THIEVES AND THIEVING (PART TWO)
I had not gone long amongst the thieves, before I found that they had a language and literature of their own - a literature which demoralises the whole nature, and erases from the mind and conscience all the lines of distinction between right and wrong. To graft notions of probity on natures thus degraded, is like building a house on a foundation of quicksand. I quote a number of thieves' words and phrases, by means of which they generally converse; and it will be seen that, whilst there are no words to express goodness, justice, or virtuous deeds, the whole of "thieves' latin" seems to have been studiously constructed with a view to elude and destroy every notion of wickedness and wrong. (See London Antiquary's Dictionary of Modern Slang.) Poultry-stealer - beak hunter; buyer of stolen property - a fence or a bloak; one who steals while bargaining with a shopkeeper - a bouncer; enticer of another to play - buttoner; to alter the maker's name on a watch - to christen a Jack; to put the works of a watch out of one case into another - to church a Jack; burglary - to crack a case; a man who travels about the country pretending to be a doctor - a crocus; one who cuts trunks from the backs of carriages - a dragsman; the treadmill - everlasting staircase; breaking a window quietly - starring the glaze; trainer of young thieves - kidsman; transported - lagged; to rob a till - pinch a lobb; confederate of thimble men - nobbler; robbing a shop by pairs, one bargaining while the other steals - palming; a person marked out for plunder - a plant; a stolen piece of Irish linen - a roll of snow; bad money - sheen or sinker; passer of bad money - smasher; stealer of linen from a clothes' line - snow dropper; stolen property - swag; to go about half naked - on the shallows; to steal into a room through a window - to go the jump; thief of kitchens and cellars - area sneak; coiner of bad money - turner-out or bit-faker; stealers of lead pipes - blue pigeon flyers; handcuffs - bracelets; plunderers of drunken men - bug hunters; selling obscene songs - busking; entering a dwelling house during divine service - dead lurk; convicted of thieving - done for a ramp; imprisonment for six months - half a stretch; wrenching off knockers - drawing teeth; to shoot a man- to flip; searched by a policeman - frisked; City missionary - gospel-grinder; shoplifting - hoisting; a man who robs children - a kinchin cove; hidden from the police - laid up in lavender; a little thief passed through a small hole to let in the gang - little snakes-man; to drug a person, and then rob him - hocuss; thieves who watch for countrymen at railway stations and in the streets - magsmen; forged bank-notes - queer screens; the condemned cell - salt-box; a whipping in prison before the justices - scroby; to be hanged - die in shoes; thieves who rob persons of their watches - thimble twisters; thief with long fingers, expert at picking ladies' pockets - a wire.
The list of criminal slang might have been extended much further - might have been carried lower down into the iniquitous region; but no good end could be answered by that. Let any thoughtful man ask himself, what must be the moral condition of a people with such a vernacular?
In its wider range, thieves' literature embraces obscene prints, flash songs, immoral books, and degrading performances in low theatres and penny gaffs. Who that has witnessed the performances in these dens of infamy, can ever forget the gusto and relish with which the poisonous abominations are listened to by a criminal audience? The song of Claude Duval, in the play of Jack Sheppard, "who carved his name on Newgate Stone," and other unmentionable pieces leave Don Giovanni and Traviata far behind - firing the hot and distempered blood of many a young and daring thief. In these scenes vice is made alluring by art and beauty, and the lowest deeds of man assume the shape of heroism. The impure literature, so difficult of access, and so expensive to the fast young man, is to the thief as common and as cheap as his daily food. But I have already gone low enough into the human sewerage, and gladly return to less tainted topics.
No man can study the thieves without being struck with the strange contradictions that they present. The more I tried to comprehend them the more I was perplexed; and as I wandered brooding through the streets, the words of the Arabian poet would sometimes occur to me: "O thou who occupiest thyself in the darkness of night, and in peril! spare thy trouble; for the support of Providence is not obtained by toil." They were not logical, and therefore I could reduce them to no syllogistic formula. There comes an end to all things, and, at length, there came an end to my bewilderment. I arrived at the conclusion that I had got into the mystery of iniquity, and, resolving to search no more for the central arcanum, I satisfied myself with grasping and understanding a few of the leading elements in a life of crime. They have a feeling of chivalry amongst them, and some of them would sacrifice their lives for their code of honour. They perform for each other many a kind and generous deed. In the following verse, taken from a pet flash song, you have a comical specimen of this sort of guilty chivalry -
"A cross cove is in the street for me,
And I a poor girl of low degree:
If I was as rich as I am poor,
Ye never should go on the cross no more." (Cross cove - thief)But this honour among thieves is often violated. There are a few men and women among thieves called nosers. They are so called, because they are in the secret pay of the police, giving information when the information will not lead to the crimination of themselves. I would not give much for a "noser's" life, if his brethren found him out in his treachery.
