A MIDNIGHT MEETING.—REV. BAPTIST NOEL SPEAKING.

LONDON LABOUR
AND THE LONDON POOR

A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings
OF
THOSE THAT WILL WORK
THOSE THAT CANNOT WORK, AND
THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK

BY
HENRY MAYHEW

THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK
COMPRISING
PROSTITUTES · THIEVES · SWINDLERS · BEGGARS
BY SEVERAL CONTRIBUTORS

With an Introductory Essay on the Agencies at Present in Operation in the Metropolis for the Suppression of Vice and Crime
by
THE REV. WILLIAM TUCKNISS, B.A.
CHAPLAIN TO THE SOCIETY FOR THE RESCUE OF YOUNG WOMEN AND CHILDREN

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME FOUR

ADVERTISEMENT.

It would be a work of supererogation to extol the utility of such a publication as “London Labour and the London Poor,” so apparent must be its value to all classes of society. It stands alone as a photograph of life as actually spent by the lower classes of the Metropolis. That one half of the world does not know how the other half lives is an axiom of antiquity, but the truthful revelations and descriptions of the London street folk, workers and non-workers, and the means by which they exist, will go a great way to enlighten the educated classes respecting matters which have hitherto been involved in mystery and uncertainty.

The class of individuals treated of in this volume are the Non-Workers, or in other words, the Dangerous Classes of the Metropolis; and every endeavour has been made to obtain correct information, not only through the assistance of the police authorities, but by an expenditure of much time and research among the unfortunates themselves. Their favourite haunts, and the localities in London wherein they chiefly congregate, as well as their modes of existence, are accurately described; in addition to which have been inserted very many deeply interesting autobiographies, faithfully transcribed from their own lips, which go far to unveil the intricate schemes of villany and crime that abound in the Metropolis, and prove how much more rational and effective are preventive measures than such as are merely correctional.

Every phase of vice has been investigated and treated of, in order that all possible information that can prove interesting to the moralist, the philanthropist, and the statist, as well as to the general public, might be afforded. In a word the veil has been raised, and the skeleton exposed to the view of the public.

In order to inspire hope and confidence in those who would shudder and lose heart in the perusal of such a record of crime and misery, the volume is prefaced by a comprehensive account of the agencies in operation within the Metropolis for the suppression of crime and vice, in which is detailed the aim and scope of the numerous religious and philanthropic associations now actively following the footsteps of that Divine Saviour, Whose chief mission was to the poor and guilty.

These brave workers now abound in all the dark places of the Metropolis, and the fruits of their labours, particularly in the case of youthful criminals, are becoming, through the blessing of Providence, abundantly apparent.

A vast amount of statistical information, compiled from authentic records, is contained in the body of the work, and in the Appendix, and a few illustrations are introduced, graphically showing the extremes of vice and crime.

The publishers have to thank Sir Richard Mayne and the authorities at Scotland Yard, as well as the Secretaries of the various charitable societies, for much valuable information and assistance.

Stationers’ Hall Court;
December, 1861.

CONTENTS.

APPENDIX.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

INTRODUCTION.
THE AGENCIES AT PRESENT IN OPERATION WITHIN THE METROPOLIS FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE AND CRIME.

One of the most remarkable and distinctive features of the present age is the universal desire for analytical investigations. Almost every branch of social economy is treated with a precision, and pursued with an accuracy, that pertains to an exact science. Demonstration has been reduced to a mathematical certainty; figures and statistics everywhere abound, and supply data for further research.

Too often, however, it happens that the solution of the social problem, or the collation of facts tending to throw light upon the moral and religious condition of our country, forms the goal, and not the starting point of our labours.

Having accomplished a diligent, and often a laborious, search, and succeeded in eliminating truth from a mass of contradictory evidence, men are generally satisfied with the mere pleasure derived from success. Their knowledge, the hard pursuit of which has called forth immense energy and perseverance, and entrenched largely on their time and capital, is no longer the means to an end, but the end itself. Having gathered a few pebbles from the exhaustless arcana of social philosophy, they complacently enjoy their newly-found treasures, without a thought of the practical uses to which they may be applied.

Other men are found who enter into their labours, and use the materials thus collected as the basis of further philanthropic investigations.

While thus perpetually rising higher in the scale of intelligence, and arriving at closer approximations to truth, men too often neglect to turn their discoveries to any utilitarian or practical purpose, and rest content with merely theoretical results.

Thus it is that while an inductive philosophy is built up from a series of statistics and particulars, very little is being done to reduce this knowledge to practice. The science of investigation is admirable as far as it goes, and the pursuit of truth is at all times an object worthy of human ambition; but it must become the pioneer to tangible results, or its utility will by no means be apparent; and indeed it becomes a question, in an active state of existence, how far knowledge, which is final in its character and valuable merely for its own sake, is calculated to reward the efforts expended on its acquisition. It is true that the old philosophers held a contemplative life to be the highest development of human happiness, but their dreamy and fluctuating views are hardly likely to carry weight in an age of bustling activity; and it is equally certain that the bare, quiescent contemplation of evil in all its endless ramifications and hideous consequences, apart from all remedial efforts, is not likely to prove satisfactory to the philanthropist, nor consolatory to the Christian.

It is only so far as knowledge opens up to us the path of usefulness, and directs us how and where to plant our energies for the benefit of the human race, that it becomes really valuable. If, however, knowledge be power, and if the discovery of an evil be half-way towards its cure, then have we a right to expect that our humanitarian and other appliances for the alleviation of misery and the prevention of crime, should at least keep pace with modern developments of social science. Hitherto men have been content to declaim against these evils, wherever they existed, without suggesting any feasible remedies.

For a length of time our philanthropic schemes have partaken too much of the character of mere surface appliances, directed to the amelioration of existing evils, but in no way likely to effect their extirpation. We have been dealing with effects rather than with first causes, and in our zeal to absorb, divert, or diminish the former, the latter have generally escaped detection. When too late, we have discovered that mere palliatives will not suffice, and that they are powerless to resist the steady growth of crime in all its subtle developments. For, as well might we attempt to exhaust the perennial flow of a spring by the application of sponges, as prescribe external alleviations for our social disorders.

Our homes, penitentiaries, and industrial reformatories will continue to do their work of mercy upon an infinitesimal scale, and will snatch solitary individuals from impending destruction; but in the meantime the reproductive process goes on, and fresh victims are hurried upon the stage of suffering and of guilt, from numberless unforeseen and unsuspected channels, thus causing a continuous succession of want, profligacy, and wretchedness.

We have affected surprise, that, notwithstanding all our benevolent exertions, and the completeness and efficiency of our reclaiming systems, the great tide of our social impurities continues to roll on with increasing velocity. Happily, however, for future generations, there is a manifest tendency in the present age to correct these fatal mistakes, and to return to first principles.

The science of anatomy is not confined to hospitals and dissecting-rooms, nor restricted in its application to the human frame. Social science conferences, and other associations are laying bare the deeply-imbedded roots of our national evils, and are preparing the way for their extirpation. Men are getting tired of planting flowers and training creepers to hide their social upases, and are beginning to discover that it is both sounder policy and truer economy to uproot a noxious weed than to pluck off its poisonous berries.

We have flattered ourselves that education and civilization, with all their humanizing and elevating influences, would gradually permeate all ranks of society; and that the leaven of Christianity would ultimately subdue the power of evil, and convert our outer world into an Elysium of purity and unselfishness. The results, however, of past years have hardly answered these sanguine expectations; and our present experience goes far to prove, that while there has undoubtedly been progress for good, there has been a corresponding progress for evil; for although the criminal statistics of some localities exhibit a sensible diminution in certain forms of vice, we must not forget that an increase of education and a growing intelligence bring with them superior facilities for the successful perpetration and concealment of crime.

All the latest developments of science and skill being pressed into the service of the modern criminal, his evasion of justice must often be regarded less as the result of caution, or of a fortuitous combination of favourable circumstances, than of his knowledge of chemical properties and physical laws. So far indeed from our being able to augur favourably from the infrequency of convictions, the fearful tragedies which are occasionally brought to the surface of society, coupled in many instances with a surprising fertility of resource and ingenuity of method, are indicative of an under current of crime—the depth and foulness of which defy all computation. We may add further, that the immense difficulty of obtaining direct evidence in cases of criminal prosecution, and the onus probandi that the law, not unfairly, throws upon the accusers, are sufficient to hush up any cases of mere suspicion; so that at present we possess no adequate data by which to gauge the real dimensions of crime, or to judge respecting its insidious growth and power. It is not, however, so much with crime in the abstract, as with the most prolific sources of vice that the philanthropist has to deal; and it is a highly suggestive and encouraging fact that, in these days, men are concerned in investigating the various causes of crime, and in exposing its reflex influence upon society. Just in proportion as they adhere to this course, which is distinguished alike by prudence and sagacity, will they become instrumental in effecting a radical reformation of existing evils, and in restoring society to a more healthy and vigorous condition. “What we want in all such cases is no false rhetoric and no violent outbursts of passion, but clear statements of that vivid truth which contains the intrinsic elements of reformation amongst mankind. The true philanthropist is the man whose judgment is on a par with his feelings, and who recognizes the fact that there is some particle of meaning in every particle of suffering around us.

“Some of this wretchedness is remediable, the result of actual causes which may be altered, though much is beyond human control. In an age like this, however we may toil to overtake the urgent need of our own time, the difficulty is, at the same time, calmly and deliberately to satisfy the fresh wants which may daily arise—keeping pace with them. With the heavy defalcations from past years weighing upon them, our statesmen and economists are often bewildered at the magnitude of their engagements; while the best and wisest amongst us are crushed and appalled by the new and giant evils which are continually being brought to light. Earnest thought, however, is the true incentive to action,”[1] and we would thankfully recognize as one visible result of the increasing attention given to matters of public interest, a growing disposition on the part of all who are qualified by position and authority, to grapple manfully with the various phases of wretchedness and crime now contributing their influence upon our social condition.

Nowhere are these hopeful indications more manifest than in this giant metropolis, where the various conditions of ordinary life seem to be intensified by their direct contact with good and evil; and where Christianity appears to be struggling to maintain its independent and aggressive character, amid much that is calculated to retard its progress and check its influence.

It is here, within the crowded areas and noisome purlieus of this greatest of great cities, that we may gather lessons of life to be gained nowhere else—and of which those can form a very inadequate conception, who dwell only in an atmosphere of honied flowers and rural pleasures.

It is here especially that the sorrows and sufferings of humanity have evoked an active and pervasive spirit of benevolence, which has infected all ranks and penetrated every class of society; so that the high born and the educated, the gentle and the refined, vie with each other in a restless energy to alleviate human misery and to assuage some of the groans of creation. This disposition to relieve distress in every shape, and to mitigate the ills of a common brotherhood, proclaims at once its divine origin, and is, in fact, the nearest assimilation to the character of Him who “went about doing good.”

The germ of this heaven-born principle has survived the fall; and though its highest development is one of the distinguishing marks of the true Christian, its existence is discernible in all who have not sinned away the last faint outlines of the Divine image.

Some philosophers, indeed, would persuade us that there is no such thing in existence as a principle of pure, unmixed benevolence; that every exercise of charity is simply another mode of self-gratification, and every generous impulse a mere exhibition of selfishness.

Undoubtedly there is a “luxury in doing good,” and the ability to contribute to the happiness of others is one of the purest sources of human gratification; but we question whether an act, resulting from mere self-love, is capable of yielding any solid satisfaction to the agent; and we therefore hold the existence of genuine benevolence, believing that it is a principle innate in the human breast, and requiring only to be developed and consecrated by religious influence to become one of the most powerful levers for the evangelization of the world.

Unhappily there are too many who have schooled themselves to the practice of inhumanity, and closed up the springs of spontaneous sympathy, thus depriving the heart of its rightful heritage, and restricting the sphere of its operations to self. Those who thus sever themselves from all external influences are left at length in undisturbed possession of a little world of their own creation. No longer linked to their fellow-men in the bonds of true fellowship, their orbit of activity becomes narrower, until at length every avenue to the heart is hermetically sealed, except such as minister to self-gratification and indulgence. The man who has thus estranged himself from the rest of creation, and become isolated from all the ties of a common humanity, is indeed an object of unqualified pity, because he has destroyed one of the purest springs of happiness.

He who, on the other hand, is most fully alive to the claims of universal brotherhood, and whose heart is most

“At leisure from itself,

To soothe and sympathize,”

is the highest type of man, and the best representative of his race. This spirit of brotherhood if recognised by the world, would “hush the thunder of battle, and wipe away the tears of nations. It would sweep earth’s wildernesses of moral blight, causing them to blossom as the rose.”

Those persons who accustom themselves to speak of London as a mere seething caldron of crime, or as a very charnel-house of impurity, without any redeeming character or hopeful element, are surely as wide of the mark as they who under-rate its vast resources for crime, or take a superficial view of its predominant vices.

It would, perhaps, be a curious and not unprofitable subject of inquiry how far the metropolis contributes its influence for good or evil upon the provinces, and to what extent the country is capable of reciprocating this influence. Probably, allowance being made for the difference of population, the law of giving and receiving is pretty evenly adjusted. Those forms of vice which seem to be more indigenous to our great cities are steadily imported into the country, while on the other hand, the hamlet and the village transmit to the town those particular vices in which they appear to be constitutionally most prolific.

It is in the crowded city, however, that the seeds of good or evil are brought to the highest state of maturity, and virtue and vice most rapidly developed, under the forcing influences that everywhere abound.

“Great cities,” says Dr. Guthrie, “many have found to be great curses. It had been well for many an honest lad and unsuspecting country girl, that hopes of higher wages and opportunities of fortune—that the gay attire and polished tongue, and gilded story of some old acquaintance—had never turned their steps cityward, nor turned them from the rude simplicity, but safety of their rustic home. Many a foot that once lightly pressed the heather or brushed the dewy grass, has wearily trodden in darkness, and guilt, and remorse, on these city pavements. Happy had it been for many that they had never exchanged the starry skies for the lamps of the town, nor had left their lonely glens, or quiet hamlets, or solitary shores, for the throng and roar of our streets. Well for them that they had heard no roar but the rivers, whose winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but oceans, whose stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than encounter the flood of city temptations, which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into ruin.

“Yet I bless God for cities. The world had not been what it is without them. The disciples were commanded to ‘begin at Jerusalem,’ and Paul threw himself into the cities of the ancient world, as offering the most commanding positions of influence. Cities have been as lamps of light along the pathway of humanity and religion. Within them science has given birth to her noblest discoveries. Behind their walls freedom has fought her noblest battles. They have stood on the surface of the earth like great breakwaters, rolling back or turning aside the swelling tide of oppression. Cities, indeed, have been the cradles of human liberty. They have been the radiating, active centres of almost all church and state reformation. The highest humanity has been developed in cities. Somehow or other, amid their crowding and confinement, the human mind finds its fullest freest expansion. Unlike the dwarfed and dusty plants which stand in our city gardens, languishing like exiles for the purer air and freer sunshine, that kiss their fellows far away in flowery fields and green woodland, on sunny banks and breezy hills, man reaches his highest condition amid the social influences of the crowded city. His intellect receives its brightest polish, where gold and silver lose theirs, tarnished by the scorching smoke and foul vapours of city air. The mental powers acquire their full robustness, where the cheek loses its ruddy hue, and the limbs their elastic step, and pale thought sits on manly brows, and as aërolites—those shooting stars which, like a good man on his path in life, leave a train of glory behind them on the dusky sky—are supposed to catch fire by the rapidity of their motion, as they rush through the higher regions of our atmosphere, so the mind of man fires, burns, shines, acquires its most dazzling brilliancy, by the very rapidity of action into which it is thrown amid the bustle and excitements of city life. And if, just as in those countries where tropical suns, and the same skies, ripen the sweetest fruit and the deadliest poisons—you find in the city the most daring and active wickedness, you find there also, boldly confronting it, the most active, diligent, warm-hearted, self-denying and devoted Christians.”[2]

London then may be considered as the grand central focus of operations, at once the emporium of crime and the palladium of Christianity. It is, in fact the great arena of conflict between the powers of darkness and the ministry of heaven. Here, within the area of our metropolis, the real struggle is maintained between the two antagonistic principles of good and evil. It is here that they join issue in the most deadly proximity, and struggle for the vantage-ground.

