Were the Government, with the consent of the Legislature, to establish lodging-houses for poor but honest persons, an immense benefit would be conferred upon that class, and the fearful progress of immorality would receive a check at least in one point. The respectability of such institutions might be ensured by placing trustworthy married couples at their head, and applying a system of rules which would enforce regular hours, exclude ardent spirits, and only permit a moderate quantity of beer to be brought in for the use of each individual, and likewise empower magistrates to punish those who might be brought before them charged with breaking the regulations, or otherwise subverting the wholesome discipline enjoined.
Thieves, prostitutes, and bad characters would not attempt to obtain admission to establishments if this description:—no more than a person enjoying a competency would endeavour to become the inmate of a workhouse. Scenes of debauchery and unbounded license alone suit abandoned males and females;—and thus every guarantee would exist for the respectable management of those institutions which would save the honest poor from the low lodging-houses of London.[10]
The following is a glossary which will enable the reader to comprehend the flash terms used in the thieves' marriage-service:—
_Parish prig_, clergyman. _Bouncing ben_, learned man. _Padding-ken_, lodging-house. _Cop_, make over. _Shaler_, girl—young lady. _Fancy bloak_, paramour—fancy man. _Tip mauleys_, shake hands. _Jomen_, paramour—fancy girl. _On the cross_, out thieving. _Doss_, bed. _Traps_, constables. _Upon the nose_, on the watch. _Fly_, alert. _Pinch a lob_, rob a till. _Plan_, steal. _Sneezer_, snuff-box. _Randlesman_, a silk pocket handkerchief. _Work the bulls_, pass bad 5_s._ pieces (a favourite specie with coiners in those days). _Couters_, sovereigns. _Rum_, bad—spurious. _Go the jump_, steal into a room through a window. _Speel the drum_, run away with stolen property. _Shop-bouncer_, shop-lifter. _Get the clinch_, be locked up in gaol. _Lumbered_, imprisoned. _Fawney_, ring. Footnote 10:
When Mr. Mills was instructed to draw up his "Report on Prison Discipline," he obtained the necessary information and evidence from a variety of sources. One of the witnesses whom he examined was Inspector Titterton of the Metropolitan Police Force. This intelligent officer deposed as follows:—"St Giles's abounds with low lodging-houses. The most notorious are kept by Grout. He is a rich man, and has elegant private houses at Hampstead, and the lowest sort of lodging-houses in every part of London. He generally visits these dens daily;—keeps his horse and gig. Price of these houses, as all others, threepence or fourpence a night in a room with a score or two of other people. Men and women sleep together anyhow. A man and woman may have a place screened off, which they call a room, for eightpence a night; but they are seldom so delicate. These houses are brothels. Grout is the monopolist of low lodging-houses. The St. Giles's prostitutes commit many robberies upon drunken countrymen whom they entice to those places, and either bully or _hocus_ them. The last is to stupify them with opium or laudanum in their drink. Girls club, and keep a man between them. Inspector has known instances of girls robbing men even of their clothes. In one case the victim had been deprived absolutely of his shirt, because it was a good one: this man the inspector carried home in a policeman's great coat. At the census Grout returned that 140 persons slept in one of his houses in Laurence Lane. His ground landlord is Nugee, the great tailor. The lodging-houses in St. Giles's are like rabbit-burrows: not an inch of ground is lost; and there are stairs and passages, innumerable. While Grout is thus the landlord of hundreds and hundreds of thieves, vagrants, and prostitutes, he lets his beautiful Hampstead villas to genteel and fashionable families."