The street mother,

and her wretched children.

interference. In manufacturing districts the evil is aggravated, because of more constant recurrence. In our large towns and cities, however, the habit of employing mothers in street-selling rises to a revolting degree. The following account of a costermonger's life in the streets of London, will furnish deeply melancholy evidence of the frightful evils of the custom :-The tap-room is the resort of the father, while the mother may be said to frequent, rather than to inhabit her house. Standing at a stall or pacing the streets with her humble wares, the day is spent away from her children, who play in the court or alley, “picking up their morals out of the gutter." The parents have no solicitude about them provided their limbs acquire their natural form and strength. Their notions of right and wrong are derived from police interference. The history of one of those girls is the history of all, and may be thus summed up. During the earliest days of its life, the infant is nursed by some neighbour, the mother, if a fond one, visiting it at stated intervals, or having it brought to her at certain appointed places, to be fed. As soon as able to go alone, the court becomes her play-ground, and the gutter her school-room," and the day is spent under the care of an elder sister, among children similarly abandoned by their parents. At the age of seven she enters upon the occupation of her life, never daring to return home in the evening if unfortunate in her sales, but passing the night under a dry arch or by the entrance of some market-place, until the morrow's gains ensure her a safe reception and shelter under the paternal roof. Once inured to the hardships of a street life, the coster girl acquires so strong a relish for it, that nothing short of absolute compulsion will cause her to adopt another. It is by the aid of these little precocious creatures, that many a family is kept from starvation or the workhouse. A little girl's own statement is a sad exhibition of the hardships of this class. Speaking

of her mother, she said, "she used to be at work from six in the morning till ten o'clock at night, which was a long time for a child's belly to hold out again, and when it was dark, we would go and lie down on the bed and try and sleep until she came home with the food. I was eight years old then."

The above extracts need no comment. This indirect source of juvenile depravity is as obvious as that the evil is not confined to one great city. Multitudes have sickened and died, and multitudes have survived such hardships only to enter but too early upon a course of vagrancy and crime.

The following table,* showing the number of lost children in one city only, in the course of a year, exhibits the e amount of parental neglect, and the dangers to which poor children are hourly exposed.

§ 5. Vagrancy. The history of the coster girl, and the lost children of one town in this country, will prepare us to account in some measure for the existence of vagrancy. The connection between it and mendicancy and theft will be palpable after the study of the characteristics of the

* Compiled from Capt. Willis's Police Returns.

Vagrancy.

Tramping

Statistics.

class. It will be of importance to observe that these nomads amongst us may be divided into two classes: the one takes to it from love of roaming and idle habits, the other resorts to it from the force of destitution. The latter class ought to be known as mendicants rather than as vagrants properly so called. The mendicant, unless a professional beggar (in which case he belongs to the vagrant orders), returns to his wonted occupation with the return of prosperous times. But the vagrant, whether so by disposition, or early training, is seldom induced to earn his livelihood by the sweat of his brow. The various causes inducing a tramping life, will be briefly presented by the following statistics. At the meeting already alluded to (at page 8), consisting of thieves of the juvenile class, the following facts were elicited by Mr. Mayhew. It was found that twenty-two had run away from their homes, owing to the ill-treatment they had received from their parents; eighteen attributed their ruin to the habits they acquired and the associations they had formed while running wild in the streets; fifteen confessed that they had first learned to steal in lodging-houses.

Of the 150 who were congregated together on the occasion, it was found that seventy-eight had their stated rounds through the country every year; sixty-five of them were in the regular habit of sleeping in the casual wards of the unions, and fifty-two usually passed the night in the lodging-houses for the class of "travellers" which are scattered over the length and breadth of the land.

On the same authority we find the number of tramps and beggars throughout England and Wales to be on the lowest computation about 22,000. The average of commitments from this class amounts annually to 19,621. Many of them never see the interior of a prison, whilst others escape with about a dozen incarcerations during life-time.

portrayed.

These moral pests and nuisances to civilized society have Vagrancy certain prominent features requiring the most serious consideration of the nation. The following is a miniature taken from a portrait of this order by a clergyman, who, as the reader scarcely requires to be informed, has paid great attention to the subject. They are able-bodied men, physically stout and healthy, full of mischief, restless, volatile, stubborn, doggedly self-willed: impatient of the least control, and delighting in nothing so much as in "thwarting the authorities." They freely indulge in every amusement within their power, but are by no means given to intoxication, though strongly distinguished by their "libidinous propensities." Reading is not one of their pleasures, but they take great delight in the intercourse of the casual ward. Ignorance certainly is not a marked feature, most of them displaying a strong, shrewd intellect, love of enterprise, contempt of danger, eagerness to engage in feats of strength and peril. Of quick perceptive powers, they are totally deficient in patience and perseverance. They possess a keen sense of the ridiculous, and betray at times the deepest pathos. A constitutional antipathy to all continued exertion, and passionate attachment to a roving life, induce them to make, during the summer months, annual rounds of the country, contriving to vary the route so as to be continually visiting strange places. They are so perfectly organized, that whatever affects their liberties or their comforts, is communicated to the whole fraternity in an incredibly short space of time.*

theft.

The character above sketched is sufficiently disgusting Vagrancy and and alarming. The contaminating influence of this singular people visiting every nook and corner of the land, must be incalculably great. The total suppression of vagrancy would, indeed, be the disappearance of one

* "London Labour and London Poor."

Begging schools.

kind of the crime coming under the denomination of summary convictions. The alternation of the periods of gluttony and starvation, idleness and of spasmodic physical exertion, must lead to a debasement of mind. The intervals, frequently long, of their desultory occupation, must be filled up of necessity by habits of mendicancy and peculation. "To my mind," says Mayhew, "vagrancy is the physical cause of crime." Many of the reputed thieves in London are nocturnal marauders in winter and vagabonds in summer.

Begging was declared years ago, and may be reiterated with undiminished emphasis, in the present day, to be practised more in London than in any other city in Europe. In one of the reports presented to the House of Commons, "it was stated in evidence that two houses in St. Giles (which is the principal resort of beggars), are frequented by considerably more than 200 persons, who hold in them a kind of club from which all who are not of their profession are excluded; that children are let out by the day, and that the hire paid for deformed chidren is sometimes as high as 4s. per day, and that a regular school is kept in the same district where children are instructed in the arts necessary to their success as beggars. It has been stated that the number of professional beggars in and about London amounts to 15,000, more than two-thirds of whom are Irish."*

Now, when it is remembered that the professed vagrant is a vagabond and thief, out of sheer necessity at certain times, and always a part of the dangerous classes in society, and that children are carried about by their parents, or those who hire them, and are thus early habituated to the pleasures, the hardships, and the vices of a roaming life; nay, that children are essential to success in a vagrant

"Penny Cyclopædia."