great-coat. I showed him where to hang it, so that I might have a
good view of it; and he went away; and I lay under the sofa on my
chest, for a couple of hours or so, waiting.
'At last, the same young man came down. He walked across the room,
whistling - stopped and listened - took another walk and whistled -
stopped again, and listened - then began to go regularly round the
pegs, feeling in the pockets of all the coats. When he came to the
great-coat, and felt the pocket-book, he was so eager and so
hurried that he broke the strap in tearing it open. As he began to
put the money in his pocket, I crawled out from under the sofa, and
his eyes met mine.
'My face, as you may perceive, is brown now, but it was pale at
that time, my health not being good; and looked as long as a
horse's. Besides which, there was a great draught of air from the
door, underneath the sofa, and I had tied a handkerchief round my
head; so what I looked like, altogether, I don't know. He turned
blue - literally blue - when he saw me crawling out, and I couldn't
feel surprised at it.
'"I am an officer of the Detective Police," said I, "and have been
lying here, since you first came in this morning. I regret, for
the sake of yourself and your friends, that you should have done
what you have; but this case is complete. You have the pocket-book
in your hand and the money upon you; and I must take you into
custody!"
'It was impossible to make out any case in his behalf, and on his
trial he pleaded guilty. How or when he got the means I don't
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know; but while he was awaiting his sentence, he poisoned himself
in Newgate.'
We inquired of this officer, on the conclusion of the foregoing
anecdote, whether the time appeared long, or short, when he lay in
that constrained position under the sofa?
'Why, you see, sir,' he replied, 'if he hadn't come in, the first
time, and I had not been quite sure he was the thief, and would
return, the time would have seemed long. But, as it was, I being
dead certain of my man, the time seemed pretty short.'
ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD
HOW goes the night? Saint Giles's clock is striking nine. The
weather is dull and wet, and the long lines of street lamps are
blurred, as if we saw them through tears. A damp wind blows and
rakes the pieman's fire out, when he opens the door of his little
furnace, carrying away an eddy of sparks.
Saint Giles's clock strikes nine. We are punctual. Where is
Inspector Field? Assistant Commissioner of Police is already here,
enwrapped in oil-skin cloak, and standing in the shadow of Saint
Giles's steeple. Detective Sergeant, weary of speaking French all
day to foreigners unpacking at the Great Exhibition, is already
here. Where is Inspector Field?
Inspector Field is, to-night, the guardian genius of the British
Museum. He is bringing his shrewd eye to bear on every corner of
its solitary galleries, before he reports 'all right.' Suspicious
of the Elgin marbles, and not to be done by cat-faced Egyptian
giants with their hands upon their knees, Inspector Field,
sagacious, vigilant, lamp in hand, throwing monstrous shadows on
the walls and ceilings, passes through the spacious rooms. If a
mummy trembled in an atom of its dusty covering, Inspector Field
would say, 'Come out of that, Tom Green. I know you!' If the
smallest 'Gonoph' about town were crouching at the bottom of a
classic bath, Inspector Field would nose him with a finer scent
than the ogre's, when adventurous Jack lay trembling in his kitchen
copper. But all is quiet, and Inspector Field goes warily on,
making little outward show of attending to anything in particular,
just recognising the Ichthyosaurus as a familiar acquaintance, and
wondering, perhaps, how the detectives did it in the days before
the Flood.
Will Inspector Field be long about this work? He may be half-anhour
longer. He sends his compliments by Police Constable, and
proposes that we meet at St. Giles's Station House, across the
road. Good. It were as well to stand by the fire, there, as in
the shadow of Saint Giles's steeple.
Anything doing here to-night? Not much. We are very quiet. A
lost boy, extremely calm and small, sitting by the fire, whom we
now confide to a constable to take home, for the child says that if
you show him Newgate Street, he can show you where he lives - a
raving drunken woman in the cells, who has screeched her voice
away, and has hardly power enough left to declare, even with the
passionate help of her feet and arms, that she is the daughter of a
British officer, and, strike her blind and dead, but she'll write a
letter to the Queen! but who is soothed with a drink of water - in
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another cell, a quiet woman with a child at her breast, for begging
- in another, her husband in a smock-frock, with a basket of
watercresses - in another, a pickpocket - in another, a meek
tremulous old pauper man who has been out for a holiday 'and has
took but a little drop, but it has overcome him after so many
months in the house' - and that's all as yet. Presently, a
sensation at the Station House door. Mr. Field, gentlemen!
Inspector Field comes in, wiping his forehead, for he is of a burly
figure, and has come fast from the ores and metals of the deep
mines of the earth, and from the Parrot Gods of the South Sea
Islands, and from the birds and beetles of the tropics, and from
the Arts of Greece and Rome, and from the Sculptures of Nineveh,
and from the traces of an elder world, when these were not. Is
Rogers ready? Rogers is ready, strapped and great-coated, with a
flaming eye in the middle of his waist, like a deformed Cyclops.
