"The habit of turning a dozen little children, some of whom were only just able to walk, into the street in the way I have described, was not likely to be always unattended with disagreeable consequences. Sometimes a child was run over, and either severely wounded or killed. In the latter case, no Coroner's Inquest ever sate on the body: the exposure of Mother Maggs's neglect towards us, would have drawn the attention of the parochial authorities towards her. But when a death happened in that way, the old woman used to put the body into a sack and carry it some distance into the country, where she would sink it in a pond or ditch. Often, however, the corpse of a dead child has been allowed to remain in our room till it was quite putrid, Mother Maggs not having time or inclination to remove it before. And, on those occasions, we _who were alive in that room_ were so frightened to be with the dead body in the dark, that we shrieked and screamed till the noise reached the old woman's ears in the public-house next door; and so savage was she at being disturbed in her gin and her gossip, that she has half murdered us by way of making us hold our tongues! "Sometimes a child was lost; and if the parents, on being informed of it, expressed regret or anger, Mother Maggs would take some trouble to find it again: if not, she did not put herself out of the way respecting the matter. In addition to her boarding-house for children, she let out lodgings to persons of either sex; and, as she was not particular so long as she got paid, her house was nothing more or less than a common brothel. She was always saying she had no time to do any thing which ought to be done: and if being all day in the public-house was a necessary duty, she certainly had no time for other purposes. Though not often tipsy, she was never actually sober—but in a constant state of muzziness. Liquor did not improve her temper: on the contrary it made her irritable—sometimes ferocious; and I have seen her fight with other women until her face was covered with long seams made by the finger-nails, and pouring with blood. "You cannot suppose that _all_ these things which I have just told you or that I am going to tell you directly, in connexion with Mother Maggs's establishment, were noticed or understood by me when I was quite a child there: but you must remember that I stayed at that den until I was nine, and in the course of those years all I saw made a deep impression on my mind; and what was then dark and unintelligible to me, has since been made clear and plain by experience and by reflection on those scenes and circumstances.