Here legions of crime and legions of vices unite and form an almost impenetrable phalanx, while the strong man armed enjoys his goods in peace—no, not in peace, for here too the banner of the cross is most firmly planted, and Christianity wins its freshest laurels. Here is the stronghold, the occupation of which by the everlasting gospel, has given vigour, support, and consistency to the religion of the world. Here is concentrated that fervent and apostolic piety that has made itself felt to the remotest corner of the earth; and here is the nucleus of missionary enterprise, and the radiating centre of active benevolence.

“The Christian power that has moved a sluggish world on, the Christian benevolence and energy that have changed the face of society, the Christian zeal that has gone forth, burning to win nations and kingdoms for Jesus,” have received their birth or development in London.

Since, then, this busy mart of the world, in which the most opposite and dissimilar wares are exhibited, is made up of such composite materials and conflicting elements, it is only fair that while estimating its capabilities for crime, and endeavouring to plumb its depths of depravity, ignorance, and suffering, we should, when possible, faithfully depict their opposites, and take cognizance of such instrumentalities as present the best antidotes and alleviations.

It is questionable, indeed, how far the cause of religion and morality would be promoted by a ghastly array of facts, representing the dimensions of crime in all its naked deformity, or by any exhibition, however truthful, of vice and wretchedness under their most repulsive aspects, and without any cheering reference to corrective and remedial agencies. The effect produced upon the mind, in such a case, would be, in the generality of instances, blank despair; and the only influence thus excited would partake strongly of that morbid sympathy and unhealthy excitement, awakened by delineations of fictitious distress.

To unravel the dark catalogue of London profligacy, and present to the eye of the reader the wearisome expanse of guilt and suffering, unrelieved by any indications of improvement, would be like exhibiting the convulsive death-agony of a drowning man without the friendly succour of a rope, or like conjuring up the horrors of a shipwreck without the mental relief afforded by a life-boat.

We need the day star of hope to guide us through the impenetrable gloom of moral darkness. The olive branch of mercy and the rainbow of promise are as needful tokens of social and religious improvement, as of abated judgments and returning favour.

After being required to give attention to figures and statistics representing crime in the aggregate, the mental eye requires alleviation from the gross darkness it has encountered, and looks impatiently for some streak of light in the moral horizon, indicative of approaching day. To view London crime and misery, without their encouraging counterparts, would be like groping our way through the blackness of midnight, unrelieved by the faintest glimmer of light.

Just, however, as stars shine brightest in the darkest nights, so may we discover some element of hope under the most appalling exhibitions of human depravity, which thus serve as a background to portray in bolder relief, and by force of contrast, the redeeming qualities of Christianity.

As a work of absorbing interest and utility to the British philanthropist, Mr. Mayhew’s wonderful book, “London Labour and London Poor,” stands probably unrivalled. The mass of evidence and detail, accumulated after the most careful and indefatigable research, and the personal interest which is sustained throughout, by the relation of facts and occurrences, gleaned from the author’s own private observation, or in which he took an active share, render his work both invaluable to the legislator and acceptable to the general reader.

While, however, the former will refer to it as a book of reference, the latter would probably rise from its perusal, with a sickening apprehension of London depravity, and unless fortified by a previous knowledge of counteracting agencies would probably form a too lugubrious and desponding view of its social aspects. As any such impression, derived from ex-parte statements, would be highly detrimental to the cause of truth and religious progress, and might contribute to the relaxation of individual effort, the publishers have naturally hesitated to allow one of the most startling and vivid records of crime to go forth to the world, without directing attention to the most approved and popular agencies, for the correction of such abuses, as have been faithfully delineated in the course of the work.

The following brief summary of charitable and religious organizations, having for their object the repression of crime and the diffusion of vital Christianity, is intended therefore to form a supplement, or prefatory essay, to the fourth and concluding volume of London Labour and London Poor.

It would be impossible, within the narrow limits that have been assigned to this essay, to do more than touch in a cursory and incidental manner upon some of the principal agencies now at work within the metropolis, for the suppression of vice and crime; the object being not so much to exhibit the results which have rewarded such instrumentalities, great and incalculable as they are, as to indicate the best channels of usefulness, towards which public attention should be constantly directed; not to foster pride and self-complacency by tracing the progress we have already made, in the race of Christian philanthropy, but rather to show how we may, by rendering efficient support to existing organizations, advance still further towards the goal, and rise to higher degrees of service in that ministry of love, which aims at nothing less than the regeneration of society, and the restoration of its unhappy prodigals to a condition of present and eternal peace.

What we want is not so much the elaboration of new schemes and the introduction of untried agencies, as a more unanimous and hearty co-operation in sustaining such as are at present in existence, many of which though fully deserving of a large measure of confidence and support, are grown effete solely from want of funds to maintain them in efficiency.

It has been truthfully remarked that there is hardly a woe or a misery to which men are liable, whether resulting from accidental causes or from personal culpability, which has not been assuaged or mitigated by benevolent exertions. Experience indeed would go far to prove that there are everywhere around us two mighty conflicting elements at work, each having no other object than to pull down and destroy the other. Every vice has its corresponding virtue, every form of evil its counteracting influence for good, every Mount Ebal, its Gerizim; the one being designed to act as an antidote or corrective to the other, and to restore the type of heaven which the other has defaced. The highest glory of our land—a glory far removed from territorial acquisitions and national aggrandisement, and that which makes it pre-eminently the admiration and envy of all other countries—are its benevolent and charitable endowments. There is not another nation in the world, where eleemosynary institutions have obtained such a permanent hold upon the sympathies of all classes of society, nor where such vast sums are realized by voluntary and private contributions.

“Palatial buildings, hospitals, reformatories, asylums, penitentiaries, homes and refuges, there are, for the sick, the maimed, the blind, the crippled, the aged, the infirm, the deaf, the dumb, the hungry, the naked, the fallen and the destitute; and it is to the support of such institutions, and the works which they carry on, that the nobles of the land, and our prosperous merchants devote a large proportion of their wealth.” No less than 530 charitable societies exist in London alone, and nearly £2,000,000 of money is annually spent by them, while probably the amount of alms bestowed altogether is not less than £3,500,000.[3]

How far these resources, vast and extended as they really are, are capable of satisfying present demands, may be best inferred from the state of our criminal population, which is still to be counted by tens of thousands, even while our prisons, refuges, and reformatories are filled to overflowing.

“In spite,” says the author just quoted, “of our prison discipline, our classification system, our silent system, and our separate system, all these efforts that we make, and perhaps boast that we make, to turn back the law-breaker to honest paths, nearly 30,000 criminals are each year sent to prison, who only know the higher classes as objects of plunder, and the maintenances of law and order as things; if possible to be destroyed, and if not avoided.” £170,000 are annually expended in London for the reformation of such offenders, and every modern appliance that mercy or ingenuity can devise is brought to bear upon our prison system, with what results may be clearly ascertained by the large and increasing number of re-commitments—which form a proportion of something like 30 per cent. on such as have been previously incarcerated; while these, be it remembered, represent only the number of those who render themselves amenable to justice by detection; there being no means of ascertaining how many continue their avocations with impunity.

Results like these are sufficiently disheartening to the philanthropist, and embarrassing to the statesman, and serve to show that however necessary it may be to devise methods for criminal reformation, it is even more incumbent upon us, and far more remunerative in the end, to carry out the principles of prevention.

The various agencies, at work in London, for the suppression of vice and crime, may be treated under the following heads, which will serve to indicate their relative value and proportionate influence; and though, in their popular sense, many of the words used, may appear to be only convertible terms, it is intended, for the sake of perspicuity and arrangement, to assign to each a distinctive and separate meaning.

Thus the word curative is used, not in its loose, remedial sense, as applying to expedients calculated to produce a diminution of crime, but must be understood as tending to the entire and absolute change of the human will, and the renovation of a corrupt nature—such a thorough change, in fact, as is implied in the word cure.

1. Curative Agencies.

Under this head religion naturally occupies the foremost place; since, by its restraining influence and converting power, it presents the only true antidote, and the only safe barrier to the existence or progress of crime; all other specifics, however valuable, being liable to the imputation of failure, and their influence being either more or less efficacious, according to the various phases of moral disease exhibited by different mental and physical constitutions.

While applying political expedients for the cure of such disorders, it must ever be borne in mind, that the origin of all evil is to be found in the corruption of the human heart, and in its entire alienation from God; and it is only so far as these intrinsic defects can be remedied, that any permanent influence will be produced. That power, therefore, which seizes upon the citadel of the heart, controlling its affections, regulating its principles of action, and subduing its vicious propensities or illicit motions, is the only sovereign remedy for crime. In its natural state the heart may be compared to a fountain discharging only turbid and bitter waters; but while various agencies are employed to sweeten, disguise, or check this poisoned current, religion is the only influence which purifies the fountain head, and dries up the noxious springs, by placing a wholesome check upon the first motive principles of action—the thoughts.

The truth of these remarks is even more strikingly exemplified in the sudden and complete transformations of character, effected by the all-mighty influence of religion. The moral demoniac finds no difficulty in bursting the chains and fetters, in which society has attempted to bind him. He is never changed, only curbed, pacified, or restrained by such artificial modes of treatment. The wound may be cauterised, cicatrised, or mollified, but the poison, if left in the system, is sure to rankle and exhibit itself afresh. Religion, however, casts out the unclean spirit, restores human nature to its right mind, and asserts the supremacy of reason over that of passion and caprice.

Next in value and importance to religion itself, are those subordinate instrumentalities calculated to exhibit or extend its influence, and which bear the same relation to it as the means do to the end. Such are the various agencies, in that divinely-appointed machinery for the regeneration of mankind, the universal spread of “truth and justice, religion and piety” throughout the world, and for the formation and support of the spiritual Church of Christ.

The most powerful and efficacious of all levers for the social, moral, and spiritual elevation of mankind is the Word of God. Into whatever quarters of the habitable globe the sacred volume is diffused, there is a corresponding spread of civilisation, and a sensible improvement in the scale of humanity; and those countries are most socially, morally, and politically debased, in which its circulation is debarred or restricted.

Here it is only right to mention those societies which are directly concerned in diffusing the Scriptures.

The British and Foreign Bible Society is one of the most honoured and influential channels for promoting the circulation of the Word of God, “without note or comment.” It dates its origin from 1804, and since this period it has, either directly or indirectly, been instrumental in translating the Scriptures into 160 different languages or dialects, including 190 separate versions. Connected with this Society, there are in the United Kingdom 3728 auxiliary branches or associations.

The number of issues from London alone, during the last financial year, amount to 594,651 copies of the Old Testament, and 544,901 copies of the New Testament. The grants made during the same time amounted to £58,551 17s. 7d. The total receipts of the Society derived from subscriptions, and from the sale of publications, amounted last year to £206,778 12s. 6d.

Next to the Bible Society, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge is most directly concerned in the propagation of the Scriptures. It was founded in 1698. During the past year 157,358 Bibles, and 78,234 New Testaments have been issued, besides prayer-books, tracts, and other publications. In addition to the dissemination of religious works, its objects include the extension of the Episcopate in the colonies, by contributing to the erection of new sees, and the support of colleges and educational institutions. The receipts for the past year amounted to £31,697 19s. 7d. besides £81,516 6s. 8d. received for the sale of publications.

In addition to these larger instrumentalities for the circulation of the Scriptures, it has been reserved for modern zeal and piety to discover a “missing link” in the operations hitherto in use, and this void has been admirably supplied by the “Bible women” of the nineteenth century. The appointment of these female colporteurs has been attended with the most beneficial and encouraging results, for not only has the sale of Bibles been facilitated among classes almost inaccessible to such influences, but opportunities have been afforded of permanently benefiting some of the most wretched and morally debased of our population. The introductions, gained by means of this traffic, have been turned to the best account, and a kindly influence has been established over the families thus visited, which has been often attended with the most favourable results.

“The lowest strata of society are thus reached by an agency which takes the Bible as the starting point of its labours, and makes IT the basis of all the social and religious improvements which are subsequently attempted. Small in its beginnings, the work, by its proved adaptation and results, has greatly enlarged its dimensions, enlisting the sympathy and liberality of the Christian public; and in almost all the metropolitan districts affording scope for the agency, the Bible women are to be found prosecuting their arduous labours, with immense advantage to the poor. At the present time there are 152 of these agents employed. During the past year the Bible women in London disposed of many thousand copies of the Scriptures amongst classes, which, to a very great extent, were beyond the reach of the ordinary means used to effect this work; and this circulation was attained not by the easy method of gift, but by sale, the very poorest of the population being willing, when brought under kind and persuasive influence, to pay for the Bible or Testament by small weekly instalments.”

Another kindred agency of recent appointment is the “Institution for reading aloud the Word of God in the open air,” in connection with which are the “Bible Carriages,” or locomotive depôts, now employed for extending the sale of the Scriptures in various parts of London, and which have succeeded in drawing a large number of purchasers, attracted, no doubt, by the novelty and singularity of the means adopted.

While enumerating the religious agencies concerned in the repression of crime in London, allusion need only be made incidentally to such as necessarily spring out of an organized, ecclesiastical, or parochial machinery consisting of clergy, churches, chapels, schools, &c., and to the various societies and associations designed to extend and give support to this machinery; the object of this essay being rather to draw public attention to such auxiliary and supplemental organisations, as are less generally known, or are of more recent origin.

One of the most remarkable movements of modern times in connection with preaching, has been the establishment of Theatre services, which owe their existence to the present Earl of Shaftesbury. So irregular and unconstitutional a proceeding provoked, as might naturally have been expected, a large amount of censure and unfriendly criticism. Ecclesiastical dignities were at first somewhat scandalized by such an innovation of church discipline, and evidently regarded the movement as one calling rather for reluctant toleration, than as being entitled to episcopal sanction—a feeling which was probably largely shared by the more sober and orthodox portion of the community.

There appeared to be, at first sight, it must be confessed, a singular incongruity, if not an absolute impropriety, in converting the stage of a playhouse into a temple for the provisional celebration of divine worship, and using an edifice habitually consecrated to amusement, for the alternate promulgation of sacred verities and pantomimic representations. Apart, however, from the repulsive features of the proceeding arising from local associations, and from the periodical juxtaposition of objects the most hostile and dissimilar, there appeared to be no graver objection to the arrangement. The end was here, at least, supposed not only to justify, but even to sanctify the means, and the defence of this mal-appropriation was not unfairly said to consist in the inadequacy of church accommodation, and in the cheap facilities thus afforded, for bringing under the occasional ministry of the word of life, classes, who from long habits of neglect, prejudice, and an utter disrelish of religious ordinances, had become isolated from the ordinary channels of instruction and improvement. The movement having now had a fair trial, and the results being found to answer the expectations of the originators, it may be regarded as no longer a hazardous experiment, but as a part of the recognised machinery employed for the evangelisation of the masses.