Lead on, Rogers, to Rats' Castle!
How many people may there be in London, who, if we had brought them
deviously and blindfold, to this street, fifty paces from the
Station House, and within call of Saint Giles's church, would know
it for a not remote part of the city in which their lives are
passed? How many, who amidst this compound of sickening smells,
these heaps of filth, these tumbling houses, with all their vile
contents, animate, and inanimate, slimily overflowing into the
black road, would believe that they breathe THIS air? How much Red
Tape may there be, that could look round on the faces which now hem
us in - for our appearance here has caused a rush from all points
to a common centre - the lowering foreheads, the sallow cheeks, the
brutal eyes, the matted hair, the infected, vermin-haunted heaps of
rags - and say, 'I have thought of this. I have not dismissed the
thing. I have neither blustered it away, nor frozen it away, nor
tied it up and put it away, nor smoothly said pooh, pooh! to it
when it has been shown to me?'
This is not what Rogers wants to know, however. What Rogers wants
to kn
ow, is, whether you WILL clear the way here, some of you, or
whether you won't; because if you don't do it right on end, he'll
lock you up! 'What! YOU are there, are you, Bob Miles? You
haven't had enough of it yet, haven't you? You want three months
more, do you? Come away from that gentleman! What are you
creeping round there for?'
'What am I a doing, thinn, Mr. Rogers?' says Bob Miles, appearing,
villainous, at the end of a lane of light, made by the lantern.
'I'll let you know pretty quick, if you don't hook it. WILL you
hook it?'
A sycophantic murmur rises from the crowd. 'Hook it, Bob, when Mr.
Rogers and Mr. Field tells you! Why don't you hook it, when you
are told to?'
The most importunate of the voices strikes familiarly on Mr.
Rogers's ear. He suddenly turns his lantern on the owner.
'What! YOU are there, are you, Mister Click? You hook it too -
come!'
'What for?' says Mr. Click, discomfited.
'You hook it, will you!' says Mr. Rogers with stern emphasis.
Both Click and Miles DO 'hook it,' without another word, or, in
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plainer English, sneak away.
'Close up there, my men!' says Inspector Field to two constables on
duty who have followed. 'Keep together, gentlemen; we are going
down here. Heads!'
Saint Giles's church strikes half-past ten. We stoop low, and
creep down a precipitous flight of steps into a dark close cellar.
There is a fire. There is a long deal table. There are benches.
The cellar is full of company, chiefly very young men in various
conditions of dirt and raggedness. Some are eating supper. There
are no girls or women present. Welcome to Rats' Castle, gentlemen,
and to this company of noted thieves!
'Well, my lads! How are you, my lads? What have you been doing
to-day? Here's some company come to see you, my lads! - THERE'S a
plate of beefsteak, sir, for the supper of a fine young man! And
there's a mouth for a steak, sir! Why, I should be too proud of
such a mouth as that, if I had it myself! Stand up and show it,
sir! Take off your cap. There's a fine young man for a nice
little party, sir! An't he?'
Inspector Field is the bustling speaker. Inspector Field's eye is
the roving eye that searches every corner of the cellar as he
talks. Inspector Field's hand is the well-known hand that has
collared half the people here, and motioned their brothers,
sisters, fathers, mothers, male and female friends, inexorably to
New South Wales. Yet Inspector Field stands in this den, the
Sultan of the place. Every thief here cowers before him, like a
schoolboy before his schoolmaster. All watch him, all answer when
addressed, all laugh at his jokes, all seek to propitiate him.
This cellar company alone - to say nothing of the crowd surrounding
the entrance from the street above, and making the steps shine with
eyes - is strong enough to murder us all, and willing enough to do
it; but, let Inspector Field have a mind to pick out one thief
here, and take him; let him produce that ghostly truncheon from his
pocket, and say, with his business-air, 'My lad, I want you!' and
all Rats' Castle shall be stricken with paralysis, and not a finger
move against him, as he fits the handcuffs on!
Where's the Earl of Warwick? - Here he is, Mr. Field! Here's the
Earl of Warwick, Mr. Field! - O there you are, my Lord. Come
for'ard. There's a chest, sir, not to have a clean shirt on. An't
it? Take your hat off, my Lord. Why, I should be ashamed if I was
you - and an Earl, too - to show myself to a gentleman with my hat
on! - The Earl of Warwick laughs and uncovers. All the company
laugh. One pickpocket, especially, laughs with great enthusiasm.
O what a jolly game it is, when Mr. Field comes down - and don't
want nobody!
So, YOU are here, too, are you, you tall, grey, soldierly-looking,
grave man, standing by the fire? - Yes, sir. Good evening, Mr.