Another contradiction to their honour is that they often quarrel over the division of the spoil; this leads to spite, and through spite a thief will sometimes turn informer. Two thieves stole some plate, among which was a very valuable silver inkstand; having mutilated it, one went to a Jew with it, whilst the other remained in the street. The Jew examined it, saw that it was stolen, made some demur, and then, handling it very suspiciously, put it into his desk, which he locked: to the astonishment of the thief; who was still more surprised when Moses said, "He vosh a young man vat he greatly reshpected, and therefore advised him to be off vile he vos safe." The thief went into the street to confer with his associate, when they agreed to re-enter the house and demand the restitution of their property. The Jew denied the transaction, and opened the desk to prove it, when lo! it was gone. He accused one of the thieves of deceiving his companion, and the quarrel led to a discovery.
I had not pursued my quiet mission among the thieves for many months, without discovering the damning fact, that they had no faith in the sincerity, honesty, or goodness, of human nature; and that this last and vilest scepticism of the human heart, was one of the most powerful influences at work in the continuation of crime. They believe people in general to be no better than themselves, and that most people will do a wrong thing if it serves their purpose. They consider themselves better than may square (honest) people who practice commercial frauds. Not having a spark of faith in human nature, their case is all but hopeless; and only those who have tried the experiment can tell how difficult it is to make a thief believe that you are really disinterested, and only mean him well. Put all these causes of the perpetuation of crime together - organisation, drunkenness, immoral literature, difficulty of obtaining employment, the hardening and corrupting influence of prison life, the luxuries and sprees of the boozing-kens; think of the way in which these things are interlaced, of the absorption of the moral whirlpool, the liability and temptation of the industrious, the refuge which modern Alsatia affords to idlers and vagabonds, and then you may arrive at some conclusion as to the continuity of thieving. My observation convinces me that many, nay all thieves, are confirmed in thieving before they well know either where they are or what they are about. Before they know the nature of the stream they are drifted out to sea, and before they can become conscious of their danger, they are bound in a network of iron. No Macbeth witches can cause to pass before the dreamy eyes of the young thief the shadowy forms of his future self, in the different stages of his career, onward through a life of crime and misery, to its last phase of degradation - infamy and death. Talking over this point one afternoon in my study, with a grey-haired thief, the old man told me with much emphasis, that no young thief could bear his own existence if he could foresee all he has to pass through before he gets to the end. But where is the clairvoyant, the astrologer's glass, or the play that can hold this veiled future up to the gaze of thieves, tear off the drapery, and disclose the coming fate in all its ghastly and horrible anatomy? These fascinations, this masked future, these mocking demons, howl out a malignant fate to thievedom.
Thieving, with all its terrors, miseries, costliness, and enormity, is a dark streak in the otherwise brightening horizon of modern civilisation. It flits in the portentous shadows of prison walls, and there is a voice from the echoes of every policeman's footfall telling of something bad under the surface of society, and cautioning us to beware of the danger. We never retire to rest without feeling that we may be maimed and terror-stricken in our beds, or waking, may find the hard earnings of honest toil purloined, beyond possibility of recovery, by a set of worthless vagabonds who are too lazy to earn their own living, and who, with the cowardly rascality that belongs to them, subsist on the stolen property of others. Will there ever be an end to thieves and robbers? Is there no means of getting rid of this interminable expense, damage, and terror? The criminal statistics of Britain for the last few years show plainly that thieving may be lessened, and is actually on the decrease. The Recorder of Birmingham, a short time ago, in remarking on the decrease of crime, observed that "there was a close connection between prosperity and integrity; and also that the great decrease in crime, as shown in the criminal statistics for the past year, was mainly owing to the prosperity with which the country had been favoured." Mr. Hill's ground in this position is not altogether satisfactory. This assigned cause for the decrease of crime indicates no improvement of moral principle, and is, logically speaking, a mere accident. According to this, a year of adversity would turn the scales again in the wrong direction; and besides, if cheapness and plenty lessen thieving, the good is more than counteracted by the increase of debauchery, intemperance, and over-speculation, which returning prosperity always brings to debase commerce and morals. But whilst objecting to the position laid down by the distinguished Recorder of Birmingham - objecting to it because it teaches nothing, nor holds out any fixed and substantial hope - I pay sincere homage to his eminent services in the cause of moral and criminal reform, and most heartily rejoice with him in the decrease of crime. This encouraging criminal balance-sheet for the past year should stimulate both statesmen and moralists to a more searching inquiry into the general subject of thieving, and to a rigorous application of more direct and practical measures.
