THE POLICE AND THE THIEVES. (continued 2)

The habits of thieves have been somewhat modified since the institution of the new police, and the adoption of the principle of prevention instead of detection, in dealing with the criminal population. In the time of the old Bow-street Runners the different classes of thieves had their houses of call, in which they regularly assembled. The arrangement was winked at by the magistrates, and approved by the officers, as useful to them in looking after offenders that were wanted. John Townsend, when speaking of the supposed advantage of these flash houses, said, “I know five-and-twenty, or six-and-twenty years ago, there were four houses where we could pop in, and I have taken three or four, or five or six of them at a time, and three or four of them have been convicted, and yet the public-house was tolerably well conducted too.” Perhaps officers who lived upon the capture of thieves had good reason for maintaining these flash houses, in which most robberies were concocted; the case is far different now that the police are paid by day rather than by piece-work, by weekly salary rather than by blood-money, and all known flash houses have long been discontinued. Some fifteen years since a few remained in the Borough, but Superintendent Haynes broke them up, and rooted them out. Thieves cannot meet now in respectable houses, for if they did, the constables would become aware of the fact, and the landlord would speedily lose his license. The passing of the Common Lodging-house Act has also assisted in dispersing the desperate gangs, one of which, known under the name of “The Forty Thieves,” infested the town a few years since. It may be asked, what sort of mutual fellowship exists among these outcasts who live below the surface of “society”? Of the seven or eight thousand thieves in the metropolis, very few are acquainted with each other; they are, in fact, divided into as many sections as are to be found among honest men. Beyond their own peculiar set they do not associate with their kind. The swell-mobsman is as distinct a being from the cracksman as a Bond-street dandy from a South-Sea islander; they do not even talk the same slang, and could no more practise each other’s art, than a shoemaker could make a table. These natural divisions of the underground world of rogues immensely facilitate the operations of the police. The manner in which they do their work is also in some cases a pretty good guide to the detectives. Skill and individuality is evinced in unlawful as well as in lawful pursuits—in the manner in which a door is forced, as much as in the style a picture is painted; and a clever officer, after carefully examining a door or a window, will sometimes say, “This looks like ‘Whiteheaded Bob’s work,’” or “‘Billy-go-Fast,’ must have had a hand in this job.”

The leading swell-mobsmen are the only class of thieves who “touch,” if we may term it, the ordinary society of better men. The practitioner in this line must dress and be as much like a gentleman as possible, in order to pursue his avocation without suspicion. Accordingly, he lives with a woman, who passes for his wife, in genteel lodgings, and generally in the drawing-room floor. As his earnings are often very large, he has everything about him of the most expensive kind; his style of living is luxurious, and he drinks nothing less than hock and champagne. He sometimes keeps a banking account, and one man named Brown, lately apprehended, had a balance at his banker’s of 800l.! As the members of this fraternity work wholly in the daytime, going out in the morning and returning in the evening, the landlady believes that they are engaged in mercantile pursuits, and have business in the City; and, as it is part of their game to pay their way liberally, she esteems them to be model lodgers!

The domestic habits of thieves are all pretty much alike; fluctuating between the prison and the hulks, they exhibit the usual characteristics of men engaged in dangerous enterprises. They mainly pass their time, when not at “work,” in gambling, smoking, and drinking, and in listening to the adventures of their companions. It must be remembered, however, that the professed thief, even if he drinks, is never drunk; he is employed in desperate undertakings which require him to have his wits about him quite as much, if not more than the honest man. When a pickpocket is flush of money, he spends it in the most lavish manner,—takes a tour with his female companion to the Isle of Wight, or to any other place he has a wish to see, and puts up at the best hotels. In some of these trips he thinks nothing of spending 30l. in a fortnight, and when the money is gone he comes back again “to work.” Thieves are generally faithful to each other; indeed the community of danger in which they live develops this virtue to an unusual extent. If a “pal” is apprehended, they cheerfully put down their guinea apiece to provide him with counsel for his trial; and if he should be imprisoned, they make a collection for him when he comes out. A curious circumstance is the rapidity with which news of any of the body having been arrested travels among his companions. We are assured that no sooner is a young thief captured and taken to the station-house, although he may have been plundering far away from his home, than some associate brings him his dinner or tea, as a matter of course.

