Sinks of London Laid Open | Page 4

most cases, it
is returned with safety. There are some whose character stands so high
for honesty, that twenty pounds and upwards may be entrusted with
them; but there are those again with whom it would not be prudent to
leave a rag, and who often colleague with ruffians to get up a row
during the night, to rob the lodgers, they of course coming in for a

share of the booty. It is true, too, that in a great many of those houses
men and women scorn all restraint, and hate any thing in the shape of a
barrier. As regards cleanliness very little can be said for any; they all
abound, more or less, with those small creeping things, which are said
to be so prolific on the other side of the Tweed, and in the dear country.
To delineate, however, the characters of the different houses, comes not
at present within our limits; that of itself would fill volumes with the
most extraordinary interest; and what then would be the descriptions of
the crowds who frequent such houses--the thousands and tens of
thousands who exist in this country by what is called their wits--whose
trade is imposture, and whose whole life one continued exercise of the
intellects? The flash letter-writer and the crawling supplicant; the
pretended tradesmen, who live luxuriously on the tales of others, and
the real claimant of charity, whose honest shame will hardly allow him
to beg for sufficient to procure the hard comforts of a bed of straw; the
match seller and ballad-singer, whose convenient profession unite the
four lucrative callings of begging, selling, singing, and stealing; gangs
of shipwrecked sailors, or rather, fellows whose iron constitutions
enable them for the sake of sympathy, to endure the most inclement
weather, in almost a state of nudity, and among them only one perhaps
ever heard the roar of the ocean; jugglers, coiners, tramps (mechanics
seeking work), strolling players, with all the hangers-on of fairs, races,
assizes, stable-yards; besides the hosts of Irish who yearly migrate from
sweet Erin to happy England, to beg, labour, and steal. Here then, is a
wide field for speculation, a vast common in life, where a character
may be almost picked up at every step--mines of vice and misery as yet
unexplored. A road that has never yet been trodden by the man of the
pen, and very rarely by him of the pencil. If a few straggling
mendicants, or some solitary wretch, have occasionally been sketched,
the great centre of the sons of Cain--the outcast's home--has never yet
been entered; that place has remained sacred to the tell-tale eye of each
observer. But enough of this: we will now enter among these new
scenes, and in order to give a correct view of the ways and doings of
this strange life, will at once introduce the reader to the head-quarters
of the cadgers--St. Giles's.
[Illustration]

CHAPTER II.
ST. GILES'S--THE CADGER'S HEAD-QUARTERS.
The house, or rather establishment (for it contains no less than eight
houses, having a moderate-sized court within its boundary, in which
stands a large gas lamp) to which we intend to conduct the reader, is
situate at No. 13, ---- Street, St. Giles's. The proprietor being what is
called a gentleman--a man of property--and, like all men of property, of
course, wishes not to have his name mentioned but in a respectable
way--we therefore, with all respect for the power of wealth, will
accommodate him with a dash.
[Illustration]
This cavern was opened some forty years ago, by a man of the name of
----, a native of that cautious country, "Canny, tak care o' yoursel." The
Scotchman, with the characteristic foresight of his countrymen, soon
saw that to set up prudence in the midst of wanton waste, was a sure
and ready way to accumulate the bawbees. Accordingly, he took a shop
and house at the aforesaid number, and commenced giving shelter to
the wild and the profligate. Trade thrived, and, ere long, Sawney had
reason to bless the day he crossed the border. He not only grew a rich
but a braw man--put his sons to respectable professions, and expended
as much in setting them up in the world, as might have made them no
common lairds in the land of thistles, and finally gave up the ghost,
breathing his last breath amidst the air of plenty, leaving his
money-making craft to his eldest son, who still carries on this
establishment, as well as two others, one in the Broadway, St. Giles's,
and the other in Long Acre, through the means of a deputy, and in the
deputy's name, while he himself takes his ease in elegant style, a little
way out of town, and is reputed to be the possessor of a great number
of