These special services for the working classes are now regularly conducted in the various theatres and buildings temporarily appropriated to divine worship. The attendance has been uniformly good, and that of a class who habitually absent themselves from religious ordinances, and could not therefore be reached by any of the usual instrumentalities. Considering the unpromising materials of which these singular congregations are composed, and the unfavourable antecedents of most of the audience, it is something to be able to state that on such occasions they are, for the most part, orderly and well conducted, while the continued good attendance at these services marks the appreciation in which they are held. During the Sabbath, then, at least, a wonderful outward transformation is effected in the pursuits and general demeanor of the frequenters, who meet together, week after week, to hear the Gospel message expounded in the very edifice, which during the previous six days has resounded with their oaths, ribaldries, and licentious language. Is there not room for at least a charitable hope, that when the heralds of salvation carry their proclamations into the very heart of the enemy’s territory, and aggressively plant the banner of the cross, where only the cloven foot is wont to be seen, some victories will be achieved over the world, the flesh, and the devil, and that some who usually meet to scoff and jeer, will return home savingly impressed with what they have heard?

In strict conformity with the objects contemplated by this arrangement, and arising out of the same temporary necessity, is The Open-Air Mission, which was established in 1853 “for the purpose of stirring up the Church of Christ, especially the lay elements, to go out into the streets and lanes of the city, the towns and villages of the provinces, the great gatherings that periodically occur at races, fairs, executions, &c.; to go into lodging-houses, workhouses, and hospitals, and in fact wherever persons are to be met with and spoken to about sin and salvation.” Since the formation of the Society, open-air preaching has become as it were a standing institution, and is recognized as an indispensable agency in working densely-populated districts. Ministers and laymen are to be found on every hand using this divinely-appointed and apostolic agency to “bring in the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind,” and God has eminently blessed their labours.

From May 1st, 1860, to March 31st, 1861, the London City Missionaries conducted 4,489 outdoor meetings, at which the average attendance was 103, and the gross attendance 465,070. Numerous associations have been formed in connection with this Society for Open-Air Preaching, in various parts of London, and during the summer, eighteen stations are occupied for this purpose by the students at the Church Missionary College, under the direction of the Islington Church Home Mission. A course of Sunday afternoon services is also regularly held by the appointment of the rector in Covent Garden Market, which are generally well attended and appear admirably calculated to benefit the classes whose welfare is designed. The Bishop of London and other dignities of the Church have been the preachers on such occasions, and have thus lent their countenance to the proceeding.

In reference to all such agencies as open-air services, prayer meetings, tract distributions, Bible readings, &c., it may be safely asserted, that never in the entire history of the Church was there a period, when such extraordinary efforts have been made to evangelise the poor and the criminal population of London; or when a similar activity has been displayed in ministering to the social and spiritual wants of the community.

One of the oldest and most privileged institutions within the metropolis, for bringing the influences of religion to bear upon the dense masses of our population is the London City Mission. It was founded in 1835, and its growth has steadily progressed up to the present date. The object of the mission is to “extend the knowledge of the Gospel, among the inhabitants of London and its vicinity (especially the poor), without any reference to denominational distinctions, or the peculiarities of Church government. To effect this object, missionaries of approved character and qualifications are employed, whose duty it is to visit from house to house in the respective districts assigned to them, to read the Scriptures, engage in religious conversation, and urge those who are living in the neglect of religion to observe the Sabbath and attend public worship. They are also required to see that all persons possess the Scriptures, to distribute approved religious tracts, and to aid in obtaining Scriptural education for the children of the poor. By the approval of the committee they also hold meetings for reading and expounding the Scriptures and prayer, and adopt such other means as are deemed necessary for the accomplishment of the mission.”

The London City Mission maintains a staff of 389 missionaries, who are employed in the various London and suburban districts; and thus the entire city is more or less compassed by this effective machinery, and brought under the saving influences of the Gospel. The very silent and unobtrusive character of the work thus effected, precludes anything like an accurate estimate of results, or a showy parade of success.

It works secretly, quietly, and savingly, in districts too vast to admit of pastoral supervision, and in neighbourhoods too outwardly unattractive and unpropitious, to win the attention of any who are not animated with a devoted love of souls. The influence which is thus exerted in a social and religious point of view is inestimable, and the benefits conferred by this mission, are of an order that would be best understood and appreciated by the community, if they were for a time to be suddenly withdrawn.

In addition to the regular visitation of the poor, the missionaries are employed in conducting religious services in some of the “worst spots that can be found in the metropolis, and the audiences have been, in such cases, ordinarily the most vicious and debased classes of the population.”

Six missionaries are appointed, whose exclusive duty it is to visit the various public-houses and coffee-shops in London, and to converse with the habitués on subjects of vital importance. There are also three missionaries to the London cabmen, a class greatly needing their religious offices, and by their occupation almost excluded from any social or elevating influences.

The following summary of missionary work, and its results for 1861, is sufficiently encouraging, as pointing in some instances, at least, to a sensible diminution of crime, and as being suggestive of a vast amount of good effected by this pervasive evangelistic machinery.

The income of the London City Mission, during the past year, amounted to 35,018l. 6s. 10d.; 5,763l. 15s. 7d. having been contributed by country associations.

Next to the London City Mission, the Church of England Scripture Readers’ Society is one of the most extensive and important channels for disseminating a religious influence among the masses by means of a parochial lay agency.

It is the special duty of the Scripture readers to visit from house to house; to read the Scriptures to all with whom they come in contact; to grapple with vice and crime where they abound; and to shrink from no effort to arrest their career.

“To overtake and overlook the growing multitudes which crowd our large and densely-peopled parishes,” was a work universally admitted to be beyond the present limits of clerical effort; and this desideratum has been supplied, at least to some extent, by the appointment of a lay agency, acting under the direction and control of the parochial clergy. By this means “cases are brought to light and doors opened to the pastoral visit, which were either closed against it or not discovered before; and an amount of information concerning the religious condition of the parish is obtained, such as the minister, single-handed, or with the aid of a curate, never had before.” The following results, which are reported as having attended the labours of a single Scripture reader, during a period of fourteen years, will serve as an illustration of the nature of those services rendered by this instrumentality:—

One hundred and twenty-five grants are now made by the Society for the maintenance of Scripture readers in eighty-seven parishes and districts in the metropolis, embracing a population of upwards of a million.

The Society’s income for the past year amounted to 9,850l. 2s. 10d.

Second only in importance to personal evangelistic effort is the influence of a Religious Press. Public opinion being often fluctuating, and its general estimates of morality being, to a considerable extent, formed by the current literature of the age, it is essential that this mighty and controlling power should be exerted on the side of religion and virtue.

Works of a high moral tone, inculcating correct principles and instilling lessons of practical piety, conduce, therefore, in the highest degree, to a wholesome state of society, and to the preservation of public morals.

The two great emporiums of religious literature, most directly concerned in producing these results, are the Religious Tract Society and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. The latter has already been referred to, as one of the main channels for the diffusion of the Scriptures.

None of the works issued by the Religious Tract Society can compete in point of interest or usefulness with those widely-circulated and deservedly-popular serials the Leisure Hour, the Sunday at Home, and the Cottager, a periodical lately published, and admirably adapted for the homes of the working classes.

The publications issued by the Society during the past year amounted to 41,883,921; half of which number were English tracts and handbills; 537,729 were foreign tracts; and 13,194,155 fall under the head of periodicals.

The entire number of both English and foreign publications issued by the Society, since its foundation in 1799, amount to 912,000,000.

Grants of books and tracts are annually made by the Society for schools and village libraries, prisons, workhouses, and hospitals, for the use of soldiers, sailors, emigrants, and for circulation at fairs and races, by city missionaries and colporteurs.

The total number of such grants during the past year amounted to 5,762,241; and were of the value of £6,116 14s. 4d.

The entire receipts of the Society from all sources for the past year amounted to £103,127 16s. 11d.; the benevolent contributions being £9,642 9s. 2d.

Other channels for the supply and extension of religious literature are the Weekly Tract Society, the English Monthly Tract Society, and the Book Society, which latter aims especially at promoting religious knowledge among the poor.

As a supplemental agency for the collection and dissemination of a wholesome literature, the Pure Literature Society, established 1854, is deserving of especial commendatory notice.

The following is a list of the periodicals recommended by the Society; and the circulation of which it seeks to facilitate:—

For Adults:—Leisure Hour, British Workman, Good Words, Old Jonathan, Youth’s Magazine, Appeal, Bible-Class Magazine, Christian Treasury, Churchman’s Penny Magazine, Evening Hour, Family Treasury, Family Paper, Friendly Visitor, Mother’s Friend, Servant’s Magazine, Sunday at Home, The Cottager, Tract Magazine.

For Children:—Young England, Band of Hope Review, Child’s Own Magazine, Child’s Companion, Child’s Paper, Children’s Friend, Children’s Paper, Our Children’s Magazine, Sabbath School Messenger, Sunday Scholar’s Companion.

Upwards of 140,000 periodicals are sent out annually by the Society in monthly parcels.

The Society’s income during the past year amounted to £2,783 12s. 2d.

2. Preventive Agencies.

Under this division are not included those measures which have for their object the forcible suppression of crime, which will be considered under a separate head, nor yet such as are calculated to extinguish those criminal propensities, which are ever lying dormant in the human heart, for these, as has been already shown, can only be effectually subdued, or eradicated by the influences of religion. By preventive agencies are rather to be understood, those instrumentalities best adapted to effect the removal of peculiar forms of temptation, or to abridge the power of special producing causes of vice; whatever means, in fact, are efficacious in removing hindrances to the development of virtue, and in fostering principles of morality. Human nature, owing to the force of adverse circumstances, being often placed at a disadvantage, it is the peculiar province of preventive agencies to give it a fair chance of escape, by extricating it from its perilous position, and surrounding it with virtuous influences and humanizing appliances. Under this head, moreover, are included all such measures as conduce to the social and moral improvement of the community, either by presenting an indirect barrier to the progress of crime, or by the employment of counteracting agencies.

In this connexion the Temperance Associations are deserving of especial prominence. Drunkenness being the most fruitful source of all crime, and the primary cause of want and wretchedness, it follows that whatever instrumentalities are capable of arresting its progress, or curtailing its influence, are in every way worthy the consideration of the philanthropist and the statesman. The utility of temperance societies has often been called in question; but it must be admitted, that as an instrumental agency for the suppression of drunkenness, and consequently for the diminution of crime, the influence of such associations is unlimited. Whether or not the entire-abstinence system is based on philosophical arguments, or is deducible from Scripture teaching, is little to the point, provided the fruits it has yielded are unquestionably salutary in their effects upon society, and conducive to the present and eternal happiness of millions of individuals, who, but for this timely interference would have continued in their mad career of dissipation, without the power to break off the thraldom, or to dispel the infatuation in which they were held.

The National Temperance Society, formed in 1842, is now in active operation, and seeks by means of meetings, lectures, and publications, to disseminate its principles, and to draw attention to the objects it is endeavouring to promote.

The United Kingdom Alliance, for the legislative suppression of the liquor traffic, is a step in advance of the ordinary temperance movement, and aims at nothing short of the entire extinction of a commerce in intoxicating drinks. This body has already secured a large number of influential adherents, and appears to be rapidly gaining ground. A monster meeting has lately been held in Manchester in furtherance of the Society’s proximate aims, which are to introduce a permissive Bill into Parliament, to delegate to local authorities the power to prohibit such traffic within their respective neighbourhoods.

The passing of this Act will in effect resolve the question of abolition or toleration into one of public opinion; and districts, if so inclined, will possess the power of deciding whether or no the sale of intoxicating drinks shall be carried on within their own parochial boundaries.

As a counteracting agency to the beer-shop and the gin-palace, The Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association, formed two years ago, is deserving of special notice. It has for its objects the erection and maintenance of drinking fountains in the various crowded thoroughfares of the metropolis, thus humanely furnishing the means of alleviating that feverish thirst, which during the hot season impels so many to an excessive use of intoxicating drinks.

The Ragged Schools hold a prominent place among the indirectly preventive agencies for the suppression of crime in the metropolis; for since ignorance is generally the parent of vice, any means of securing the benefits of education to those who are hopelessly deprived of it, must operate in favour of the well-being of society.

The Ragged School Union has been formed with a view to develope and give consistency to this movement, which it does by collecting and diffusing information respecting schools now in existence, and by pecuniary grants towards their foundation and support.

The number of buildings now in existence in London, appropriated to these educational purposes, is 176. The day-schools are 151 in number, and are attended by 17,230 scholars. The evening-schools number 215, and the scholars 9,840; Sunday-schools 207, and scholars 25,260. The number of scholars placed in situations last year amounted to 1,800.

Penny Banks, Clothing Clubs, Reading Rooms, Mother’s Meetings, and Shoe-Black Brigades have been established in connexion with this movement, and contribute their influence to the general well-being of those attending the schools, as well as to that of society at large.

In connexion with the Union are 16 refuges for the homeless and destitute, accommodating 700 inmates.

The receipts of the Union amounted last year to £5,739 7s. 8d.; and probably no money was ever laid out at better interest, than that contributed by the benevolent public towards the rescue and moral training of these embryo criminals. Difficult as the principle of Government intervention no doubt is, that would be a wise, politic, humane, and economical course which should sever this Gordian knot, by constituting the State the lawful guardian of such as are deprived of all that is understood by the terms home influence, and moral training.

Another agency contributing largely to the prevention of crime is the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes, not so much, however, in the transformations and improvement of buildings effected under its own immediate control, which are rather designed to serve as models to those desirous of carrying out these principles of reform, as by drawing public attention to one of the most interesting and painful subjects that can occupy the mind of the philanthropist, viz., the inadequate provision of decent, and proper house accommodation for the industrial classes, which is now universally admitted to be productive of the worst social disorders.

The important provisions of the Common Lodging-Houses Act, passed in 1851, under the auspices of Lord Shaftesbury, and the system of registration thus enforced, have also been attended with great benefits, and have conduced not a little to the promotion of social and sanatory reform, by bringing legal enactments to bear upon the disorders, indecencies, and impurities of low and crowded lodging-houses.

There is no class of preventive agencies in the metropolis, which on every principle of justice and humanity have stronger claims on the sympathy of the benevolent than such as interpose their friendly shelter and kind offices, to rescue those who are suddenly reduced to positions of great extremity and temptation. It is doubtless an act of mercy to rescue a drowning man, and such charitable deeds are performed by those who labour for the reformation of the criminal; but it is a higher act of charity, and a wiser and more Christian course to prevent his falling into the stream; experience, however, proves that it is easier to enlist sympathy on behalf of one who is already being swept away by the current of crime, than to rescue one who is bordering on destruction, and perhaps bravely battling with temptation. This is perhaps only natural; our perception of danger in the one case is far greater than in the other, and our commiseration is awakened at sight of the death agony of the drowning wretch, but is hardly stirred on behalf of him who walks on the slippery brink.[4]

It is unhappily a fact too well authenticated to need further demonstration, that owing perhaps to sudden reverses of fortune, to the removal of natural protectors, or to the force of some overwhelming temptation, many persons are unwillingly, and almost unavoidably, pressed into the ranks of crime, who but for the extremity in which they were placed, would have continued to walk erect in the path of honour and virtue. Let none then who move in the calm sunlight of prosperity, presume to judge those who stumble in the dark night of trial.

