BY THOMAS HOLMES SECRETARY TO THE HOWARD ASSOCIATION AUTHOR OF "PICTURES AND PROBLEMS FROM LONDON POLICE COURTS," ETC. LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 1908 [ All rights reserved ]...

The kind reception accorded to a previous book encourages me to believe that another volume dealing with my experiences in the great under-world of London may not prove unacceptable. For twenty-five years I have practically lived in this under-world, and the knowledge that I have obtained has been gathered from sad, and often wearying, experience. Yet I have seen so much to encourage and inspire me, that now, in my latter days, I am more hopeful of humanity's ultimate good than ever. Hopeful—nay

During the summer of 1904 there were in London few men more unsettled in mind and miserable than myself. I had severed my connection with London police-courts—and well I knew it. I was not sure that I had done wisely or well, and was troubled accordingly. I missed more than words can express the miseries that had hitherto been inseparable from the routine of my life. For twenty-one years, day after day at a regular hour, I had turned my steps in one direction, and had gone from home morning by m

The common London burglar is by no means a formidable fellow. Speaking generally, there is nothing of Bill Sikes about him, for he has not much stature, strength, courage, or brains. Most of those that I have met have been poor specimens of manhood, ready alike to surrender to a self-possessed woman or to a young policeman. Idle, worthless fellows, who, having no regular work to do, and being quite indifferent as to what happens to them, often attempt burglary, but of the crudest description. Th

In my opening chapter a slight reference was made to the Habitual Inebriates Act of 1898. I now wish to deal more fully with this subject, for it has occupied much time in police-courts, and has held a large place in the public mind and interest. The uselessness of short terms of imprisonment for persons frequently charged with drunkenness had been fully proved; they had not been found deterrent or reformative, the only practical result being that the lives of those constantly committed were con

The fashion that has arisen of late years of judges or magistrates engineering weddings among the wretched and often penniless people who sometimes come before them savours of indecency. Such proceedings ought to have no place in our courts of penal administration. The effects of thriftless and ill-assorted marriages are so palpable in police-courts that one wonders to what malign source of inspiration the suggestion that some criminal youth or some vicious young woman can be reincarnated by mar

I owe my readers an apology for introducing this chapter, inasmuch as it does not deal chiefly with my own experiences, but with two extraordinary sentences recently given, and made public through the press; though it is fair to say that I know something of the friends in the one case and the victims in the other of the prisoners who received those sentences. I have seen nothing during my personal experiences to cause me any misgivings as to the administration of justice. I have not seen people

It was, of course, inevitable, considering the large space prison reform and discharged prisoners have occupied in the public mind, that some influence, not altogether healthy, would be exercised on both prisoners and public. The leniency of sentences, or of treatment whilst undergoing sentences, has upon most prisoners a humanizing and softening effect. On others it produces a very different feeling, for in a measure it confirms them in wrong-doing. Personally, I have great faith in wise and di

For more than half a century I have taken a great interest in those who, of malice aforethought, and after considerable pains, succeed in taking the lives of others. I remember as if it were to-day the excitement that arose when William Palmer was charged with the murder of John Parsons Cook. For fifty years a vivid impression of all the events and episodes connected with the remarkable trial of that remarkable man has remained with me. I was then a boy of eleven, but Palmer was well known to th

And now, so far as this book is concerned, I have done with prisoners and criminals, so I turn right gladly to the other side of my life. For my life is dual, one half being given to sinners and the other to saints. I have spoken freely about the difficulties of prisoners and with prisoners; let me now tell of the struggles, difficulties, and virtues of the industrious poor. I will draw a veil over the ignorance, the drunkenness, the wastefulness, and the cupidity of the very poor. Other people

Present-day excitements have killed the "hooligan" scare. Good nervous people now sleep comfortably in their beds, for the cry of "The hooligans! the hooligans!" is no longer heard in our land. Yet, truth to tell, the evil is greater now than when sensational writers boomed it. It grows, and will continue to grow, until the conditions that produce it are seriously tackled by the State. I must confine myself to the hooliganism of the poor. Of the hooliganism of undergraduates, medical students, s

In our narrow streets, in our courts and alleys, where the air makes one sick and faint, where the houses are rotten and tottering, where humanity is crowded and congested, where the children graduate in the gutter—there the heights and depths of humanity can be sounded, for there the very extremes of human character stand in striking contrast. Could the odorous canals that intersect our narrow streets speak, they would tell of many a dark deed, but, thank God! of many a brave deed also. Numbers

It was winter-time, and the cold damp fog had fallen like a heavy cloud on East London. The pavements were grimy and greasy; travelling, either on foot or by conveyance, was slow and dangerous. The voices of children were not heard in the streets, but ever and again the hoarse voice of some bewildered driver was heard asking his way, or expostulating with his horse. Occasionally a tell-tale cough came from some foot-passenger of whose proximity I had been unaware, but who, like myself, was slowl

One hundred pairs of old boots and shoes that have been cast off by the very poor present a deplorable sight—a sight that sets one thinking. Many times I have regretted that I did not call in a photographer before they were hurried off to the local dust-destructor. What a tale they told! or rather what a series of tragedies they revealed! There was a deeply pathetic look about every pair: they looked so woefully, so reproachfully, at me as I contemplated them. They seemed to voice not only their

It was application time in a London police-court. All sorts of people, with all sorts of difficulties, had stepped, one after another, into the witness-box, and had put all sorts of questions to the patient magistrate. They had gone away more or less satisfied with the various answers the experience of the magistrate suggested, when, last of all, there stepped in front of him a quaint-looking elderly man. Below the average size, with a body somewhat bent, grey hair, and a bristly white moustache

London's abyss contains a very mixed population. Naturally the "born poor" predominate, of whom the larger portion are helpless and hopeless, for environment and temperament are against them. Amongst these, but not of these, exists a strange medley of people who have "come down" in life. Drunkenness, fast living, gambling, and general rascality have hurried many educated men into the abyss; and such fellows descend to depths of wickedness and uncleanliness that the gross and ignorant poor cannot