Sinks of London Laid Open: A Pocket Companion for the Uninitiated, to Which is Added a Modern Flash Dictionary Containing all the Cant Words, Slang Terms, and Flash Phrases Now in Vogue, with a List of the Sixty Orders of Prime Coves
History
Sinks of London Laid Open: A Pocket Companion for the Uninitiated, to Which is Added a Modern Flash Dictionary Containing all the Cant Words, Slang Terms, and Flash Phrases Now in Vogue, with a List of the Sixty Orders of Prime Coves
Cant; English language -- Slang -- Dictionaries; London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- Social life and customs; Vice
Independent of the hosts of "Military and Naval Sketches of Mr.
Such-a-one," "the Author of So-and-So's Reminiscences," &c., with the
usual abundance of matter, that daily crowd from the press, we may
notice amongst the really useful works that have lately appeared, the
"Old Bailey Experience," "Essays on the Condition of the People," "the
Dishonest Practices of Household Servants," and "the Machinery of
Crime in England, or the Connection between the Thieves and Flash
Houses;" but, valuable as these articles are, and they are certainly
of some importance to society, has there any one, we might ask, ever
entered into the Common Lodging House,--the Vagabond's Home,--a place
that abounds in character and crime? The only information which we
have had in these dens of poverty and vice, has been merely through
the Police Reports, when some unfortunate defaulter had been taken out
of one of those skulking-holes. On such occasions we are told, amongst
the usual remarks, that the accommodation in those houses were
exceedingly cheap, and that the lodgers herded together
indiscriminately, &c.; but how such houses were really conducted, and
of the manners and characters of most of the people who frequented
them, the public may be said to be almost in perfect ignorance. In
like manner with that fraternity called "Cadgers," our knowledge has
been equally limited. No correct account has ever yet been given of
this idle, but cunning class of the community. All that we have been
told concerning them, is, to use the common phrase, but mere hearsay.
We remember reading, some few years ago, of one of those begging
gentry boasting of being able to make five shillings a day. He
considered that sixty streets were easily got through, from sunrise to
sunset, and that it was strange indeed if he could not collect a penny
in every street. Now, this very same anecdote we read, not many days
since, in a new work, entitled, "A History of the Working Classes," as
something, of course, just brought to light.
The story, too, in that by-gone piece of notoriety, "Pierce Egan's
Life in London," about the beggar's opera, where the lame and the
blind, and other disordered individuals, were said to meet nightly, in
a place called the "back slums," to throw off their infirmities, and
laugh at the credulity of the public, was, not a great many weeks ago,
trumped up into a paragraph in one of our weekly journals as a fact
just discovered, and the curious were referred to a certain house in
St. Giles's, in corroboration thereof. Indeed, we think it would be
easy to prove that what little is known of the Common Lodging House,
and those people the Cadgers, is neither more nor less than mere
reports, and which like the generality of reports, contain not always
the truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account