A brief examination of existing anti-thieving agencies may not be altogether without interest to the general reader. Prisons exist in abundance; and if the loss of personal liberty, fetters, and severe punishment, could have cured crime, there would have been an end to it long since. As equitable punishment for wrongs done, prisons have not frequently erred on the side of mercy; but as reformatory and curative institutions, prisons are a failure - a huge and costly failure. Certainly prisons are a terror to evil-doers, and how many have been deterred from thieving by the dread of being sent to prison can never be ascertained: no doubt they have intimidated many; but, perhaps, not one thief in a thousand has been made a reformed character by passing through a prison.
Great changes have taken place within the last twenty years in the treatment of prisoners, and many of the changes are decided improvements; but there is danger here: danger, lest crime should give the scoundrel a vantage-ground over the honest and industrious poor; danger, lest the terror, hardship, and punishment justly belonging to dishonesty and vice, should be neutralised by a mistaken and maudlin philanthropy. Prisons are doing all they can do for the reformation of offenders; and that "all" may be wrapped in a very little compass. Crime must be punished; the thieves themselves tell me that if anything steps in between crime and suffering, by way of separating the one from the other, there will be an end to all safe government; or, to use their own phrase, "there would be no livin' for 'em."
The police force of this country - a splendid, useful, and living monument to the late Sir Robert Peel - is a most efficient and well-managed arm of the law. Many of the police are very lazy, some are stupid bunglers, and a few of them may be in secret league with the thieves; but taking them on the whole, they are about as efficient a body of men as we can expect to have for such a service on such terms. Common house-dwellers are generally very ignorant of the duties of the police, and some of the gentlemen stuck-up in blue take advantage of this ignorance; it might be well, therefore, if a printed explanation of the powers and duties of the police were in the hands of every ratepayer, together with a direction how to proceed when a policeman failed in his duty.
The benefits which the community at large reaps from the police establishment are these three: - Ist. Crime is detected. 2nd. Crime is checked. 3rd. Crime is prevented. But with the cure of crime the police force has, and can have, nothing to do. There is no honest sap that can be hammered into a thief's skull out of a policeman's truncheon, nor any elevating lesson of self-respect to be learned from the steel bracelets of the law.
Ragged schools, reformatory institutions, and penitentiaries - more particularly the former - are rendering valuable service to the country, and purifying some of the foulest springs that contribute to the general stream of criminal life. Many of these youths, under the beneficial treatment of the above-mentioned institutions, will become honest and industrious, and a few of them may possibly rise to something higher. Ragged school and reformatory institutions are not without their beneficial influences on the criminal classes generally; they act as beacons of warning, that a course of evil must result in misery; - of honour, that some of their own ranks have thrown off the manacles of crime and risen superior to the terrible circumstances to which they were born; and of hope, to those who are waking to something resembling the dawn of a moral consciousness, and see before them a possibility of escape and a place of refuge.
In my intercourse with thieves, I obtained a great deal of light on the reception which the thieves give to the reforming agency of religion, and of the place which religion holds in their views; but although I could offer many valuable suggestions on this part of the question, such hints would be out of place here. I may just, however, say that religious tracts distributed among thieves are of no use, and the only pamphlets of this kind that could be of any service to them, should be written down to their level, and done in "thieves' latin;" the thieves would read them with the utmost eagerness, and I respectfully commend this suggestion to the Religious Tract Society.