The best class of swell-mobsmen sometimes act upon the joint-stock principle “with limited liabilities.” When a good thing is in prospect—a gold-dust robbery or a bank robbery—it is not unusual for several of them to “post” as much as 50l. apiece in order to provide the sinews of war to carry on the plan in a business-like manner. If in the end the job succeeds, the money advanced is carefully paid back to the persons advancing it—several of whom have lived for years on plunder thus obtained, without the police being able to detect them. Often the receivers make these adventures in crime, and plot the robbery of a jeweller’s shop with as much coolness and shrewdness as though it were an ordinary mercantile speculation, and the produce is disposed of in the same business-like manner. Watches are what is termed “re-christened,” that is, the maker’s names and numbers are taken out and fresh ones put in; they are then exported in large quantities to America. All articles of plate are immediately thrown into the crucible and melted down, so as to place them beyond the hope of identification. In many cases, when the receiver cannot thoroughly depend upon the thief, it is, we believe, customary to employ intermediate receivers so as to render it impossible to trace the property to its ultimate destination. It must not be supposed that the passion for gain is always the sole incentive to robbery. “Oh, how I do love thieving! If I had thousands, I’d still be thief;” such were the words uttered by a youth in Coldbath-fields Prison, and overheard by the governor.[49]

If the machinery for preventing and detecting crime has so vastly improved within this present century, the same may be said for the method of dispensing justice. Up to as late as 1792, the magistrates of Bow-street—the first “police-office,” as it was then termed—were paid in that most obnoxious of all modes, by fees, which were often obtained in a manner so disgraceful that the magistrates got the name of “trading justices” and “basket justices.” Our old friend John Townsend, whom we must summon once more to our aid, gives an insight into their proceedings, and he knew them well. He said, “The plan used to be to issue warrants, and to take up all the poor devils in the streets, and then there was the bailing them, 2s. 4d., which the magistrate had. In taking up a hundred girls, that would make, at 2s. 4d., 11l. 13s. 4d. They sent none to jail, for the bailing them was so much better!” The old Bow-street worthy then draws a picture of the magistrate settling the amount of these ill-gotten fees with his clerk on the Monday morning. The “basket justices” were so called, because they allowed themselves to be bought over by presents of baskets of game. These enormities were so glaring, that, according to Townsend, “they at last led to the Police Bill, and it was a great blessing to the public to do away with these men, for they were nothing better than the encouragers of blacklegs, vice, and plunderers. There is no doubt about it.” In 1792 seven other “offices” were established, namely, Queen-square, Great Marlborough-street, Hatton Garden, Worship-street, Lambeth, Shadwell, and Union-street, each office having three magistrates, who did the duties alternately. These, by the addition of the suburban courts, have since been augmented to eleven. They form the judgment-seats to which all offenders in this great capital of 2,500,000 inhabitants are brought, either to be punished summarily, or to be remanded to the sessions to take their trial.

The police-courts may be likened to so many shafts sunk in the smooth surface of society, through which the seething mass of debauchery, violence, and crime, are daily bubbling up before the public eye. A spectator cannot sit beside the magistrate on the bench for a couple of hours without feeling that there are currents of wickedness flowing among the population as fixedly as the trade-winds in the tropics. A panorama of sin passes before his eye which he shudders to think is only like a single thread drawn from the fabric of vice which underlies the whole system of elegant, punctilious, and accomplished metropolitan life. On every case that comes before him the magistrate unassisted has to decide rapidly and justly, unless he desires to call down upon his head the thunders of an ever-watchful press. In addition to his judicial duties, he has to answer numberless questions, and to give advice upon law points to distressed persons: and all this amid a pestilential atmosphere which is calculated to depress both body and mind. Nevertheless, the work is done admirably, and justice, as speedy as that dispensed by cadis in Eastern tales, and much more impartial, is dealt to the throng brought before him.