“The path of a man, even of a man on the highway to heaven, is never one of perfect safety. There are many dangerous passes in the journey of life. The very next turn, for anything we know, may bring us on one. Turn that projecting point, which hides the path before you, and you are suddenly in circumstances which demand that reason be strong, and conscience be tender, and hope be bright, and faith be vigorous.”

Happily there are persons whose qualities of head and heart have enabled them by precautionary measures to provide against the weakness of human nature, and to offer assistance to those who are placed in such critical positions.

There is no class more essential to the well-being and comfort of society, and none, it is to be feared, more exposed to dangers and temptations, than domestic servants. It is calculated that in London alone there are upwards of one hundred thousand females engaged in domestic service, and that ten thousand of these are continually in a transition state, and therefore out of employment. When it is borne in mind that vast numbers of these young women have migrated, at an early age, from various parts of the country in search of a livelihood, that many of them are orphans and friendless, or at least wholly destitute of friends and resources in London, that they are moreover inexperienced, unsuspecting, and ignorant of the snares and temptations that surround them, it cannot be a matter of surprise that the reports of all the London penitentiaries should bear witness to the fact, that a large majority of the fallen women who are received into these institutions came originally from the ranks of domestic service. It would be superfluous to attempt to prove the value of associations formed to counteract these evils, by offering advice, shelter, and protection to servants who are out of situations or seeking employment. One of the oldest and best organizations of this kind is the Female Servants’ Home Society,[5] which has now been in active operation four-and-twenty years. Its objects are to provide a safe home for respectable female servants when out of place, or for those seeking situations. The Homes, four in number, are under the control of experienced and pious matrons, who establish a kind and motherly influence over the inmates, and are indefatigable in endeavouring to promote their welfare. The Homes are regularly visited by Christian ladies, and a service is conducted every week by the chaplain. A registry, free to the servants, is attached to each Home, where for a trifling fee of half-a-crown, or by an annual subscription of one guinea, every facility is afforded to employers of procuring efficient and trustworthy servants.

Since the formation of the Society, upwards of 7,000 servants have been received into the Homes, and 37,000 have availed themselves of the registry provided, while in numberless instances young and friendless girls have been rescued from positions of extreme and imminent danger.

A kindred institution to the above is The Female Aid Society, established in 1836. Its objects, which are threefold, are thus defined:—

1st. “It provides a home for female servants, where they may reside with comfort, respectability, and economy, while seeking for situations;” and in connexion with which is a register for the convenience of servants and employers.

2nd. “It receives into a home, for purposes of protection and instruction, young girls to be trained for service and other employments, who, from circumstances of poverty, orphanage, or sinful conduct in those who should preserve them from evil, are exposed to great temptations, and are in want of a home where there is proper guardianship and example.”

3rd. “A home and rescue is offered to women who, weary of sin, are desirous of leaving a life of awful depravity and misery;” and no depth of past degradation, provided there is any sign of amendment, presents a barrier to their reception, shelter being freely offered to the very outcast among the outcasts, to inmates of refractory wards, of workhouses, and to women freshly discharged from prison. Since the formation of the Society 4,116 servants have been admitted into the Home, and 7,622 placed in service; 2,008 young women have enjoyed the protection of the Friendless’ Home, and 2,205 have been received as penitents. Want of funds, however, has obliged the Society to curtail its operations.

The Girls’ Laundry and Training Institution for Young Servants is an industrial home, affording shelter, protection, and instruction in household duties to forty young girls, who are thus carefully trained and prepared for domestic service.

Other institutions for the accommodation, temporary relief, and permanent benefit of servants are, The National Guardian Institution, The Marylebone Philanthropic Servants’ Institution and Pension Society, The Provisional Protection Society, The General Domestic Servants’ Benevolent Institution, and The Servants’ Provident and Benevolent Society.

Among the London preventive agencies must be classed the various homes, refuges, and asylums for the relief of the utterly destitute and friendless of good character, and which severally offer food, shelter, and protection to those needing their assistance.

The Field Lane Night Refuges provide accommodation nightly for 200 men and women; and by this instrumentality many are rescued from death and crime, and are enabled to regain their positions in life, or to maintain themselves in respectability. During the past year 31,747 lodgings were afforded to persons of both sexes. Many of those thus assisted were poor needlewomen, who, during an inclement winter, had been, together with their families, turned into the street, having been stript of everything for rent.

The Dudley Stuart Night Refuge, founded by Lord Dudley Stuart in 1852, provides for the reception of the utterly destitute during the winter months. Accommodation is offered to 95 persons in two warm, spacious, and well-ventilated apartments. The relief afforded consists of a night’s lodging, bread night and morning, and medical attendance, if required. This charity has, since its foundation, alleviated a vast amount of suffering. It admits those against whom every other door is closed, and requires no recommendation beyond the utter destitution of the applicants. Upwards of 8,000 men, women, and children were admitted and relieved during last winter.

The Houseless Poor Asylum is the oldest night-refuge in London, and was opened to “afford nightly shelter and sustenance to the absolutely destitute working classes, who are suddenly thrown out of employment during the inclement winter months.” Accommodation is provided for 700; and since the opening of the Asylum 1,449,047 nights’ lodgings and 3,515,951 rations of bread have been supplied.

The House of Charity provides for the reception of distressed persons of good character, who, from various accidental causes, require a temporary home, protection, and food. Nearly 3000 persons of both sexes have been thus accommodated for an average period of a month or five weeks.

The Foundling Hospital, first opened in 1741, for the reception of illegitimate children, has undergone considerable changes and improvements, and now shelters, maintains, and educates 460 children, who, at the age of fifteen, are apprenticed or otherwise provided for, and are thus humanely rescued from the early and contaminating influence of vicious associations. No child is eligible for this charity unless there is satisfactory proof of the mother’s previous good character and present necessity, of desertion by the father, and that the reception of the child will, in all probability, be the means of replacing the mother in the course of virtue, and the way of an honest livelihood.

The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity was instituted in 1818, “for the purpose of checking the practice of public mendicity, with all its baneful and demoralizing consequences; by putting the laws in force against imposters who adopt it as a trade, and by affording prompt and effectual assistance to those whom sudden calamity or unaffected distress may cast in want and misery upon the public attention.”

A just discrimination between cases of real and fictitious distress, and a judicious adaptation of relief to deserving cases, is a necessary, but very difficult, part of true benevolence. The frauds which are successfully practised by systematic sharpers upon a charitable, but over-credulous public, and the existence of an immense amount of genuine and unrelieved suffering, are sufficient proofs of the value and importance of any agency designed to counteract these abuses, and to accord a just measure of benevolence.

By means of printed tickets supplied to subscribers, beggars can be directed to the Society’s offices, where their cases are fully investigated, and treated according to desert, a sure provision being thus made against imposture.

Since the formation of the Society 51,016 registered cases have been disposed of, and food, money, and clothing dispensed to deserving applicants, while employment has been provided for such as were found able to work.

The Association for Promoting the Relief of Destitution in the Metropolis is likewise a safe channel for the exercise of public benevolence. It is carried on under the direction of the bishop and clergy, and the efforts of the Association are directed to the origination and support of local undertakings, thus forming a connection and a centre of union between the various parochial visiting societies.

The present condition of that large class of female workers in London, comprehended under the terms milliners and dressmakers, is one of the saddest reproaches upon a country whose benevolent objects are so numerous, and so extensive, and one of the severest comments upon the heartlessness and artificialism of that society, which takes no cognizance of those who are most largely concerned in administering to its necessities. The miseries of this shamefully under-paid and cruelly over-worked class of white slaves have been too often eloquently animadverted upon, to need any further denunciations of the system, under which they are hopelessly and unfeelingly condemned to labour.

The impossibility of supporting life on the wretched pittance accorded to their labours, is the oft-heard, and the unanswerably extenuating plea for their recourse to criminal avocations.

While, however, the State shrinks from the task of ameliorating their condition by any legislative interference, it is satisfactory to know that public benevolence in this wide field is not wholly unrepresented.

The Association for the Aid and Benefit of Dressmakers and Milliners is a noble breakwater against the inroads of oppression, and a valuable counteracting agency to the force of temptation.

Its objects, briefly stated, are to obtain some remission of labour and other concessions from employers, and to afford pecuniary and medical assistance in cases of temporary distress or illness. A registry and provident fund are provided in connexion with the association.

Actuated by the same humane intention, although different in object, is the Needlewomen’s Institution, established in 1850, “with the twofold view of affording those who had suffered under the oppression of middle men and slop-sellers, the opportunity of maintaining themselves, by supplying them with regular employment at remunerative prices, in airy work-rooms, and if desired, lodging at a moderate charge.”

Another institution of very recent origin directed to the religious and social improvement of the same unhappy class, is the Young Women’s Christian Association and West London Home, for young women engaged in houses of business. Its objects are twofold, 1st, “to supply a place where young women so employed, can profitably spend their Sundays and week-day evenings,” thus counteracting the evil influence of badly conducted houses of business; and 2nd, “the home is intended to provide a residence for young people coming from the country to seek employment, and for those who are changing their situations, or who from over-work and failing health require rest for a time.” The rooms of the Association are open every evening from seven until ten o’clock, when educational and religious classes are held for the benefit of those attending.

Thus, “where occasional spasms of sympathy, the well-merited castigations of the press, and the voice of popular opinion had unitedly failed to shake the throne of the god of Mammon, erected on skeletons, and cemented with the blood of women and children, it was reserved for a Christian lady to strike out a plan which has already been productive of an immensity of good, and has commended itself to the approval of all who are labouring to promote the welfare of this oppressed and neglected class. The better to appreciate the importance of this noble and truly womanly enterprise, only let the solemn and fearful fact be borne in mind, that in London alone 1,000 poor girls are yearly crushed out of life from over-toil and grinding oppression, while 15,000 are living in a state of semi-starvation. Ah! who can wonder that our streets swarm with the fallen and the lost, when SIN OR STARVE is the dire alternative! Who cannot track the via doloroso between the 15,000 starving and the thrice that number living by sin as a trade!

“Here, then, is an Institution that meets the wants of the case. It not only catches them before they go over the precipice, and lovingly shelters them from the fierce blasts of temptation, beating remorselessly on many a young and shrinking heart, but ensures them a ‘Home,’ where soul and body alike may find rest and peace.”[6]

The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women has lately been called into existence, by the emergencies of the present age, the object of which is to develop and extend the hitherto restricted field of female labour, by the establishment of industrial schools and workshops, where girls may be taught those trades and occupations which are at present exclusively monopolised by men. Those “educated in this school will be capable of becoming clerks, cashiers, railway-ticket sellers, printers,” &c.

These and similar measures which tend to open up resources to women in search of a livelihood, will have the happiest effect in diverting numbers into paths of honest industry, who now labour under strong temptations to abandon themselves to a life of criminal ease and self-indulgence.

The remaining agencies indirectly tending to the prevention of crime, are the Metropolitan Early Closing Association, for abridging the hours of business, so as to afford to assistants time for recreation, and for physical, intellectual, and moral improvement; the Metropolitan Evening Classes for Young Men, for furnishing the means of instruction and self-improvement; and the Young Men’s Christian Association, for promoting the spiritual and mental improvement of young men, “by means of devotional meetings, classes for Biblical instruction, and for literary improvement, the delivery of lectures, the diffusion of Christian literature, and a library for reference and circulation.” This last instrumentality has been widely blessed, and its beneficial influence is now extended, by means of branch associations, to most of the provincial towns.

3. Repressive and Punitive Agencies.

The various instrumentalities falling under this head appear deserving of separate consideration, and cannot therefore be appropriately included under either of the previous divisions, being neither curative in their character, nor preventive to any appreciable extent. They evidently presuppose the existence of crime, and merely seek to diminish its influence, or curtail its power by the application of legal provisions and compulsory measures, intended on the one hand to indemnify society against the infraction of its rights, and on the other to intimidate or restrain the criminal offender. The absolute reformation of the viciously disposed can hardly be expected to result from the use of such means, and belongs properly to another class of agencies. It may indeed be achieved by punitive measures, but in this case reformation of character is rather a startling accident than an essential property of the system pursued. Experience has abundantly established the utility of legal provisions as a “terror to evil doers;” but the statistics of our police-courts will by no means warrant the assumption that penal measures have per se been successful in reclaiming the offender. It is not intended, however, while speaking of repressive and punitive agencies, to include in this category the strictly legal efforts employed by the State to deter and correct the criminal who renders himself amenable to justice. This subject will be found fully and distinctly treated by Mr. Mayhew, in a work now in the press, entitled “Prisons of London, and Scenes of Prison Life.”

The inquiry pursued in the course of this Essay is not designed to comprehend such constitutional measures as are employed by either Church or State, for the suppression of vice and crime; but rather to draw from their obscurity, and to give prominence to those resources and expedients which society itself adopts, for the defence and preservation of its own interests.

The Society for the Suppression of Vice, which was established in 1802, has for its objects the repression of attempts “to spread infidelity and blasphemy by means of public lectures, and printed publications.” The operations of the Society have also been directed to the suppression of disorderly houses, the punishment of fortune-tellers, and other important objects. “It is represented that by means of this Society many convictions have taken place, and persons have been sentenced to imprisonment for selling obscene publications and prints,” while their works have been either seized or destroyed. With such admirable intentions and useful objects, to commend it to benevolent support, and with the entire voice of public opinion in its favour, the only wonder is that this Society does not carry on its operations with greater publicity, vigilance, and efficiency. Unhappily the loathsome traffic in Holywell Street literature is still carried on with bold and unblushing effrontery, and its existence, although greatly diminished in the country, is too notorious and too patent, in certain portions of the metropolis, to need any extraordinary efforts to promote exposure and punishment.

The demoralizing influence of low theatres, and the licentious corruptions of the Coal Hole, and Posés Plastiques, might surely afford scope for vigorous prosecutions under the Society’s auspices; and yet these dens, in which the vilest passions of mankind are stimulated, and every sentiment of religion, virtue, and decency grossly outraged, or publicly caricatured, are allowed to emit their virulent poison upon all ranks of society without the slightest let or hindrance! Only let a man smitten by the plague or with any other infectious disease, obtrude himself by unnecessary contact upon the public, and his right to free agency would be summarily disposed of, by speedy incarceration within the walls of a hospital; but provided only the disorder be a moral one—and therefore far more to be dreaded, in its pestiferous influence and baneful effects upon society—it is forsooth to be tolerated as a necessary evil! Proh tempora et mores!

The Associate Institution, formed in 1844, has been in active operation fifteen years, and has been instrumental in effecting a large amount of good, by improving and enforcing the laws for the protection of women. It has maintained a strenuous crusade against houses of ill-fame, and has since its establishment conducted upwards of 300 prosecutions, in most of which it has been successful in bringing condign punishment upon the heads of those, who have committed criminal assaults upon women and children, or who have decoyed them away for immoral purposes.

Important as these results have been, a larger amount of good has probably been achieved by means of lectures and meetings held in various parts of the country by Mr. J. Harding, the Society’s travelling secretary, whose faithful and stirring appeals and bold denunciations of vice have contributed not a little to the spread of sounder and more wholesome views on social questions, and to the removal of that ignorance of profligate wiles and artifices, which, in so many cases, proves fatal to the unsuspecting and unwary.

