The Seven Curses of London. James Greenwood
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James Greenwood
The Seven Curses of London
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4057664621115
Table of Contents
CHAPTER II. RESPECTING THE PARENTAGE OF SOME OF OUR GUTTER POPULATION.
CHAPTER V. THE PROBLEM OF DELIVERANCE.
CHAPTER VI. THEIR NUMBER AND THEIR DIFFICULTIES.
CHAPTER VII. HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE BRITISH THIEF.
CHAPTER VIII. JUVENILE THIEVES.
CHAPTER IX. THE THIEF NON-PROFESSIONAL.
CHAPTER X. CRIMINAL SUPPRESSION AND PUNISHMENT.
CHAPTER XI. ADULT CRIMINALS AND THE NEW LAW FOR THEIR BETTER GOVERNMENT.
CHAPTER XII. THE BEGGAR OF OLDEN TIME.
CHAPTER XIII. THE WORK OF PUNISHMENT AND RECLAMATION.
CHAPTER XIV. BEGGING “DODGES.”
CHAPTER XV. GENTEEL ADVERTISING BEGGARS.
CHAPTER XVII. THE PLAIN FACTS AND FIGURES OF PROSTITUTION.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE QUESTION.
CHAPTER XXI. ATTEMPTS TO ARREST IT.
CHAPTER XXII. “ADVERTISING TIPSTERS” AND “BETTING COMMISSIONERS.”
CHAPTER XXIII. METROPOLITAN PAUPERISM.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE BEST REMEDY.
I.—Neglected Children.
CHAPTER I.
STARTLING FACTS.
The Pauper Population.—Pauper Children.—Opinions concerning their proper Treatment.—A Hundred Thousand Children loose in London Streets.—Neglected Babies.—Juvenile “Market Prowlers.”
It is a startling fact that, in England and Wales alone, at the present time, the number of children under the age of sixteen, dependent more or less on the parochial authorities for maintenance, amounts to three hundred and fifty thousand.
It is scarcely less startling to learn that annually more than a hundred thousand criminals emerge at the doors of the various prisons, that, for short time or long time, have been their homes, and with no more substantial advice than “to take care that they don’t make their appearance there again,” are turned adrift once more to face the world, unkind as when they last stole from it. This does not include our immense army of juvenile vagrants. How the information has been arrived at is more than I can tell; but it is an accepted fact that, daily, winter and summer, within the limits of our vast and wealthy city of London, there wander, destitute of proper guardianship, food, clothing, or employment, a hundred thousand boys and girls in fair training for the treadmill and the oakum shed, and finally for Portland and the convict’s mark.
It is these last-mentioned hundred thousand, rather than the four hundred and fifty thousand previously mentioned, that are properly classed under the heading of this first chapter. Practically, the three hundred and fifty thousand little paupers that cumber the poor-rates are without the category of neglected ones. In all probability, at least one-half of that vast number never were victims of neglect, in the true sense of the term. Mr. Bumble derives his foster children from sources innumerable. There are those that are born in the “house,” and who, on some pretext, are abandoned by their unnatural mother. There are the “strays,” discovered by the police on their beats, and consigned, for the present, to the workhouse, and never owned. There is the offspring of the decamping weaver, or shoemaker, who goes on tramp “to better himself;” but, never succeeding, does not regard it as worth while to tramp home again to report his ill-luck. These, and such as these, may truly ascribe their pauperism to neglect on somebody’s part; but by far the greater number are what they are through sheer misfortune. When death snatches father