A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their PreventionColquhoun, Patrick
History
A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their Prevention
Colquhoun, Patrick
Crime -- England -- London; Police -- England -- London
V. _A Class of Cheats of the Society of Jews, who are to be found in
every street, lane and alley in and near the Metropolis, under the
pretence of purchasing old clothes, and metals of different sorts_;
Their chief business really is to prowl about the houses and stables
of men of rank and fortune, for the purpose of holding out temptations
to the servants to pilfer and steal small articles, not likely to be
missed, which these Jews purchase at about one third of the real
value.--It is supposed that upwards of fifteen hundred of these
depraved people are employed in diurnal journies of this kind; by
which, through the medium of bad money, and other fraudulent dealings,
many of them acquire property, and then set up shops and become
Receivers of stolen Goods.
It is estimated that there are from fifteen to twenty thousand Jews in
the city of London, besides, perhaps, about five or six thousand more
in the great provincial and sea-port towns; (where there are at least
twenty synagogues, besides six in the Metropolis;) most of the lower
classes of those distinguished by the name of German or Dutch Jews,
live chiefly by their wits, and establish a system of mischievous
intercourse all over the country, the better to carry on their
fraudulent designs in the circulation of base money,--the sale of
stolen goods, and in the purchase of metals of various kinds; as well
as other articles pilfered from the Dock-Yards, and stolen in the
provincial towns, which they bring to the Metropolis to elude
detection,--and _vice versâ_.
Educated in idleness from their earliest infancy, they acquire every
debauched and vicious principle which can fit them for the most
complicated arts of fraud and deception; to which they seldom fail to
add the crime of perjury, whenever it can be of use, in shielding
themselves or their associates from the punishment of the law.--From
the orange boy, and the retailer of seals, razors, glass, and other
wares, in the public streets, to the shop-keeper, dealer in wearing
apparel, or in silver and gold, the same principles of conduct too
generally prevail.
The itinerants utter base money to enable them, by selling cheap, to
dispose of their goods; while those that are stationary, with very few
exceptions, receive and purchase, at an under-price, whatever is
brought them, without asking questions.
VI. _Cheats who sell provisions and other articles by means of false
weights and measures._ Nothing requires the assistance of the
Legislature in a greater degree than this evil; to shield the Poor
against the numerous tricks thus practised upon them, by low and
inferior shop-keepers and itinerants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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