Two Bills prepared by this Association, one for the protection of female children between 12 and 13 years of age, and the other to simplify and facilitate the prosecution of persons charged with keeping houses of ill fame, were this year submitted to parliament, but unhappily without success, having been lost either on technical grounds, or for want of support. It is refreshing to turn from the supineness of statesmen to the energy and decision manifested by private associations in resisting the encroachments of vice. The East London Association, composed of a committee partly clerical and partly lay, and including most of the influential parochial clergy in the district, was instituted four years ago for the purpose of checking “that class of public offences, which consists in acts of indecency, profaneness, drunkenness, and prostitution.”

Its modes of action are as follows:—

1. To create and foster public opinion in reprobation of the above-named acts.

2. To bring such public opinion to bear upon all exercising social influence, with a view to discountenance the perpetrators and abettors thereof.

3. To secure the efficient application by the Police of the laws and regulations for the suppression of the class of public offences above named; and to obtain, if necessary, the institution of legal proceedings.

4. To procure the alteration of the law, wheresoever needful to the object contemplated, and especially to the obtaining further restrictions in granting Licenses for Music and Dancing to houses where intoxicating liquors are sold.

5. To find Houses of Refuge and means of restoration for the victims of seduction by honest employment, emigration, &c.

It is satisfactory to state that already, and with the very limited funds placed at the disposal of this Association, no fewer than “seventy-five houses in some of the worst streets in the east of London, hitherto devoted to the vilest purposes, have been cleared of their inmates; one of these houses having had thirty rooms, which were occupied by prostitutes; that more than one house ostensibly open for public accommodation, but really for ensnaring females for prostitution, has been closed; and that in one instance of peculiar atrocity, the owner of the house has been convicted and punished. Handbills have also been issued, containing extracts from the Police Acts, to show the power of remedy for offences against public decency, such as swearing, the use of improper language, and the exhibition of improper conduct in the streets.”

Such are the objects and results of this Association, and such the praiseworthy example set to other London districts, which if vigorously followed would result, at least, in the repression of vice, and in a marked diminution of crime.

“It is chiefly from the reserve which, rather by implication than by compact, has so long been preserved in those influential quarters where the power to correct and guide public opinion is maintained, that the crying social evil of our day has attained such dimensions, and exhibited itself in such dangerous and revolting forms as we have referred to. Preachers, moralists, and public writers have been deterred by the difficulty and delicacy of the subject from their obvious duty of protecting the social interests, and a sluggish legislature, ever inert in introducing such measures as are calculated to foster and conserve the public virtue, has thus lacked the external pressure which might have aroused it to vigilance and forethought in the discharge of its duties. Recently, however, there have been clear indications that a distrust of the old plan is spreading. With manifest reluctance, but not without interest, has public attention fastened itself on a subject in which not merely the happiness of individuals, and the peace of families, but the national prosperity and the concerns of social life, are felt to be bound up. Inquiries as to the best mode of doing something to stem the tide of immorality which is coursing onwards are made in quarters where indifference, if not acquiescence, was formerly manifested. Public opinion is ever slowly formed, but is seldom wrong at the last in detecting the true source of generic evils, and in applying to them the best remedies. Example, also, is as contagious on the side of virtue as of vice; and where an initiative step, taken by another, appeals to our intuitive sense of right and duty, it is seldom that the courageous right-doer has to wait long for the expression of sympathy and the proffer of aid.

“It is only recently that the great sin of our land has received a measure of the attention it has long and loudly called for.

“First in one quarter, and then in another, has the subject been discussed with tolerable delicacy, and with an approximate fidelity.

“The discussion has done good. Men have thought about the subject, have been led to measure the fearful dimensions of this evil, to observe its progress and influence within their own neighbourhoods, and have come at last to deplore the existence of that which they have too long tolerated or connived at. Where remedial measures have been attempted, they have not lacked for countenance and support; and, in some quarters, at least, there have been indications of a desire to pass from the feebler stage of alleviation to the more potential remedy of prevention. Whilst it seems to be admitted on all hands, that to aim at the forcible extinction of immorality would be Utopian and disappointing, the repression and diminution of crime is felt to be an imperious obligation upon all who are vested with any power and influence for that end.

“We cannot help regarding the measures which have been recently adopted by certain parochial authorities in the metropolis as at once a proof of the benefit which has arisen from the partial discussion of this subject in the various public channels into which it has gained admittance; and we regard it, further, as a cheering sign that a deepening conviction is spreading on all sides respecting the absolute necessity of a well-organised antagonism to evil, in place of our former supine indifference, or more culpable acquiescence. Some of the most influential metropolitan vestries have commenced a crusade against the keepers of bad houses in their respective parishes, and, by the vigour and promptitude characterizing their prosecutions, seem determined to hunt down the hosts of abandoned householders who are mainly concerned in extending and facilitating immorality.

“Aristocratic St. James’s, and more plebeian Lambeth, have alike joined in these laudable measures; and it is to be noticed, with extreme satisfaction, that the steps thus taken have been almost invariably successful, and that severe punishments have been inflicted upon the wretches who were the objects of these prosecutions. Such a movement cannot be sufficiently applauded, and fervently is it to be trusted that the example thus shown in these influential centres may not only reach to every other parish in the metropolis, but may also stir up the parochial authorities in every city and town in the land to a like course of procedure. This is to strike at the main root of the evil. In vain are all our Reformatories and Refuges, in vain the endeavours of Christian people to repress the evil by exertions for the rescue even of a large number of its victims, if the floodgates of vice be allowed, by public neglect, to remain open, ever to pour out into our streets fresh streams of wickedness and pollution. There are, no doubt, persons who think that measures, such as those now under consideration, will not materially check the traffic in vice, but will only lead to its being more subtly and secretly practised. Even that result, if brought about, would be something gained, something as a protest on the side of public purity and virtue, and something in the amount of warning and terror brought home to guilty breasts, leading them to dread retribution in future, whenever offended justice could detect them in their malpractices. But in truth there is no limit to the amount of good which would result from these repressive measures becoming universal and well-sustained.

“Many persons would be saved from future ruin, a manifest check would be given to the further development of iniquity, and the example of authority thus generally exercised in aid of the cause of virtue, would greatly tend to the spread of sounder views of social duty in regard to this matter.”[7]

One of the greatest scandals on a country professedly Christian, is the extent to which Sabbath desecration pervades the metropolis. Although the traffic now openly pursued in the streets, or carried on with impunity in shops, is strictly illegal, yet the technicalities which are too often allowed to obstruct the ends of justice, and the smallness of the fines inflicted, even where summary conviction follows, concur to render the law, in this particular, a mere dead letter.

The permission to sell on Sunday, originally extended only to vendors of perishable articles, is now claimed by whole troops of costermongers, who, presuming upon the license they have so long enjoyed, no longer hesitate to ply their usual calling in the most public and offensive manner, frequently pursuing their traffic in the open streets during the hours of divine service, and disturbing whole congregations by their noisy vociferations around the very doors of our churches.

These evils call loudly for more stringent legal measures, and it is to be hoped the time is not far distant when some improvement will take place.

As one means of directing public attention to this subject, by the circulation of appeals and tracts, and of promoting the introduction of salutary legal provisions for the repression of such acts of desecration, the Society for Promoting the Due Observance of the Lord’s Day is entitled to a large measure of support. The efforts made by the Society to awaken public opposition to the obnoxious provisions of Lord Chelmsford’s Sunday Trading Bill, were probably mainly instrumental in securing its rejection.

One of the noblest repressive agencies within the metropolis is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, established in 1824, which employs a number of agents to frequent the markets and public thoroughfares, for the purpose of bringing to punishment persons detected in the commission of acts of cruelty to animals. It seeks, moreover, by means of suitable tracts, to diffuse among the public a just sense of the duty of humanity and forbearance towards the lower orders of creation. Allusion was made during the present year to the objects embraced by this Society from upwards of two thousand London pulpits, which will doubtless have the effect of directing the attention of the benevolent public to an instrumentality which has already achieved a large amount of good; and only requires to be better known to enjoy a corresponding measure of support.

4. Reformative Agencies.

Must be understood as referring solely to individuals, and include all such measures as are employed to effect an external change of character, and render those, who are vicious and depraved, honest and respectable members of society.

While, however, agencies of this kind are reformative in their relation to persons, they have also a preventive aspect, when viewed in their bearings upon the entire community; for the reformation of every vicious man is a social boon, inasmuch as it removes one individual from a course of vice, and thus diminishes the aggregate of crime.

As a nucleus of reformatory operations, and a “centre of information and encouragement,” the Reformatory and Refuge Union was established in 1856. It seeks to diffuse information respecting the various agencies at present in existence, and to encourage and facilitate the establishment of new institutions. In connection with the Union is a “Female Mission” for the rescue of the fallen. The Mission maintains a staff of female missionaries, whose business it is to distribute tracts among the fallen women of the metropolis, to converse with them in the streets, and visit them in their houses, in the hospitals, or in the workhouses. These missionaries, “as a rule, leave their homes between eight and nine o’clock at night, remaining out till nearly twelve, and occasionally till one in the morning. They are located in different parts of London, near to the nightly walks and haunts of those they desire to benefit. They have the means of rescuing a large number who have been placed in the Homes or restored to their friends.”

There are upwards of fifty metropolitan institutions for the reception of the destitute and the reformation of the criminal, or those who are exposed to temptation, capable of accommodating collectively about 4,000 persons of both sexes.

Nine of these institutions are designed especially for the reception and training of juvenile criminals, sentenced under the “Youthful Offenders’ Act,” and two for vagrants sentenced to detention under the “Industrial School Act.” Three are exclusively appropriated to the benefit of discharged prisoners, and the rest are chiefly employed in the rescue and reformation of destitute or criminal children.[8]

Most of these institutions, with the exception of such as are certified by Act of Parliament, and aided by Government subsidies, are supported entirely by voluntary contributions and by the earnings of the inmates, who are either admitted free on application, or by payment of a small sum towards the expense of maintenance.

Such is the benevolent machinery now at work within the metropolis for the reformation of our criminal population, and for the preservation of those who are in a fair way of becoming the moral pests and aliens of society.

The results, both in a religious, social, and sanatory point of view, achieved by these different agencies, are beyond all human calculation; and it is mainly to their beneficial and restraining influence that the peace, safety, and well-being of society may be attributed.

The other Reformative Agencies are those adapted to the rescue and reformation of fallen women, or such as have been led astray from the paths of virtue.

There are twenty-one institutions in London devoted to these objects, and unitedly providing accommodation for about 1,200 inmates. Ten of these are in connexion with the Church of England, and in the remaining eleven the religious instruction is unsectarian and evangelical. Three, viz., The Female Temporary Home, The Trinity Home, and The Home of Hope, are designed for the reception of the better educated and higher class of fallen women. One, viz., The London Society for the Protection of Young Females, is limited to girls under fifteen years of age; and another, The Marylebone Female Protection Society, affords shelter exclusively to those who have recently been led astray, and whose previous good character will bear the strictest investigation.

It may be fairly assumed that the objects of all these institutions are substantially the same, viz., the reformation of character, and the restoration of the individual to religious and social privileges. While, however, the end is in most cases one and the same, the methods and subordinate means adopted to insure its attainment, are often strikingly dissimilar, and present distinctive and almost opposite features. Thus one class of institutions, in imitation of our Lord’s merciful forbearance towards the sinner, make their treatment pre-eminently one of love, and seek by means the most gentle and attractive to win back the stubborn wills and depraved natures of those entrusted to their care. Kindness is the only instrument used in laying siege to the hard heart, and in mollifying the seared conscience. Stern discipline, irritating restraints, and rigorous exactions, form no part of a system which is built up on the model prescribed by Him, who “spake as never man spake.”

That a mode of treatment which affords such a remarkable coincidence, and such a striking parallel to the divine method of dealing with the sinner, so eloquently taught under the parable of the Prodigal Son, should be found by experience to be the only really efficacious one, can hardly be a matter of surprise. The fact is too notorious to require any proof that in numberless instances

‘Law and terrors do but harden’

the heart which can be easily subdued by the exhibition of Christian kindness. Here is the omnipotent weapon which has achieved such moral victories, when wielded by gentle and loving women, like Miss Marsh, Mrs. Wightman, and Mrs. Sheppard.

The opposite mode of treatment, however successful it may be in the restoration of external character, or in the subjugation of turbulent passions, is defective, inasmuch as it fails to influence the heart, and therefore at best contributes only to an incomplete and partial cure. The almost penal character of the system pursued in many of the older penitentiaries is founded on the misconception, that the injury sustained by society in the departure from virtue of her female members, can only be atoned for by some personal mulct inflicted on the offender. While, therefore, the ultimate object is the reformation of lost character, this is too often overlooked or rendered subsidiary to the proximate one of propitiating society; and the austere regimen by which the latter point is secured, is generally found to be subversive of the other. When, however, as is too frequently the case, society is the tempter, the offence may surely be condoned by a less rigorous process! Society may indeed well waive the right to compensation for supposed damages, when it can be proved that she is at least particeps criminis, and when, moreover, she has a personal interest in the speedy restoration of her unhappy prodigals. The retributive suffering, which, in the majority of cases, so surely overtakes the female delinquent, may be urged as another reason for dealing leniently with the erring; but the strongest justification of such a method is undoubtedly derived from the success attending it, and from the Divine sanction which it has received.

The impediments which the old penitentiary system of close confinement, criminal fare, and hard labour, have unfortunately presented to the rescue of fallen women is too well known to those who are accustomed to deal with this class. Frequently are the urgent entreaties of the missionary to forsake an abandoned course of life, and seek shelter in some institution, met with either rancorous denunciations against the penal system, or by polite but firm refusals to submit to the discipline, which is supposed to extend to all reformatory asylums.

Gradually, however, this prevailing opinion is being cleared away, and the fallen women themselves are not slow to distinguish between the two opposite methods of treatment, a fact which is rendered clearly apparent by the overwhelming number of applications for admission into those Homes which are characterized by a more humane and gentle regimen.

The oldest reformatory institution in the metropolis for the reception of fallen women is The Magdalen Hospital, founded in 1758. During the last 100 years of its existence nearly 9,000 women have been admitted, about two-thirds of whom have been restored to friends or relations. At the time when this charity was first instituted “the notion of providing a house for the reception and maintenance of ‘Penitent Prostitutes’ seems not to have suggested itself to the public mind. Even good and actively benevolent men appear to have been startled at the novelty of the proposition, while they doubted the wisdom, and still more the success of such an attempt. The newspapers of that period contained both arguments against, and ridicule of the plan and its promoters. God, however, blessed the undertaking, and raised up friends and supporters in every direction.”

So that eighteen years after its incorporation its friends were able to use the following cheering language.

“We see many fellow-creatures, by means of this happy asylum, rescued from sorrow in which they had been involved by all the iniquitous stratagems of seduction; in which condition they had been detained by a species of horrid necessity; from which they had no probable or possible retreat; and in which they must, therefore, according to all human appearance, have perished. We see them restored to their God, to their parents, to their friends, their country, and themselves. What charitable heart, what truly Christian hand can withhold its best endeavours to promote an undertaking so laudable, so beneficent? Who would not desire to add to the number of souls preserved from the deepest guilt—of bodies rescued from shame, misery, and death? Who would not wish to wipe the tear from a parent’s eyes—to save the hoary head from being brought down with sorrow to the grave?”

