Sinks of London Laid Open | Page 4

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.
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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.
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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 houses besides.
This grand cadging rendezvous, then, is under the superintendence of a deputy, and is kept up in his name; he is assisted by his wife and under deputy (men-servants), and a few female domestics. This man--that is, the leader of the band--hails we believe from Cambridgeshire. He is of a slight make, with a shrewd cast of the eye. Formerly he figured in a gentleman's family, and has