From an analysis of the Criminal Returns of the Metropolitan Police, it is apparent that crimes have their peculiar seasons. Thus attempts to commit suicide generally occur in the months of June, July, and August, and rarely in November, according to the commonly accepted notion; comfort, it is evident, is considered even in the accomplishment of this desperate act. Common assaults and drunkenness also multiply wonderfully in the dog-days. In the winter, on the contrary, burglaries increase, and, for some unknown reason, the uttering of counterfeit coin.

The character of the cases brought before the police-courts varies, in some degree, according to the neighbourhood and other causes. Bow-street still maintains the pre-eminence over the other courts which it exercised in the old days, when the horse-patrol and the detective police, known as the Bow-street runners, were in existence; and this it does in consequence of its special jurisdiction over persons who are amenable to foreign law. The cases of this class—arson, murder, or bankruptcy—are heard in private, generally by the chief magistrate, and the depositions are forwarded direct to the Foreign Office. Ticket-of-leave men who have committed fresh offences, are here deprived of their tickets and apprehended by a warrant from the Home-Office. All Inland Revenue and Post-Office cases, such as stealing from letters, are adjudicated upon exclusively at Bow-street, which is, in fact, the Government office.

The Thames police deals with mutinies and murders committed on the high seas, and all disputes under the Mercantile Marine Act come as a matter of course to this court, together with the major portion of the criminals, the scene of whose offences is in the docks and on the river. Drunkenness, the vice of the sailors, and the insubordination arising out of it, form a very large portion of the charges of the district. Worship-street is famous, or rather infamous, for wife-beaters. The reason is curious, and supplies a hint to philanthropists to reform the dwellings of the poor, rather than pass harsh acts of parliament against the husbands, which in many cases only serve to aggravate the evils arising from their brutality. The majority of the wife-beaters come from Bethnal-green, where there are a great number of large old mansions let out to the working-classes in floors or flats. Sometimes as many as twenty families live in the same house. The children play about in the passages as a neutral ground, disputes arise, and the mothers take the parts of their respective offspring with discordant fierceness. This drives the men to the public-houses, where they drink their porter iced and listen to more pleasant sounds in the shape of gratuitous concerts. The wives in turn are driven to the tavern doors to seek their mates, with words not too conciliatory, and are brutally assaulted by the drunken husbands, who are taken up the next day and get six months’ imprisonment, the family being in most instances irretrievably broken up and ruined thereby. Some of the magistrates, seeing the baleful working of the system, have attempted a solution of the difficulty by making the husband promise to allow the wife to receive his weekly wages from his master, whose consent to the arrangement has been given. In many instances this plan has worked well, since the husband knows that on the slightest infringement of the agreement his spouse may give him six months’ imprisonment, judgment in the case having been only suspended. But this power, again, is often abused by the woman, and it is a common thing for them on the least threat of their mates to say, “Mind what you are about, or I will give you ‘a sixer.’”

Cases of begging are principally heard at the Marlborough-street police-court, as the rich streets in its neighbourhood are the main scenes of the nuisance. Blind beggars especially affect Regent-street, Oxford-street, and Piccadilly, the most thronged thoroughfares in the West End. We warn our readers against their charitable tendencies for these people. If the truth was known, the cry, “Pity the poor blind!” far from exciting their pity, would arouse their disgust. Blind beggars, as a class, are the most profligate scoundrels in the metropolis, thinking of nothing but their grosser appetites, and plundering the charitable for their satisfaction. One of these men lately taken into custody was discovered seated at the breakfast-table with ham and fourteen poached eggs before him! At the Westminster police-court the foot-guards are continually visitors against their will; but it is remarked as extraordinary that not one of the horse-guards has been charged here for years.

