Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

728 страница из 895

After he has resorted to such places—​the sharper boys for three and the duller boys for six months—​they are adepts at any thieving or vice.

In the same work the statement of a young girl of sixteen years of age is given.

The narrative is that of a fallen female who was accustomed to sleep in the low lodging-houses where boys and girls were promiscuously huddled together. The account given disclosed a system of depravity, atrocity, and enormity, which certainly could not be paralleled in any nation, however barbarous, nor in any age, however dark.

The facts detailed are gross enough to make us all blush for the land in which such scenes could be daily perpetrated.

Happily for the morality of the lower classes, legislation has done much to abate the evil; the low lodging houses of the present day are under the surpervision of the police, who have done much to abate the evil which was so justly complained of. Nevertheless, the scenes which take place in lodging houses in the courts and alleys of London are, even at the present time, a scandal and disgrace to a Christian land.