The agencies that are at work for the arrest of crime are all, more or less, working to good purpose and conducing to a good end. Had I previously known nothing of the zeal and labour that have been expended during the last few years on behalf of the criminal population, I should have learnt from my intercourse with the thieves themselves that a new spirit was getting amongst them, and that something for their good was going on outside thievedom. The thieves - the worst of them - speak gloomily of the prospects of their fraternity; just as a Red Indian would complain of the dwindling of his tribe before the strong march of advancing civilisation: they speak as though they belong to a failing cause. The savage attacks made on the officers of the law by the robbers of a former generation are scarcely ever heard of now; thieves submit, for the most part, to be led away quietly, when arrested by the police. Alsatia lowers her flag in humiliation and obeisance to the flying standard of improved morals, and is gradually owning itself to be in the wrong. In the course of years, crime in this country will undergo a heavy reduction: I gather the argument for this opinion from the prognostications of the thieves themselves.
But the agencies now in existence can never grapple successfully with the whole case, and must necessarily leave much evil undestroyed. All young thieves will neither go to the ragged schools nor to the reformatories. The meshes of the existing nets are too large, and many of the worst fish slip through. In spite of the means in operation for the extinction of crime there will be an evil residuum. This residuum will continue to thieve, it will train young thieves, attract and beguile adults of moral weakness, and will be the nucleus for the perpetuation of crime and the standing secret organisation against common honesty. This is the fertile source, the virus of future thieving; and, like the worm in the naked foot of the negro, the reptile can never be killed until its head is drawn out.
Some will love thieving and stick to it. In prison and out of prison they will never keep their hands from picking and stealing so long as they can bend their fingers and twist their wrists. There are too many such loving artists of the light-fingered profession already. They have had every opportunity and every inducement to reform; they have gone through every species of prison discipline, and all the hardships incident to a thief's career; yet nothing will ever induce them to reform. These men and women have their parallel in other walks of vice. Of how many poachers, gamesters, drunkards and spendthrifts, has it been said, "Nothing but the grave will ever stop them;" and the sequel has confirmed the prediction.
Here, then, are a number of persons who have been in prison scores of times; nothing will mend them. Now, why are they thus? And what is to be done with these dregs or irreclaimable rascality?
Probably, kleptomania is no imaginary disease. Passing the records of history as suggestive of the doctrine, our own observation of life has led us to serious convictions on the subject of kleptomania. The writer has now one particular instance of it in his mind, in which a young lady, of good sense and most respectable station, could never be trusted in a shop alone. If this disease can happen in the upper classes, why may it not exist in the lower strata of social life? Many other causes contribute to the existence of incorrigible rogues, which need not be here discussed - causes all implied in that one saying of the thief: - "I don't believe it's possible for me to be honest; but I'll try."
We need some additional power to the apparatus already in existence, before we can grapple successfully with incorrigible rogues. This class of thieves has always been the safe depository for the larvae of crime, and while they continue to be gentlemen at large, thieving can never be put down. Nothing human can be an unmixed good, and the police force has done, and must inevitably continue to do, one serious evil: it renders thieves more expert in adroitness and secrecy. So much cleverer are thieves since the police came into existence, that a thief who aforetime might secure £10. per week, would, in these days of progress, be hardly clever enough to earn his bread. Viewed in this light, the police force seems a great training institution to make thieves craftier and cleverer; and how they have profited by the lesson, every diligent reader of the police reports very well knows.
It is this residuum of badness to which the reader's attention is here called. Let these irreclaimable plunderers, who have been known to the law as thieves for the greater part of their lives - who have, for different offences, been in prison times without number, and who are old in pilfering - be deprived of their personal liberty for the remainder of their lives. The particular provisions, safeguards, and details of arrangement necessary in such a legislative enactment, need not be here examined; but the general philosophy of such a piece of supposed legislation, may be instructively investigated. Why should not such a measure be passed? Properly guarded, it could interfere with the legal rights and liberty of no honest man. The liberty of the individual subject would, by some, be considered in peril. But what liberty? Certainly not constitutional freedom. It would only put an end to the license which some have to break the law and plunder with impunity.
