Macers,[75] Coiners, Begging-Letter Impostors, &c. &c.

  The orgies of that motley crew soon became uproarious and revolting. Those who had money lavished it with the most reckless profusion; and thus those who had none were far from being in want of liquor.

  The Cracksman was evidently a great man amongst this horrible fraternity: his stories and songs invariably commanded attention.

  It is not our purpose to detain the reader much longer in the parlour of the “boozing-ken.” We have doubtless narrated enough in this and the preceding chapter to give him a faint idea of some of the horrors of London. We cannot, however, allow the morning scene to pass unnoticed.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  MORNING.

  THE orgie lasted throughout the night in the “boozing-ken.” There were plenty of kind guests who, being flush of money, treated those that had none; and thus Tom the Cracksman, Dick Flairer, and Bill Bolter, were enabled to indulge, to their heart’s content, in the adulterated liquors sold at the establishment.

  The cold raw November morning was ushered in with a fine mizzling rain. The gas-lights were extinguished in the parlour; and the dawn of day fell upon countenances inflamed with debauchery, and rendered hideous by dirt and dark bristling beards.

  That was a busy hour for the landlord and landlady of the “boozing-ken.” The neighbours who “used the house,” came in, one after another—male and female, to take their “morning.” This signified their first dram.

  Then was it that the “all sorts” was in great demand. Old clothesmen, sweeps, dustmen, knackers, crimps, and women of the town, crowded round the bar, imbibing the strange but potent compound. Even young boys and girls of tender age seemed as a matter of course to require the morning stimulant ere they commenced the avocations or business of the day. Matted hair, blear-eyes, grimy faces, pestiferous breaths, and hollow cheeks, combined with rags and tatters, were the characteristics of the wretches that thronged about the bar of that lowest of low drinking-dens.

  Nothing is more revolting to the eye than the unwashed aspect of dissipation by the dingy light of the early dawn. The women had evidently jumped from their beds and huddled on their miserable attire without the slightest regard to decency, in order to lose no time in obtaining their morning dram. The men appeared as if they had slept in their clothes all night; and the pieces of straw in the coarse matted hair of many of them, plainly denoted of what materials their beds were made.

  They all entered shivering, cold, depressed, and sullen. The dram instantly produced an extraordinary change in each. Artificial gaiety—a gaiety which developed itself in ribald jokes, profane oaths, and obscene talk—was diffused around. Those who could afford it indulged in a second and a third glass; and some tossed for pots of beer. The men lighted their pipes; and the place was impregnated with the narcotic fumes of the strongest and worst tobacco—that bastard opium of the poor.

  Presently the policeman “upon that beat” lounged in, and was complimented by the landlady with a glass of her “best cordial gin.” He seemed well acquainted with many of the individuals there, and laughed heartily at the jokes uttered in his presence. When he was gone, the inmates of the “boozing-ken” all declared, with one accord, “that he was the most niblike[76] blue-bottle in the entire force.”

  In the parlour there were several men occupied in warming beer, toasting herrings, and frying sausages. The tables were smeared over with a rag as black as a hat, by a dirty slip-shod drab of a girl; and with the same cloth she dusted the frame of wire-work which protected the dingy face of the huge Dutch clock. Totally regardless of her presence, the men continued their obscene and filthy discourse; and she proceeded with her work as coolly as if nothing offensive met her ears.

  There are, thank God! thousands of British women who constitute the glory of their sex—chaste, virtuous, delicate-minded, and pure in thought and action,—beings who are but one remove from angels now, but who will be angels hereafter when they succeed to their inheritance of immortality. It must be to such as these that the eyes of the poet are turned when he eulogises, in glowing and impassioned language, the entire sex comprehended under the bewitching name of WOMAN! For, oh! how would his mind be shocked, were he to wander for a few hours amidst those haunts of vice and sinks of depravity which we have just described;—his spirit, towering on eagle-wing up into the sunny skies of poesy, would flutter back again to the earth, at the aspect of those foul and loathsome wretches, who, in the female shape, are found in the dwelling-places of poverty and crime!

  But to continue.

  Bill Bolter took leave of his companions at about eight o’clock in the morning, after a night of boisterous revelry; and rapidly retraced his steps homewards.

  Field Lane was now swarming with life. The miserable little shops were all open; and their proprietors were busy in displaying their commodities to the best advantage. Here Jewesses were occupied in suspending innumerable silk handkerchiefs to wires and poles over their doors: there the “tra
nslators” of old shoes were employed in spreading their stock upon the shelves that filled the place where the windows ought to have been. In one or two low dark shops women were engaged in arranging herrings, stock-fish, and dried haddocks: in another, coals, vegetables, and oysters were exposed for sale; and not a few were hung with “old clothes as good as new.” To this, we may add that in the centre of the great metropolis of the mightiest empire in the world—in a city possessing a police which annually costs the nation thousands of pounds—and in a country whose laws are vaunted as being adapted to reach and baffle all degrees of crime—numbers of receivers of stolen goods were boldly, safely, and tranquilly exposing for sale the articles which their agents had “picked up” during the preceding night.

  There was, however, nothing in the aspect of Field Lane at all new to the eyes of Bill Bolter. Indeed he merely went down that Jew’s bazaar, in his way homewards, because he was anxious to purchase certain luxuries in the shape of red-herrings for his breakfast, he having borrowed a trifle of a friend at the “boozing-ken” to supply his immediate necessities.

  When he arrived at his lodgings in Lower Union Court, he was assailed with a storm of reproaches, menaces, and curses, on the part of his wife, for having stayed all night at the “boozing ken.” At first that cruel and remorseless man trembled—actually turned pale and trembled in the presence of the virago who thus attacked him. But at length his passion was aroused by her taunts and threats; and, after bandying some horrible abuse and foul epithets with the infuriate woman, he was provoked to blows. With one stroke of his enormous fist, he felled her to the ground, and then brutally kicked her as she lay almost senseless at his feet.

  He then coolly sate down by the fire to cook his own breakfast, without paying the least attention to the two poor children, who were crying bitterly in that corner of the room where they had slept.