Field! - Let us see. You lived servant to a nobleman once? - Yes,
Mr. Field. - And what is it you do now; I forget? - Well, Mr.
Field, I job about as well as I can. I left my employment on
account of delicate health. The family is still kind to me. Mr.
Wix of Piccadilly is also very kind to me when I am hard up.
Likewise Mr. Nix of Oxford Street. I get a trifle from them
occasionally, and rub on as well as I can, Mr. Field. Mr. Field's
eye rolls enjoyingly, for this man is a notorious begging-letter
writer. - Good night, my lads! - Good night, Mr. Field, and
thank'ee, sir!
Clear the street here, half a thousand of you! Cut it, Mrs.
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Stalker - none of that - we don't want you! Rogers of the flaming
eye, lead on to the tramps' lodging-house!
A dream of baleful faces attends to the door. Now, stand back all
of you! In the rear Detective Sergeant plants himself, composedly
whistling, with his strong right arm across the narrow passage.
Mrs. Stalker, I am something'd that need not be written here, if
you won't get yourself into trouble, in about half a minute, if I
see that face of yours again!
Saint Giles's church clock, striking eleven, hums through our hand
stricken back by the pestilent breath that issues from within.
Rogers to the front with the light, and let us look!
Ten, twenty, thirty - who can count them! Men, women, children,
for the most part naked, heaped upon the floor like maggots in a
cheese! Ho! In that dark corner yonder! Does anybody lie there?
Me sir, Irish me, a widder, with six children. And yonder? Me
sir, Irish me, with me wife and eight poor babes. And to the left
there? Me sir, Irish me, along with two more Irish boys as is me
friends. And to the right there? Me sir and the Murphy fam'ly,
numbering five blessed souls. And what's this, coiling, now, about
my foot? Another Irish me, pitifully in want of shaving, whom I
have awakened from sleep - and across my other foot lies his wife -
and by the shoes of Inspector Field lie their three eldest - and
their three youngest are at present squeezed between the open door
and the wall. And why is there no one on that little mat before
the sullen fire? Because O'Donovan, with his wife and daughter, is
not come in from selling Lucifers! Nor on the bit of sacking in
the nearest corner? Bad luck! Because that Irish family is late
to-night, a-cadging in the streets!
They are all awake now, the children excepted, and most of them sit
up, to stare. Wheresoever Mr. Rogers turns the flaming eye, there
is a spectral figure rising, unshrouded, from a grave of rags. Who
is the landlord here? - I am, Mr. Field! says a bundle of ribs and
parchment against the wall, scratching itself. - Will you spend
this money fairly, in the morning, to buy coffee for 'em all? -
Yes, sir, I will! - O he'll do it, sir, he'll do it fair. He's
honest! cry the spectres. And with thanks and Good Night sink into
their graves again.
Thus, we make our New Oxford Streets, and our other new streets,
never heeding, never asking, where the wretches whom we clear out,
crowd. With such scenes at our doors, with all the plagues of
Egypt tied up with bits of cobweb in kennels so near our homes, we
timorously make our Nuisance Bills and Boards of Health,
nonentities, and think to keep away the Wolves of Crime and Filth,
by our electioneering ducking to little vestrymen and our
gentlemanly handling of Red Tape!
Intelligence of the coffee-money has got abroad. The yard is full,
and Rogers of the flaming eye is beleaguered with entreaties to
show other Lodging Houses. Mine next! Mine! Mine! Rogers,
military, obdurate, stiff-necked, immovable, replies not, but leads
away; all falling back before him. Inspector Field follows.
Detective Sergeant, with his barrier of arm across the little
passage, deliberately waits to close the procession. He sees
behind him, without any effort, and exceedingly disturbs one
individual far in the rear by coolly calling out, 'It won't do, Mr.
Michael! Don't try it!'
After council holden in the street, we enter other lodging-houses,
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public-houses, many lairs and holes; all noisome and offensive;
none so filthy and so crowded as where Irish are. In one, The
Ethiopian party are expected home presently - were in Oxford Street
when last heard of - shall be fetched, for our delight, within ten
minutes. In another, one of the two or three Professors who drew
Napoleon Buonaparte and a couple of mackerel, on the pavement and
then let the work of art out to a speculator, is refreshing after
his labours. In another, the vested interest of the profitable
nuisance has been in one family for a hundred years, and the
landlord drives in comfortably from the country to his snug little
stew in town. In all, Inspector Field is received with warmth.
Coiners and smashers droop before him; pickpockets defer to him;
the gentle sex (not very gentle here) smile upon him. Half-drunken
hags check themselves in the midst of pots of beer, or pints of
gin, to drink to Mr. Field, and pressingly to ask the honour of his
finishing the draught. One beldame in rusty black has such
admiration for him, that she runs a whole street's length to shake