An interval of half a century elapsed after the foundation of the Magdalen Asylum before the establishment of any similar institution. Within the last ten years, however, public attention has been directed with increasing interest to this subject, and numerous efforts have been made to provide more ample accommodation for those who are desirous of escaping from their wretched mode of life.

The London by Moonlight Mission, inaugurated some years ago by Lieutenant Blackmore, has been followed in our own day by the Midnight Meeting Movement, which has excited a world-wide sympathy and interest, and has been very generally approved even in quarters where encouragement could be least expected. The commencement of these meetings in London was the signal for similar experiments in Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Dublin, and other large towns.

Twenty-two of these meetings have now been held, and attended by upwards of 4,000 women, more than 600 of whom have been rescued, and either restored to friends, or placed in situations, where they are giving satisfactory evidence of outward reformation, and many of them of a thorough change of character.

The largest association in London for the reformation of fallen women, is the Society for the Rescue of Young Women and Children. The Society has at present eleven homes in various parts of London, and one at Dover. Four of these are “Family Homes” for the reception of preventive cases, or young girls who have not strayed from the path of virtue, but are addicted to crime, or are in circumstances of danger. One is a Home for orphan children, from nine to thirteen years of age; and the remaining seven are for fallen cases.

Upwards of 2,700 women and children have been admitted into these Homes since the Society’s formation in 1853, the greater part of whom have given satisfactory proof of having been reclaimed and permanently benefitted. The Society’s income for the past year amounted to £6,789 17s. 2d. The Homes are under the care of pious and experienced matrons, who labour incessantly to promote the spiritual and social welfare of their charges.

Another institution of recent origin, but of rapidly increasing growth, is the London Female Preventive and Reformatory Institution, which already numbers four Homes, and has admitted, during the past year, upwards of 250 inmates.

The following are the objects embraced by the Institution:—

“I. To seek the destitute and fallen by voluntary missionary effort.

“II. To afford temporary protection to friendless young women, whose circumstances expose them to danger; also to effect the rescue of fallen females, especially those decoyed from the country, by admitting them to the benefits of this Institution.

“III. To restore, when practicable, the wanderer to her family and friends, whether in town or country.

“IV. To qualify those admitted into the Institution for various departments of domestic service, to obtain suitable situations for them, and provide them with clothing.

“V. To aid such as for approved reasons wish to emigrate.

“VI. Above all, to seek the spiritual welfare of the inmates.”

The two last-named Societies and the Home of Hope, which is another Refuge identical in character and spirit with that last named, have received most of the cases rescued by the midnight meetings.

Great and encouraging as are the results effected by these institutions, and wide as the sympathy is which they have awakened, it is clear that the means of rescue are as yet wholly disproportioned to the numbers claiming assistance.

Calculating the number of fallen women in London at eighty thousand, which is probably not far wide of the truth, and computing the number at present in the different institutions to be 1,000, the chance of rescue through the only recognized medium for female reformation is offered to one woman in every eighty!

This is the high-water mark of public charity, and the utmost provision made by Society for the rescue of these 80,000 outcasts! And yet there are special reasons which seem to give them a strong claim upon the sympathy and compassion of the benevolent public. The brief term of their existence, the average length of which is at best but a few years, and the fact that large numbers of them are driven upon the streets by a stern necessity, and compelled to live by sin as a trade, while everything contributes to prevent their escape from the mode of life into which they have been involuntarily forced, are surely considerations calculated to stimulate Christian effort on their behalf. But more than this,—it is well known that they are hanging as it were over the mouth of the bottomless pit.

“Their life-blood is ebbing at a fearful rate, and their souls are drifting madly to eternity. Their fate is certain; their doom impends: and, for their death-bed, there is not even the faintest glimmer of hope which charity can bequeath to the dying sinner. All others may find peace at last; but these, suddenly overtaken by death, and perishing in and by their sins, must be irrevocably lost. And who are they on whose warm vitals the ‘worm feeds sweetly,’ even on this side the grave, and around whose heads the unquenchable fire prematurely burns? Who are those whose souls, in countless numbers, are now glutting the chambers of hell? Not swarthy Indians nor sable Africans, whose deeds of violence and superstition have spread horror and astonishment among civilized nations, but delicately-nurtured Saxon women, who in infancy were lovingly fondled in the arms of Christian mothers, and received ‘into the ark of Christ’s Church’ in baptism, before a praying congregation; young girls, for whom pious sponsors promised that they should be ‘virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life,’ and who, in the faithful discharge of this promise, were trained in our Sabbath-schools, and ‘taken to the Bishop to be confirmed by him.’ They have sung the same hymns which we now sing; our congregational melodies are still familiar to them. They have read the same Scriptures which we now read, worshipped in the same temple in which we assemble, offered up the same prayers, listened to the same exhortations, and looked forward to the same glorious fruition of future blessedness. But where are they now? What are their hopes and expectations, and what the probable end of their existence? Let those answer these questions who sneeringly ask why such prodigious efforts are made to rescue the fallen.

“It not unfrequently happens, however, that the benevolent promoters of such schemes are perplexed and disheartened by those who assume a tone of expediency and argue thus: ‘Yes, it is all very true; and we can sympathise with your efforts, and pity the poor unhappy objects of your solicitude; but, then, this is a necessary evil, and any attempts to remove it are altogether mistaken, and are sure to end in failure, or to produce greater mischief. Besides, the demand will always create the supply, and for every fallen woman you snatch from the streets, an innocent, and hitherto virtuous girl, must be sacrificed. No, we are sorry for them, but better let them perish than save them at the sacrifice of other victims.’

“First then, this is a ‘necessary evil.’ Falsehood is sufficiently patent upon the face of this foolish and monstrous assertion. Could the Creator have pronounced his work ‘very good’ with such an inseparable appendage to social life? Again, how comes it that a ‘necessary evil’ only exhibits itself in certain localities, and under particular circumstances, disappearing altogether in uncivilized countries, and gathering strength and virulence in the most refined states of society? Will any modern philosopher favour us with a solution of this difficulty?

“But ‘the demand will always create the supply.’ Inexorable logic apparently, and incontrovertible if the supply were limited to the demand. This, however, we deny. Thousands are driven to prostitution as the only alternative from starvation. Necessity, and not the demand, here creates the supply, and it is well known that the supply suggests the demand. Is, then, the balance of vice so exact and undeviating, that the gap occasioned by the removal of one victim must be speedily filled by another? Is the equilibrium of profligacy so nicely adjusted, that it would be dangerous to assert the prerogative of virtue; and shall we desire its unhappy votaries to continue in sin that virtue may abound? Shall we drive back anxious souls, striving to ‘flee from the wrath to come,’ with the cold-blooded assurance that, ‘for the good of society, they had better remain where they are?’ Will it satisfy an immortal spirit, to be told that she helps to maintain the proper equilibrium of vice; or that, by standing in the gap, she is a benefactor to the innocent of her own sex, who would otherwise be sacrificed? Shall we assign as our reason for not preaching the Gospel to ‘every creature,’ that the state of society would be unhinged by curtailing a necessary evil, or that greater injuries would result from any attempt to rescue perishing souls? Shall we mock Him who has said ‘All souls are mine,’ by elevating a doctrine of human expediency above the authority of a distinct command? Let us be sure that, in a case so intimately affecting the honour and glory of God, to ‘obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.’ In vain may we plead political necessity as a plausible pretext for disobedience.

“We are not afraid, however, to meet this argument on philosophical grounds; and we affirm, confidently, that the rescue of every fallen woman is a social boon. Admitting the possibility that, eventually, her place will be supplied by another—for we can approach no nearer to the truth—is it not better to remove a present evil than to provide for a remote contingency? Supposing that in the long vista of future years, the immolation of a fresh victim is the price of every individual rescue, do we overlook the fact, that in the mean time a powerful temptation is removed, and that not merely units, but probably hundreds, of the young of the opposite sex are delivered from the toils of the strange woman? Is nothing achieved by the temporary removal of one tempter from the streets, and is society a loser in the end, by the reformation of one whose sole occupation is to waylay and ruin the youth of the opposite sex? Let our moral economists escape from this dilemma if they can; the philanthropist and the Christian need no further arguments to convince them that they have not only the law of God, but the inexorable logic of common sense on their side.

“Who can tell the pestiferous influence exercised on society by one single fallen woman? Who can calculate the evils of such a system? Woman, waylaid, tempted, deceived, becomes in turn the terrible avenger of her sex. Armed with a power which is all but irresistible, and stript of that which can alone restrain and purify her influence, she steps upon the arena of life qualified to act her part in the reorganization of society. The lex talionis—the law of retaliation—is hers. Society has made her what she is, and must be now governed by her potent influence. The weight of this influence is untold: view it in the dissolution of domestic ties, in the sacrifice of family peace, in the cold desolation of promising homes; but, above all, in the growth of practical Atheism, and in the downward tendency of all that is pure and holy in life! One and another who has been educated in an atmosphere redolent of virtue and principle, and has given promise of high and noble qualities, falls a victim to the prevalence of meretricious allurements, and carries back to his hitherto untainted home the noxious influence he has imbibed. Another and another, within the range of that influence, is made to suffer for his sacrifice of moral rectitude, and they, in their turn, become the agents, and the originators of fresh evils. Who, in contemplating this pedigree of profligacy resulting from a solitary temptation, will venture to affirm that the temporary withdrawal of a single prostitute is not a social blessing? Surely for such immediate results we are justified in dispensing with considerations of future expediency; and, acting upon the first principles of Christian ethics, may help to reform the vicious and profligate, leaving it in the hands of a merciful God to avert the contingency of ruin overtaking the as yet unfallen woman.”[9]

In reference to all such Christian efforts to reclaim the fallen, it has been truly said that “You may ransack the world for objects of compassion. You may scour the earth in search of suffering humanity, on which to exercise your philanthropy; you may roam the countless hospitals and asylums of this vast city; you may penetrate the dens and caves of all other profligacy; you may lavish your bounty upon a transatlantic famine, or dive into Neapolitan dungeons, or scatter the Bible broadcast throughout the great moral wildernesses of heathendom: but in all the million claims upon your faith, upon your feeling as a man, upon your benevolence as a Christian, you will never fulfil a mission dearer to Christ, you will never promote a charity more congenial to the spirit of this gospel; you will never more surely wake up joy in heaven, and force tears into the eyes of sympathising angels, than when you can bring a Magdalene face to face with her Redeemer, and thrill her poor heart, even to breaking, with the plaintive music of that divine voice, calling her by name—Mary.”

LONDON LABOUR
AND THE
LONDON POOR.

THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK.

INTRODUCTION.

I enter upon this part of my subject with a deep sense of the misery, the vice, the ignorance, and the want that encompass us on every side—I enter upon it after much grave attention to the subject, observing closely, reflecting patiently, and generalizing cautiously upon the phenomena and causes of the vice and crime of this city—I enter upon it after a thoughtful study of the habits and character of the “outcast” class generally—I enter upon it, moreover, not only as forming an integral and most important part of the task I have imposed upon myself, but from a wish to divest the public mind of certain “idols” of the platform and conventicle—“idols” peculiar to our own time, and unknown to the great Father of the inductive philosophy—and “idols,” too, that appear to me greatly to obstruct a proper understanding of the subject. Further, I am led to believe that I can contribute some new facts concerning the physics and economy of vice and crime generally, that will not only make the solution of the social problem more easy to us, but, setting more plainly before us some of its latent causes, make us look with more pity and less anger on those who want the fortitude to resist their influence; and induce us, or at least the more earnest among us, to apply ourselves steadfastly to the removal or alleviation of those social evils that appear to create so large a proportion of the vice and crime that we seek by punishment to prevent.

Such are the ultimate objects of my present labours: the result of them is given to the world with an earnest desire to better the condition of the wretched social outcasts of whom I have now to treat, and to contribute, if possible, my mite of good towards the common weal.

But though such be my ultimate object, let me here confess that my immediate aim is the elimination of the truth; without this, of course, all other principles must be sheer sentimentality—sentiments being, to my mind, opinions engendered by the feelings rather than the judgment. The attainment of the truth, then, will be my primary aim; but by the truth, I wish it to be understood, I mean something more than the bare facts. Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact. A fact, so long as it remains an isolated fact, is a dull, dead, uninformed thing; no object nor event by itself can possibly give us any knowledge, we must compare it with some other, even to distinguish it; and it is the distinctive quality thus developed that constitutes the essence of a thing—that is to say, the point by which we cognize and recognise it when again presented to us. A fact must be assimilated with, or discriminated from, some other fact or facts, in order to be raised to the dignity of a truth, and made to convey the least knowledge to the mind. To say, for instance, that in the year 1850 there were 26,813 criminal offenders in England and Wales, is merely to oppress the brain with the record of a fact that, per se, is so much mental lumber. This is the very mummery of statistics; of what rational good can such information by itself be to any person? who can tell whether the number of offenders in that year be large or small, unless they compare it with the number of some other year, or in some other country? but to do this will require another fact, and even then this second fact can give us but little real knowledge. It may teach us, perhaps, that the past year was more or less criminal than some other year, or that the people of this country, in that year, were more or less disposed to the infraction of the laws than some other people abroad; still, what will all this avail us? If the year which we select to contrast criminally with that of 1850 be not itself compared with other years, how are we to know whether the number of criminals appertaining to it be above or below the average? or, in other words, how can the one be made a measure of the other?

To give the least mental value to facts, therefore, we must generalize them, that is to say, we must contemplate them in connection with other facts, and so discover their agreements and differences, their antecedents, concomitants, and consequences. It is true we may frame erroneous and defective theories in so doing; we may believe things which are similar in appearance to be similar in their powers and properties also; we may distinguish between things having no real difference; we may mistake concomitant events for consequences; we may generalize with too few particulars, and hastily infer that to be common to all which is but the special attribute of a limited number; nevertheless, if theory may occasionally teach us wrongly, facts without theory or generalization cannot possibly teach us at all. What the process of digestion is to food, that of generalizing is to fact; for as it is by the assimilation of the substances we eat with the elements of our bodies that our limbs are enlarged and our whole frames strengthened, so is it by associating perception with perception in our brains that our intellect becomes at once expanded and invigorated. Contrary to the vulgar notion, theory, that is to say, theory in its true Baconian sense, is not opposed to fact, but consists rather of a large collection of facts; it is not true of this or that thing alone, but of all things belonging to the same class—in a word, it consists not of one fact but an infinity. The theory of gravitation, for instance, expresses not only what occurs when a stone falls to the earth, but when every other body does the same thing; it expresses, moreover, what takes place in the revolution of the moon round our planet, and in the revolution of our planet and of all the other planets round our sun, and of all other suns round the centre of the universe; in fine, it is true not of one thing merely, but of every material object in the entire range of creation.

There are, of course, two methods of dealing philosophically with every subject—deductively and inductively. We may either proceed from principles to facts, or recede from facts to principles. The one explains, the other investigates; the former applies known general rules to the comprehension of particular phenomena, and the latter classifies the particular phenomena, so that we may ultimately come to comprehend their unknown general rules. The deductive method is the mode of using knowledge, and the inductive method the mode of acquiring it.

In a subject like the crime and vice of the metropolis, and the country in general, of which so little is known—of which there are so many facts, but so little comprehension—it is evident that we must seek by induction, that is to say, by a careful classification of the known phenomena, to render the matter more intelligible; in fine, we must, in order to arrive at a comprehensive knowledge of its antecedents, consequences, and concomitants, contemplate as large a number of facts as possible in as many different relations as the statistical records of the country will admit of our doing.

