Not a generation ago the capital itself was the home of innumerable thieves. In fact, a goodly percentage of the people were either thieves, robbers or beggars. These were drawn from the _mestizo_ class, and formed a picturesque but filthy group of blackguards. They would make love to any one’s pocket, and argue with one another at the point of a long, sharp knife. Each one carried a knife and revolver. “Unfortunate men, women and children, the legitimate heritage of wrong, oppression and misgovernment, thronged the streets begging in daytime, and committing petty robberies by night. They slept by hundreds in doorways, on benches in public parks, in ruined houses, and in the dirtiest of apartments. A score or more of filthy beings of all ages and both sexes would sleep together in one small room reeking with the miasma that rose from sewers and unclean cobble-stone pavements.” Vice was the natural outcome of such conditions. All natural feelings of delicacy and shame were deadened. Morality was unknown, and they lived like animals rather than human beings. Marriages were unthought of, and children knew not their parents, for even their mothers deserted them. If not deserted, they were frequently maimed and turned out into the street to beg. Pulque and mescal added its touch to the picture. Disfiguring diseases were added, and the name _leperos_ attached to them. Brantz Mayer, a writer on Mexico, has given the following definition of the _lepero_. “Blacken a man in the sun, let his hair grow long and tangled and become filled with vermin; let him plod about the streets in all kinds of dirt for years, and never know the use of a brush, or towel, or water, even, except in storms; let him put on a pair of leather breeches at twenty and wear them until forty without change or ablution; and over all place a torn and blackened hat and a tattered blanket begrimed with abominations; let him have wild eyes and shining teeth, features pinched by famine into sharpness, and breast bared and browned; combine all these in your imagination and you have a recipe for a Mexican _lepero_.” These _leperos_ were the thieving class. They frequented all parts of the city. Even the churches were not exempt and you were just as likely to be robbed by some apparently devout, kneeling worshipper saying his _ave marias_ in a sacred edifice as on the street. In the less frequented streets many hold-ups took place, and the bodies of those murdered would be found on the pavement in the morning. It was hardly safe to move about the street after night had fallen. The thieves’ market was well known and did a thriving business. Here were the pawn-brokers who did a profitable business acting as “fences” for the thieves. Many instances are told by foreigners who were robbed, and, in a few hours, found their property exposed for sale in this market. They were obliged to pay considerable sums to recover their own property.