Already the principle of such an interference with the liberty of the subject is implied in some Acts of Parliament. Magistrates are empowered to send children to reformatories, and compel parents to contribute to the support of their children in such cases. The poor-law will compel parents to support their children; and some of the discretionary powers given to the magistracy go a long way in this direction. Lord Campbell's Act concerning obscene literature, the application of which demolished the infernal traffic of Holywell Street, tightened the reins by which people are held in subjection to the law; and notwithstanding Lord Lyndhurt's speech of learned irrelevancy, the measure in question has proved most salutary. The perpetual incarceration of old and incorrigible thieves can hardly be open to the objection of interference with constitutional freedom.
At any rate, if they were all locked up for life tomorrow, nobody would be very anxious to get them out: no revolution would be caused; no Garibaldi would rush to the rescue of the moral maniacs who had by years of persistent crime proved themselves unfit for liberty; the vessel of the State would not founder because these mutinous members of the crew were sent ashore on some lonely island where they need not starve, and from which they could never escape; but we should all sleep a little sounder when we knew that these mutineers were no longer prowling about. No evils, then, could arise from their perpetual imprisonment - an imprisonment which should be sufficiently severe to act as an intimidation, and so far industrial as to make it partially self-supporting. So far the ground is safe - safe from any great danger, or from any great evil. Suppose, for the sake of illustration, that all old and incorrigible thieves were confined for life - what would be the beneficial results?
In the first place, a great saving would accrue to the State, and to the community at large. Any person who has carefully examined the criminal statistics of the country is aware that the cost of keeping professional and confirmed thieves at large is considerably greater that the cost of keeping them in confinement. One year of their plunder would cover six years of the expense of their incarceration. In the second place, one of the main links in the chain of the continuity of crime would be effectively broken. There would be few - perhaps, none - left to train young thieves; none left to hand down from generation to generation the unwritten but deadly art and mystery of crime. In the third place, the modern Alsatia would be virtually broken up.
In the present gigantic proportions of crime it is necessary, for obvious reasons, to tolerate a thieves' quarter. But such a place is a great evil: it is the city of refuge, and the training college for all who aspire to the art of professional thieving, and for those who, from the elevations of honest life, fall to the low level of crime. The great reduction of crime would render a thieves' quarter no longer necessary; as a consequence of which the hardened thief would be an unfriended and unsheltered wanderer; the young thief would be an untrained bungler; and the lapsed operative would be obliged either to go back to honest industry, or march to a gaol.
Thus, the incarceration of irreclaimable thieves for the term of their natural lives, would be severe justice to the few, but a merciful justice to the many. Where they should be placed, and how employed, are after questions, not necessary to the general argument.
Startling as the idea of perpetual imprisonment may be, some of the thieves have told me that nothing short of this will be an effectual check, "and we expect as that's what it will come to." The day will probably arrive when public opinion, wearied out by perpetual crime - weary of unavailing endeavours to counteract the evils flowing from incorrigible rogues - will ascend to the majesty and righteous wrath of justice, and, laying hold of these hoary and unalterable villains, will cast them into the innermost prison: saying "As you are the main cause of the costliness, ravages, and misery of crime, we will no longer tolerate your evil deeds; we have tried all means to mend you, and you have been proof against all; we have given you abundant opportunities to reform, and you have refused every one of them. You shall no longer prey on the honest and industrious; you shall no longer train the youth of our beloved country to crime and ruin; you shall no longer harass the community, defy the law, and shelter dishonesty. Villains, hopeless and unredeemable, you have sold your birthright of freedom. Henceforth, you are prisoners for life!"
I visited regularly a returned convict who was in the last stage of a consumption; and a short sketch of this circumstance may form a fitting sequel to the present article. He was a young man of good figure, in the prime of life, and having nothing of the ruffian in his appearance. His constitution had been injured by his own vicious conduct, but chiefly by some unreasonable and cruel hardships of prison discipline, which I need not detail here. I was received at all times with the utmost courtesy and gratitude; and although I necessarily saw a great deal of the thieves, I never heard an oath in my presence, and never had an unkind or disrespectful word from one of them - man or woman, old or young, drunk or sober. No one can conceive how well the worst can behave, when they are treated fairly, kindly and respectfully. Such was the sense of honour upon which they felt themselves put in my case, that I firmly believe that if any thief had offered me the slightest disrespect, he would instantly have been kicked out of the house by some of his companions.
