rendez-vous pour quand nous serions _défouraillés_; alors nous sommes devenus _amarres d’attaques_ et nous avons laissé les autres _zigues_ à Clapton. At last one day we was at St. John’s Wood. I went in after some wedge. While picking some up off the table I frightened a cat, which upset a lot of plates when jumping out of the window. So I was taken and tried at Marylebone Police Court and sent to Feltham Industrial School. I had not been there a month before I planned with another boy to guy (run away), and so we did, but was stopped at Brentford and took back to the school, for which we got twelve strokes with the birch. I thought when I first went there that I knew a great deal about thieving, but I found there was some there that knew more, and I used to pal in with those that knew the most. One day, while talking with a boy, he told me he was going home in a day or so. He said his friends was going to claim him out because he was more than sixteen years old. When my friends came to see me I told them that they could claim me out, and with a good many fair promises that I would lead a new life if they did so. They got me out of the school. When I got home I found a great change in my father, who had taken to drink, and he did not take so much notice of what I done as he used. I went on all straight the first few moons at costering. One day there was a “fête” at Clapton, and I was coming home with my kipsy (basket); I had just sold all my goods out. I just stopped to pipe (see) what was going on, when a reeler came up to me and rapped (said), “Now, ----, you had better go away, or else I shall give you a drag (three months in prison).” So I said “all right;” but he rapped, “It is not all right; I don’t want any sauce from you or else I shall set about (beat) you myself.” So I said, “What for? I have done nothing; do you want to get it up for me?” Then he began to push me about, so I said I would not go at all if he put his dukes (hands) on me. Then he rammed my nut (head) against the wall and shook the very life out of me. This got a scuff (crowd) round us, and the people ask him what he was knocking me about for, so he said, “This is young ---- just come home from a schooling (a term in a reformatory).” So he did not touch me again; so I went home, turned into kip (bed) and could not get up for two or three days, because he had given me such a shaking, him being a great powerful man, and me only a little fellow. I still went on all straight until things got very dear at the market. I had been down three or four days running, and could not buy anything to earn a deaner (shilling) out of. So one morning I found I did not have more than a caser (five shillings) for stock-pieces (stock-money). So I thought to myself, “What shall I do?” I said, “I know what I will do. I will go to London Bridge rattler (railway) and take a deaner ride and go a wedge-hunting (stealing plate).” So I took a ducat (railway