With this brief preamble I will proceed to treat generally of the class that will not work, and then particularly of that portion of them termed prostitutes. But, first, who are those that will work, and who those that will not work? This is the primary point to be evolved.

Of the Workers and Non-Workers.

The essential quality of an animal is that it seeks its own living, whereas a vegetable has its living brought to it. An animal cannot stick its feet in the ground and suck up the inorganic elements of its body from the soil, nor drink in the organic elements from the atmosphere. The leaves of plants are not only their lungs but their stomachs. As they breathe they acquire food and strength, but as animals breathe they gradually waste away. The carbon which is secreted by the process of respiration in the vegetable is excreted by the very same process in the animal. Hence a fresh supply of carbonaceous matter must be sought after and obtained at frequent intervals, in order to repair the continual waste of animal life.

But in the act of seeking for substances fitted to replace that which is lost in respiration, nerves must be excited and muscles moved; and recent discoveries have shown that such excitation and motion are attended with decomposition of the organs in which they occur. Muscular action gives rise to the destruction of muscular tissue, nervous action to a change in the nervous matter; and this destruction and decomposition necessarily involve a fresh supply of nitrogenous matter, in order that the loss may be repaired.

Now a tree, being inactive, has little or no waste. All the food that it obtains goes to the invigoration of its frame; not one atom is destroyed in seeking more: but the essential condition of animal life is muscular action; the essential condition of muscular action is the destruction of muscular tissue; and the essential condition of the destruction of muscular tissue is a supply of food fitted for the reformation of it, or—death. It is impossible for an animal—like a vegetable—to stand still and not destroy. If the limbs are not moving, the heart is beating, the lungs playing, the bosom heaving. Hence an animal, in order to continue its existence, must obtain its subsistence either by its own exertions or by those of others—in a word, it must be autobious or allobious.

The procuration of sustenance, then, is the necessary condition of animal life, and constitutes the sole apparent reason for the addition of the locomotive apparatus to the vegetative functions of sentient nature; but the faculties of comparison and volition have been further added to the animal nature of Man, in order to enable him, among other things, the better to gratify his wants—to give him such a mastery over the elements of material nature, that he may force the external world the more readily to contribute to his support. Hence the derangement of either one of those functions must degrade the human being—as regards his means of sustenance—to the level of the brute. If his intellect be impaired, and the faculty of perceiving “the fitness of things” be consequently lost to him—or, this being sound, if the power of moving his muscles in compliance with his will be deficient—then the individual becomes no longer capable, like his fellows, of continuing his existence by his own exertions.

Hence, in every state, we have two extensive causes of allobiism, or living by the labour of others; the one intellectual, as in the case of lunatics and idiots, and the other physical, as in the case of the infirm, the crippled, and the maimed—the old and the young.

But a third, and a more extensive class, still remains to be particularized. The members of every community may be divided into the energetic and the an-ergetic; that is to say, into the hardworking and the non-working, the industrious and the indolent classes; the distinguishing characteristic of the anergetic being the extreme irksomeness of all labour to them, and their consequent indisposition to work for their subsistence. Now, in the circumstances above enumerated, we have three capital causes why, in every State, a certain portion of the community must derive their subsistence from the exertions of the rest; the first proceeds from some physical defect, as in the case of the old and the young, the super-annuated and the sub-annuated, the crippled and the maimed; the second from some intellectual defect, as in the case of lunatics and idiots; and the third from some moral defect, as in the case of the indolent, the vagrant, the professional mendicant, and the criminal. In all civilized countries, there will necessarily be a greater or less number of human parasites living on the sustenance of their fellows. The industrious must labour to support the lazy, and the sane to keep the insane, and the able-bodied to maintain the infirm.

Still, to complete the social fabric, another class requires to be specified. As yet, regard has been paid only to those who must needs labour for their living, or who, in default of so doing, must prey on the proceeds of the industry of their more active or more stalwart brethren. There is, however, in all civilized society, a farther portion of the people distinct from either of those above mentioned, who, being already provided—no matter how—with a sufficient stock of sustenance, or what will exchange for such, have no occasion to toil for an additional supply.

Hence all society would appear to arrange itself into four different classes:—

• I. Those that Will Work.
• II. Those that Cannot Work.
• III. Those that Will Not Work.
• IV. Those that Need Not Work.

Under one or other section of this quadruple division, every member, not only of our community, but of every other civilized State, must necessarily be included; the rich, the poor, the industrious, the idle, the honest, the dishonest, the virtuous, and the vicious—each and all must be comprised therein.

Let me now proceed specially to treat of each of these classes—to distribute under one or other of these four categories the diverse modes of living peculiar to the members of our own community, and so to enunciate, for the first time, the natural history, as it were, of the industry and idleness of Great Britain in the nineteenth century.

It is no easy matter, however, to classify the different kinds of labour scientifically. To arrange the several varieties of work into “orders,” and to group the manifold species of arts under a few comprehensive genera—so that the mind may grasp the whole at one effort—is a task of a most perplexing character. Moreover, the first attempt to bring any number of diverse phenomena within the rules of logical division is not only a matter of considerable difficulty, but one, unfortunately, that is generally unsuccessful. It is impossible, however, to proceed with the present inquiry without making some attempt at systematic arrangement; for of all scientific processes, the classification of the various phenomena, in connection with a given subject, is perhaps the most important; indeed, if we consider that the function of cognition is essentially discriminative, it is evident, that without distinguishing between one object and another, there can be no knowledge, nor, indeed, any perception. Even as the seizing of a particular difference causes the mind to apprehend the special character of an object, so does the discovery of the agreements and differences among the several phenomena of a subject enable the understanding to comprehend it. What the generalization of events is to the ascertainment of natural laws, the generalization of things is to the discovery of natural systems. But classification is no less dangerous than it is important to science; for in precisely the same proportion as a correct grouping of objects into genera and species, orders and varieties, expands and assists our understanding, so does any erroneous arrangement cripple and retard all true knowledge. The reduction of all external substances into four elements by the ancients—earth, air, fire, and water—perhaps did more to obstruct the progress of chemical science than even a prohibition of the study could have effected.

But the branches of industry are so multifarious, the divisions of labour so minute and manifold, that it seems at first almost impossible to reduce them to any system. Moreover, the crude generalizations expressed in the names of the several arts, render the subject still more perplexing.

Some kinds of workmen, for example, are called after the articles they make—as saddlers, hatters, boot-makers, dress-makers, breeches-makers, stay-makers, lace-makers, button-makers, glovers, cabinet-makers, artificial-flower-makers, ship-builders, organ-builders, boat-builders, nailers, pin-makers, basket-makers, pump-makers, clock and watch makers, wheel-wrights, ship-wrights, and so forth.

Some operatives, on the other hand, take their names not from what they make, but from the kind of work they perform. Hence we have carvers, joiners, bricklayers, weavers, knitters, engravers, embroiderers, tanners, curriers, bleachers, thatchers, lime-burners, glass-blowers, seamstresses, assayers, refiners, embossers, chasers, painters, paper-hangers, printers, book-binders, cab-drivers, fishermen, graziers, and so on.

Other artizans, again, are styled after the materials upon which they work, such as tinmen, jewellers, lapidaries, goldsmiths, braziers, plumbers, pewterers, glaziers, &c. &c.

And lastly, a few operatives are named after the tools they use; thus we have ploughmen, sawyers, and needlewomen.

But these divisions, it is evident, are as unscientific as they are arbitrary; nor would it be possible, by adopting such a classification, to arrive at any practical result.

Now, I had hoped to have derived some little assistance in my attempt to reduce the several varieties of work to system from the arrangement of the products of industry and art at “the Great Exhibition.” I knew, however, that the point of classification had proved the great stumbling block to the French Industrial Exhibitions. In the Exposition of the Arts and Manufactures of France in 1806, for instance, M. Costaz adopted a topographical arrangement, according to the departments of the kingdom whence the specimens were sent. In 1819, again, finding the previous arrangement conveyed little or no knowledge, depending, as it did, on the mere local association of the places of manufacture, the same philosopher attempted to classify all arts into a sort of natural system, but the separate divisions amounted to thirty-nine, and were found to be confused and inconvenient. In 1827 M. Payon adopted a classification into five great divisions, arranging the arts according as they are chemical, mechanical, physical, economical, or “miscellaneous” in their nature. It was found, however, in practice, that two, or even three, of these characteristics often belonged to the same manufacture. In 1834 M. Dupin proposed a classification that was found to work better than any which preceded it. He viewed man as a locomotive animal, a clothed animal, a domiciled animal, &c., and thus tracing him through his various daily wants and employments, he arrived at a classification in which all arts are placed under nine headings, according as they contribute to the alimentary, sanitary, vestiary, domiciliary, locomotive, sensitive, intellectual, preparative, or social tendencies of man. In 1844 and 1849 attempts were made towards an eclectic combination of two or three of the above-mentioned systems, but it does not appear that the latter arrangements presented any marked advantages.

Now, with all the experience of the French nation to guide us, I naturally expected that especial attention would be directed towards the point of classification with us, and that a technological system would be propounded, which would be found at least an improvement on the bungling systems of the French. It must be confessed, however, that no nation could possibly have stultified itself so egregiously as we have done in this respect. Never was there anything half so puerile as the classification of the works of industry in our own Exhibition!

But this comes of the patronage of Princes; for we are told that at one of the earliest meetings at Buckingham Palace his Royal Highness propounded the system of classification according to which the works of industry were to be arranged. The published minutes of the meeting on the 30th of June, 1849, inform us—

“His Royal Highness communicated his views regarding the formation of a Great Collection of Works of Industry and Art in London in 1851, for the purposes of exhibition, and of competition and encouragement. His Royal Highness considered that such a collection and exhibition should consist of the following divisions:—

• Raw Materials.
• Machinery and Mechanical Inventions.
• Manufactures.
• Sculpture and Plastic Art generally.”

Now, were it possible for monarchs to do with natural laws as with social ones, namely, to blow a trumpet and declaring “le roi le veut,” to have their will pass into one of the statutes of creation, it might be advantageous to science that Princes should seek to lay down orders of arrangement and propound systems of classification. But seeing that Science is as pure a republic as Letters, and that there are no “Highnesses” in philosophy—for if there be any aristocracy at all in such matters, it is at least an aristocracy of intellect—it is rather an injury than a benefit that those who are high in authority should interfere in these affairs at all; since, from the very circumstances of their position it is utterly impossible for them to arrive at anything more than the merest surface knowledge on such subjects. The influence, too, that their mere “authority” has over men’s minds is directly opposed to the perception of truth, preventing that free and independent exercise of the intellect from which alone all discovery and knowledge can proceed.

Judging the quadruple arrangement of the Great Exhibition by the laws of logical division, we find that the three classes—Raw Materials, Machinery, and Manufactures—which refer more particularly to the Works of Industry, are neither distinct nor do they include the whole. What is a raw material, and what a manufacture? It is from the difficulty of distinguishing between these two conditions that leather is placed under Manufactures, and steel under Raw Materials—though surely steel is iron plus carbon, and leather skin plus tannin; so that, technologically considered, there is no difference between them. If by the term raw material is meant some natural product in its crude state, then it is evident that “Geological maps, plans, and sections; prussiate of potash, and other mixed chemical manufactures; sulphuric, muriatic, nitric, and other acids; medicinal tinctures, cod liver oil, dried fruits, fermented liquors and spirits, preserved meats, portable soups, glue, and the alloys” cannot possibly rank as raw materials, though one and all of these articles are to be found so “classified” at the Great Exhibition; but if the meaning of a “raw material” be extended to any product which constitutes the substance to be operated upon in an industrial art, then the answer is that leather, which is the material of shoes and harness, is no more a manufacture than steel, which is placed among the raw materials, because forming the constituent substance of cutlery and tools. So interlinked are the various arts and manufactures, that what is the product of one process of industry is the material of another—thus, yarn is the product of spinning, and the material of weaving, and in the same manner the cloth, which is the product of weaving, becomes the material of tailoring.

But a still greater blunder than the non-distinction between products and materials lies in the confounding of processes with products. In an Industrial Exhibition to reserve no special place for the processes of industry is very much like the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted; and yet it is evident that, in the quadruple arrangement before mentioned, those most important industrial operations which consist merely in arriving at the same result by simpler means—as, for instance, the hot blast in metallurgical operations—can find no distinct expression. The consequence is that methods of work are arranged under the same head as the work itself; and the “Executive” have been obliged to group under the first subdivision of Raw Materials the following inconsistent jumble:—Salt deposits; ventilation; safety lamps and other methods of lighting; methods of lowering and raising miners, and draining; methods of roasting, smelting, or otherwise reducing ores; while under the second subdivision of Raw Materials chemical and pharmaceutical processes and products are indiscriminately confounded.

Another most important defect is the omission of all mention of those industrial processes which have no special or distinct products of their own, but which are rather engaged in adding to the beauty or durability of others; as, for instance, the bleaching of some textile fabrics, the embroidering of others, the dyeing and printing of others; the binding of books; the cutting of glass; the painting of china, &c. From the want of an express division for this large portion of our industrial arts, there is a jumbling and a bungling throughout the whole arrangement. Under the head of manufactures are grouped printing and bookbinding, the “dyeing of woollen, cotton, and linen goods,” “embroidery, fancy, and industrial work,” the cutting and engraving of glass; and, lastly, the art of “decoration generally,” including “ornamental, coloured decoration,” and the “imitations of woods, marbles, &c.,”—though surely these are one and all additions to manufactures rather than manufactures themselves. Indeed, a more extraordinary and unscientific hotch-potch than the entire arrangement has never been submitted to public criticism and public ridicule.

Amid all this confusion and perplexity, then, how are we to proceed? Why, we must direct our attention to some more judicious and more experienced guide. In such matters, at least, as the Exposition of the Science of Labour, it is clear that we must “put not our trust in princes.”

That Prince Albert has conferred a great boon on the country in the establishment of the Great Exhibition (for it is due not only to his patronage but to his own personal exertions), no unprejudiced mind can for a moment doubt; and that he has, ever since his first coming among us, filled a most delicate office in the State in a highly decorous and commendable manner, avoiding all political partizanship, and being ever ready to give the influence of his patronage, and, indeed, co-operation, to anything that appeared to promise an amelioration of the condition of the working classes of this country, I am most glad to have it in my power to bear witness; but that, because of this, we should pin our faith to a “hasty generalization” propounded by him, would be to render ourselves at once silly and servile.

If, with the view of obtaining some more precise information concerning the several branches of industry, we turn our attention to the Government analysis of the different modes of employment among the people, we shall find that for all purposes of a scientific or definite character the Occupation Abstract of the Census of this country is comparatively useless. Previous to 1841, the sole attempt made at generalization was the division of the entire industrial community into three orders, viz.:—

I. Those employed in Agriculture.

1. Agricultural Occupiers.

a. Employing Labourers.

b. Not employing Labourers.

