At no period could thieves in London or elsewhere have prospered had they been unable to dispose of their ill-gotten goods. The trade of fence, or receiver, therefore, is very nearly as old as the crimes which it so obviously fostered. One of the most notorious, and for a time most successful practitioners in this illicit trade, passed through Newgate into Millbank and beyond. The name of Ikey Solomons was long remembered by thief and thief-taker. He began as an itinerant street vendor at eight years of age, at ten he passed bad money, at fourteen he was a pickpocket and a “duffer,” or a seller of sham goods. He early saw the profits in purchasing stolen goods, but could not embark in it at first for want of capital. He was taken up when still in his teens for stealing a pocket-book, and was sentenced to transportation, but did not get beyond the hulks at Chatham. On his release an uncle, a slopseller in Chatham, gave him a situation as “barker,” or salesman, at which he realized £150 within a couple of years. With this capital he returned to London and set up as a fence. He had such great aptitude for business, and such a thorough knowledge of the real value of goods, that he was soon admitted to be one of the best judges known of all kinds of property, from a glass bottle to a five hundred guinea chronometer. But he never paid more than a fixed price for all articles of the same class, whatever their intrinsic value. Thus, a watch was paid for as a watch, whether it was of gold or silver; a piece of linen as such, whether the stuff was coarse or fine. This rule in dealing with stolen goods continues to this day, and has made the fortune of many since Ikey. Solomons also established a system of provincial agency, by which stolen goods were passed on from London to the seaports, and so abroad. Jewels were re-set, diamonds re-faced; all marks by which other articles might be identified, the selvages of linen, the stamps on shoes, the number and names on watches, were carefully removed or obliterated after the goods passed out of his hands. On one occasion the whole of the proceeds of a robbery from a boot shop was traced to Solomons’; the owner came with the police, and was morally convinced that it was his property, but could not positively identify it, and Ikey defied them to remove a single shoe. In the end the injured bootmaker agreed to buy back his stolen stock at the price Solomons had paid for it, and it cost him about a hundred pounds to re-stock his shop with his own goods.