A custom has grown up of making the police magistrates the almoners of the public in cases which have attracted the attention of the charitable through the medium of the press. Many a poor forsaken creature has suddenly found himself not only famous, but comparatively rich, by the simple process of telling his tale in one of these courts. The news of it flies through the country in the pages of the Times, and in the course of two or three mornings the magistrate is oppressed with post-office orders for the benefit of the sufferer, the donors simply requesting that their gifts should be acknowledged in the public journals. The annual receipts at the different courts for special cases must amount to a large sum; and there is in addition a constant flow of small sums towards the poor-box, the contents of which are distributed at the discretion of the magistrate. The annual income from this latter source is about 300l. per annum at Marlborough-street, and at Bow-street respectively, the greater portion of which is given to deserving objects whose cases have come before the court, and the remainder is dispensed at Christmas to the poor of the neighbourhood in the shape of coals and candles. We are particularly anxious to make this fact known, in order that the charitable may be aware that their gifts are well bestowed. The magistrates do not, we believe, encourage these donations, as they consider that the distribution of alms is incompatible with their office; but, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that a vast amount of temporary aid is thus given to persons whose needs cannot be satisfied by the union workhouse. Deserving people are often furnished with the means of obtaining a livelihood, workmen whose tools have been burned in a conflagration supplied with new ones, and in some cases women left behind by their husbands, under circumstances of peculiar hardship, have been provided with a passage to Australia. The thousands in England who only want to know where genuine misfortune exists to hasten to its relief, have a greater guarantee that they will not be imposed upon by these cases at the police-courts than by private solicitations, as the magistrates have the means of sifting the statements of applicants. Nevertheless, even these astute public servants are now and then deceived, and comparatively large sums have been received by them for persons who have afterwards been ascertained to be unworthy of relief; and in instances where the discovery took place in time, the money, by the direction of the donors, has been transferred to truer objects of charity.

The fees, penalties, and forfeitures received at the eleven metropolitan police-courts and by the justices of the exterior police districts are very considerable; in 1855 they amounted to 11,315l. 16s. 6d. This sum goes towards defraying the expenses of the courts, which, together with the salaries of the officers, and other items, amounted in the same year to 63,021l. 0s. 5d. The expenditure may be considered reasonable, when it is remembered that 60,000 cases are annually disposed of, many of which require a minute knowledge of statute and of common law. The chief improvement required is the improvement of the buildings. The Thames police-court is the only one at all suitable for its purpose. An enclosed yard is attached to it, in which the police-van can draw up and discharge its prisoners without exposing them to the public gaze, an important point in times of public excitement. Clerkenwell and Westminster are the next best-arranged courts, but both want space and air; Lambeth, though lately built, is a complete failure; many of the other courts are held in small private houses; and in those of Marlborough Street and Hammersmith, the business is transacted up stairs. In the latter court it is a common thing to hear it said of persons who have been taken before the magistrates—“he has been up the forty steps.” With the common people, with whom these institutions have mainly to deal, justice should be dispensed with regard to appearances; there should be the formality of the superior courts, and somewhat of their show. A magistrate sitting in a plain black dress like an ordinary gentleman, and a lawyer dispensing justice in his wig and gown, are two very different things to the lower classes, whatever they may be to educated persons; and the want of all official costume, and the huddled style of doing business, inseparable from the present confined space, is not calculated to inspire the people with much respect. The police should at least be put upon a level with the county-courts. The latter have to deal with less momentous interests. Questions of paltry debt cannot be put in comparison with questions involving the liberty of the subject; the power of committing to prison for six months with hard labour is far more important than that of adjudicating in money disputes under five pounds. It is not enough that justice is administered; it is the opinion which the people have of it that produces the effect, and until the judgment-seat is rendered dignified, and those who sit on it are clothed with the habiliments which distinguish the magistrate from the man, the law, by losing most of its impressiveness, will lose its moral power over delinquents. The vulgar terror of punishment may remain, but the lesson which is conveyed to the feelings by the solemn stateliness of the tribunal is entirely gone.