It was in the course of these visits that I first became acquainted with the practical value of Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies. The London society, ably and generously presided over by a British nobleman and the Birmingham society, which owes much to the prisoners' friend, Rev. J. T. Burt, have helped many a thief to settle himself in honest life. Such societies are every way worthy the support of a generous public, and the establishment of such societies in every principal town would offer a fair chance to the thieves, and be a public benefit.
The consumptive thief whom I visited drew near his end, and knew that he should die. What crimes he had been guilty of, and what were his dying experiences, shall not be paraded here; let it suffice that he firmly believed his Bible, and did his best for many weeks to prepare for his end, and went at last into the presence of Him who had compassion on a dying thief. One night I was sitting in my study, balancing in my own mind whether to go to bed or read on till morning. It was about quarter to twelve, and I was suddenly startled from my hesitancy by a loud and nervous ringing of the door-bell. I was told that the consumptive thief was dead, and asked would I go down to the house, as they wished to see me? As we walked together I learned that the female who had very kindly attended to him had gone upstairs to see if he wanted anything, and found him on the floor in a pool of blood; he had got out of bed, and ruptured a blood-vessel by violent coughing when upon his knees. As I entered the thieves' quarter, the streets were up; but I felt no fear even at that untimely hour. The only thing that could have happened would have been, some newly-arrived thief who did not know me, might have relieved me of my watch; but I should have had it returned me when the thing became known, and going without a watch for a day or two was no calamity. The reader will question if I should have got my watch again. But there are so few people who dare visit thieves, so few who will, and so few whom the thieves will accept, that when they do find one who will visit their sick and be kind to them in their distress, they would suffer anything sooner than he should come to harm amongst them.
But we are going along a street to a dead man's house; it is midnight, and the thieves are all on the footpath. What do I hear as I pass them? "There's our friend!" "There's the minister!" "God bless him!" "There's our parson! - isn't he kind to turn out amongst us at midnight?" These, and other ejaculations, came floating to my ears through the chill midnight air as I passed the groups of excited and wretched thieves. And I knew that good deeds had also taken place in this very street. A friend of mine, whose deeds of kindness amongst thieves and ragged children are above all praise, was once passing along this very street. He stopped to chat with two thieves whom he knew; a young man, a stranger, brushed past him. When my friend got home he found his gloves had been stolen, and guessed at once that they had been taken in this particular street. He had been kind to the thieves, and was surprised that they should serve him so. Passing down the same street a short time afterwards, a young man came to him, and asked him if his name was not ---? My friend replied, "Yes." The young man then said, "I beg your pardon for stealing your gloves; I did not know who you were, or I would not have done it. Here are your gloves; forgive me." At length we arrived at the dead man's house, and I went upstairs. What a sight! The blood-stained floor, the ghastly countenance of the corpse strained into contortion by the violent retching and pain! I sat down upon the bedside, by which I had often knelt in prayer. Many thieves with lighted candles in their hands, were gathered round me. I spoke to them a few suitable and earnest words, amidst which two policemen entered, to inquire if any violence had been used towards the deceased. We soon satisfied them on that point, and they went away; and I also returned home to a sleepless bed, or dreams of horror.
Then came the funeral; never shall I forget it. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in the summer-time, and the funeral was respectable in its appearance; one or to of the young men in attendance were as fine-looking young fellows as ever stood on English ground. My heart ached at that funeral even more than it did when, an orphan boy, I stood looking, years before, into my father's open grave. Poor old Jeremiah Meek, the sexton (he was not in the secret) was bewildered by the strangeness of my address to the mourners. Remarks about honouring the law which made the dead man's coffin his own, and preserved him from molestation alike in his own house and his own grave, sounded unusual in a funeral address. But time has rolled on since then; simple hearted Jeremiah has recovered the disturbance I gave his Irish banshee, and I have got over the nervous shock I received from the physical horrors of that midnight hour.
I often think, sometimes with a sigh, of the hours I used to spend amongst the thieves. The motley groups come back upon my fancy; not brutal faces, for that is a mistake; all thieves have not the ruffian stamped upon their features. I see fair young girls going to ruin, and young men of considerable mental power treading the road to untimely death. Many of the thieves who know me will read this article; and they know that I never injured them by publishing names; that if I never spared their vices, I never neglected them in sickness and never refused to help them in distress.