2. Agricultural Labourers.

II. Those employed in Manufactures.

1. Employed in Manufactures.

2. Employed in making Manufacturing Machinery.

III. All other Classes.

1. Employed in Retail Trade or in Handicraft, as Masters or Workmen.

2. Capitalists, Bankers, Professional, and other educated men.

3. Labourers employed in labour not Agricultural—as Miners, Quarriers, Fishermen, Porters, &c.

4. Male Servants.

5. Other Males, 20 years of age.

The defects of this arrangement must be self-evident to all who have paid the least attention to economical science. It offends against both the laws of logical division, the parts being neither distinct nor equal to the whole. In the first place, what is a manufacturer? and how is such an one to be distinguished from one employed in handicraft? How do the workers in metal, as the “tin manufacturers,” “lead manufacturers,” “iron manufacturers,”—who are one and all classed under the head of manufacturers—differ, in an economical point of view, from the workers in wood, as the carpenters and joiners, the cabinet-makers, ship-builders, &c., who are all classed under the head of handicraftsmen? Again, according to the census of 1831, a brewer is placed among those employed in retail trade or in handicrafts, while a vinegar maker is ranked with the manufacturers. According to Mr. Babbage, manufacturing differs from mere making simply in the quantity produced—he being a manufacturer who makes a greater number of the same articles; manufacturing is thus simply production in a large way, in connection with the several handicrafts. Dr. Ure, however, appears to consider such articles manufactures as are produced by means of machinery, citing the word which originally signified production by hand (being the Latin equivalent for the Saxon handicraft) as an instance of those singular verbal corruptions by which terms come to stand for the very opposite to their literal meaning. But with all deference to the Doctor, for whose judgment I have the highest respect, Mr. Babbage’s definition of a manufacturer, viz., as a producer on a large scale, appears to me the more correct; for it is in this sense that we speak of manufacturing chemists, boot and shoe manufacturers, ginger-beer manufacturers, and the like.

The Occupation Abstract of the Census of 1841, though far more comprehensive than the one preceding it, is equally unsatisfactory and unphilosophical. In this document the several members of Society are thus classified:—

• I. Persons engaged in Commerce, Trade, and Manufacture.
• II. Agriculture.
• III. Labour, not Agricultural.
• IV. Army and Navy Merchant Seamen, Fishermen, and Watermen.
• V. Professions and other pursuits requiring education.
• VI. Government, Civil Service, and Municipal and Parochial Officers.
• VII. Domestic Servants.
• VIII. Persons of Independent Means.
• IX. Almspeople, Pensioners, Paupers, Lunatics, and Prisoners.
• X. Remainder of Population, including Women and Children.

Here it will be seen that the defects arising from drawing distinctions where no real differences exist, are avoided, those engaged in handicrafts being included under the same head as those engaged in manufacture; but the equally grave error of confounding or grouping together occupations which are essentially diverse, is allowed to continue. Accordingly, the first division is made to include those who are engaged in trade and commerce as well as manufacture, though surely—the one belongs strictly to the distributing, and the other to the producing class—occupations which are not only essentially distinct, but of which it is absolutely necessary for a right understanding of the state of the country that we know the proportion that the one bears to the other. Again, the employers in both cases are confounded with the employed, so that, though the capitalists who supply the materials, and pay the wages for the several kinds of work are a distinct body of people from those who do the work, and a body, moreover, that it is of the highest possible importance, in an economical point of view, that we should be able to estimate numerically,—no attempt is made to discriminate the one from the other. Now these three classes, distributors, employers, and operatives, which in the Government returns of the people are jumbled together in one heterogeneous crowd, as if the distinctions between Capital, Labour, and Distribution had never been propounded, are precisely those concerning which the social inquirer desires the most minute information.

The Irish census is differently arranged from that of Great Britain. There the several classes are grouped under the following heads:—

I. Ministering to Food.

1. As Producers.
2. As Preparers.
3. As Distributors.

II. Ministering to Clothing.

1. As Manufacturers of Materials.
2. As Handicraftsmen and Dealers.

III. Ministering to Lodging, Furniture, Machinery, &c.

IV. Ministering to Health.

V. Ministering to Charity.

VI. Ministering to Justice.

VII. Ministering to Education.

VIII. Ministering to Religion.

IX. Various Arts and Employments, not included in the foregoing.

X. Residue of Population, not having specified occupations, and including unemployed persons and women.

This, however, is no improvement upon the English classification. There is the same want of discrimination, and the same disregard of the great “economical” divisions of society.

Moreover, to show the extreme fallacy of such a classification, it is only necessary to make the following extract from the Report of the Commissioners for Great Britain:—

“We would willingly have given a classification of the occupations of the inhabitants of Great Britain into the various wants to which they respectively minister, but, in attempting this, we were stopped by the various anomalies and uncertainties to which such a classification seemed necessarily to lead, from the fact that many persons supply more than one want, though they can only be classed under one head. Thus to give but a single instance—the farmer and grazier may be deemed to minister quite as much to clothing by the fleece and hides as he does to food by the flesh of his sheep and cattle.”

He, therefore, who would seek to elaborate the natural history of the industry of the people of England, must direct his attention to some social philosopher, who has given the subject more consideration than either princes or Government officials can possibly be expected to devote to it. Among the whole body of economists, Mr. Stuart Mill appears to be the only man who has taken a comprehensive and enlightened view of the several functions of society. Following in the footsteps of M. Say, the French social philosopher, he first points out concerning the products of industry, that labour is not creative of objects but of utilities, and then proceeds to say:—

“Now the utilities produced by labour are of three kinds; they are—

“First, utilities fixed and embodied in outward objects; by labour employed in investing external material things with properties which render them serviceable to human beings. This is the common case, and requires no illustration.

“Secondly, utilities fixed and embodied in human beings; the labour being in this case employed in conferring on human beings qualities which render them serviceable to themselves and others. To this class belongs the labour of all concerned in education; not only schoolmasters, tutors, and professors, but governments, so far as they aim successfully at the improvement of the people; moralists and clergymen, as far as productive of benefit; the labour of physicians, as far as instrumental in preserving life and physical or mental efficiency; of the teachers of bodily exercises, and of the various trades, sciences, and arts, together with the labour of the learners in acquiring them, and all labour bestowed by any persons, throughout life, in improving the knowledge or cultivating the bodily and mental faculties of themselves or others.

“Thirdly, and lastly, utilities not fixed or embodied in any object, but consisting in a mere service rendered, a pleasure given, an inconvenience or pain averted, during a longer or a shorter time, but without leaving a permanent acquisition in the improved qualities of any person or thing; the labour here being employed in producing an utility directly, not (as in the two former cases) in fitting some other thing to afford an utility. Such, for example, is the labour of the musical performer, the actor, the public declaimer or reciter, and the showman.

“Some good may, no doubt, be produced beyond the moment, upon the feeling and disposition, or general state of enjoyment of the spectators; or instead of good there may be harm, but neither the one nor the other is the effect intended, is the result for which the exhibitor works and the spectator pays, but the immediate pleasure. Such, again, is the labour of the army and navy; they, at the best, prevent a country from being conquered, or from being injured or insulted, which is a service, but in all other respects leave the country neither improved nor deteriorated. Such, too, is the labour of the legislator, the judge, the officer of justice, and all other agents of Government, in their ordinary functions, apart from any influence they may exert on the improvement of the national mind. The service which they render is to maintain peace and security; these compose the utility which they produce. It may appear to some that carriers, and merchants or dealers, should be placed in this same class, since their labour does not add any properties to objects, but I reply that it does, it adds the property of being in the place where they are wanted, instead of being in some other place, which is a very useful property, and the utility it confers is embodied in the things themselves, which now actually are in the place where they are required for use, and in consequence of that increased utility could be sold at an increased price proportioned to the labour expended in conferring it. This labour, therefore, does not belong to the third class, but to the first.”

To the latter part of the above classification, I regret to say I cannot assent. Surely the property of being in the place where they are wanted, which carriers and distributors are said to confer on external objects, cannot be said to be fixed—if, indeed, it be strictly embodied in the objects, since the very act of distribution consists in the alteration of this local relation, and transferring such objects to the possession of another. Is not the utility which the weaver fixes and embodies in a yard of cotton, a very different utility from that effected by the linendraper in handing the same yard of cotton over the counter in exchange for so much money? and in this particular act, it would be difficult to perceive what is fixed and embodied, seeing that it consists essentially in an exchange of commodities.

Mr. Mill’s mistake appears to consist in not discerning that there is another class of labour besides that employed in producing utilities directly, and that occupied in fitting other things to afford utilities: viz., that which is engaged in assisting those who are so occupied in fitting things to be useful. This class consists of such as are engaged in aiding the producers of permanent material utilities either before or during production, and such as are engaged in aiding them after production. Under the first division are comprised capitalists, or those who supply the materials and tools for the work, superintendents and managers, or those who direct the work, and labourers, or those who perform some minor office connected with the work, as in turning the large wheel for a turner, in carrying the bricks to a bricklayer, and the like; while in the second division, or those who are engaged in assisting producers after production, are included carriers, or those who remove the produce to the market, and dealers and shopmen, or those who obtain purchasers for it. Now it is evident that the function of all these classes is merely auxiliary to the labour of the producers, consisting principally of so many modes of economizing their time and labour. Whether the gains of some of these auxiliary classes are as disproportionately large, as the others are disproportionately small, this is not the place to inquire. My present duty is merely to record the fact of the existence of such classes, and to assign them their proper place in the social fabric, as at present constituted.

Now, from the above it will appear, that there are four distinct classes of workers:—

I. Enrichers, or those who are employed in producing utilities fixed and embodied in material things, that is to say, in producing exchangeable commodities or riches.

II. Auxiliaries, or those who are employed in aiding the production of exchangeable commodities.

III. Benefactors, or those who are employed in producing utilities fixed and embodied in human beings, that is to say, in conferring upon them some permanent good.

IV. Servitors, or those who are employed in rendering some service, that is to say, in conferring some temporary good upon another.

Class 1 is engaged in investing material objects with qualities which render them serviceable to others.

Class 2 is engaged in aiding the operations of Class 1.

Class 3 is engaged in conferring on human beings qualities which render them serviceable to themselves or others.

Class 4 is engaged in giving a pleasure, averting a pain (during a longer or shorter period), or preventing an inconvenience, by performing some office for others that they would find irksome to do for themselves.

Hence it appears that the operations of the first and third of the above classes, or the Enrichers and Benefactors of Society, tend to leave some permanent acquisition in the improved qualities of either persons or things,—whereas the operations of the second and fourth classes, or the Auxiliaries and Servitors, are limited merely to promoting either the labours or the pleasures of the other members of the community.

Such, then, are the several classes of Workers; and here it should be stated that, I apply the title Worker to all those who do anything for their living, who perform any act whatsoever that is considered worthy of being paid for by others, without regard to the question whether such labourers tend to add to or decrease the aggregate wealth of the community. I consider all persons doing or giving something for the comforts they obtain, as self-supporting individuals. Whether that something be really an equivalent for the emoluments they receive, it is not my vocation here to inquire. Suffice it some real or imaginary benefit is conferred upon society, or a particular individual, and what is thought a fair and proper reward is given in return for it. Hence I look upon soldiers, sailors, Government and parochial officers, capitalists, clergymen, lawyers, wives, &c., &c., as self-supporting—a certain amount of labour, or a certain desirable commodity, being given by each and all in exchange for other commodities, which are considered less desirable to the individuals parting with them, and more desirable to those receiving them.

Nevertheless, it must be confessed that, economically speaking, the most important and directly valuable of all classes are those whom I have here denominated Enrichers. These consist not only of Producers, but of the Collectors and Extractors of Wealth, concerning whom a few words are necessary.

There are three modes of obtaining the materials of our wealth—(1) by collecting, (2) by extracting, and (3) by producing them. The industrial processes concerned in the collection of the materials of wealth are of the rudest and most primitive kind—being pursued principally by such tribes as depend for their food, and raiment, and shelter, on the spontaneous productions of nature. The usual modes by which the collection is made is by gathering the vegetable produce (which is the simplest and most direct form of all industry), and when the produce is of an animal nature, by hunting, shooting, or fishing, according as the animal sought after inhabits the land, the air, or the water. In a more advanced state of society, where the erection of places of shelter has come to constitute one of the acts of life, the felling of trees will also form one of the modes by which the materials making up the wealth of the nation are collected. In Great Britain there appears to be fewer people connected with the mere collection of wealth than with any other general industrial process. The fishermen are not above 25,000, and the wood-cutters and woodmen not 5000; so that even with gamekeepers, and others engaged in the taking of game, we may safely say that there are about 30,000 out of 18,000,000, or only one-six hundredth of the entire population, engaged in this mode of industry—a fact which strongly indicates the artificial character of our society.

The production of the materials of wealth, which indicates a far higher state of civilization and which consists in the several agricultural and farming processes for increasing the natural stock of animal and vegetable food, employs upwards of one million; while those who are engaged in the extraction of our treasures from the earth, either by mining or quarrying, both of which processes—depending, as they do, upon a knowledge of some of the subtler natural powers—could only have been brought into operation in a highly advanced stage of the human intellect, number about a quarter of a million. Altogether, there appear to be about one million and a half of individuals engaged in the industrial processes connected with the collection, extraction, and production of the materials of wealth; those who are employed in operating upon these materials, in the fashioning of them into manufactures, making them up into commodities, as well as those engaged in the distribution of them—that is to say, the transport and sale of them when so fashioned or made up—appear to amount to another two millions and a half, so that the industrial classes of Great Britain, taken altogether, may be said to amount to four millions. For the more perfect comprehension, however, of the several classes of society, let me subjoin a table in round numbers, calculated from the census of 1841, and including among the first items both the employers as well as employed:—

Now, of the 5,250,000 individuals engaged in Agriculture, Mining, Transit, Manufacture and Trade, it would appear that about one million and a quarter may be considered as employers; and, consequently, that the remaining four millions may be said to represent the numerical strength of the operatives of England and Scotland. Of these about one million, or a quarter of the whole, may be said to be engaged in producing the materials of wealth; and about a quarter of a million, or one-sixteenth of the entire number, in extracting from the soil the substances upon which many of the manufacturers have to operate.

The artizans, or those who are engaged in the several handicrafts or manufactures operating upon the various materials of wealth thus obtained, are distinct from the workmen above-mentioned, belonging to what are called skilled labourers, whereas those who are employed in the collection, extraction, or growing of wealth, belong to the unskilled class.

An artisan is an educated handicraftsman, following a calling that requires an apprenticeship of greater or less duration in order to arrive at perfection in it; whereas a labourer’s occupation needs no education whatever. Many years must be spent in practising before a man can acquire sufficient manual dexterity to make a pair of boots or a coat; dock labour or porter’s work, however, needs neither teaching nor learning, for any man can carry a load or turn a wheel. The artisan, therefore, is literally a handicraftsman—one who by practice has acquired manual dexterity enough to perform a particular class of work, which is consequently called “skilled.” The natural classification of artisans, or skilled labourers, appears to be according to the materials upon which they work, for this circumstance seems to constitute the peculiar quality of the art more than the tool used—indeed, it appears to be the principal cause of the modification of the implements in different handicrafts. The tools used to fashion, as well as the instruments and substances used to join the several materials operated upon in the manufactures and handicrafts, differ according as those materials are of different kinds. We do not, for instance, attempt to saw cloth into shape nor to cut bricks with shears; neither do we solder the soles to the upper leathers of our boots, nor nail together the seams of our shirts. And even in those crafts where the means of uniting the materials are similar, the artisan working upon one kind of substance is generally incapable of operating upon another. The tailor who stitches woollen materials together would make but a poor hand at sewing leather. The two substances are joined by the same means, but in a different manner, and with different instruments. So the turner, who has been accustomed to turn wood, is unable to fashion metals by the same method.

The most natural mode of grouping the artisans into classes would appear to be according as they pursue some mechanical or chemical occupation. The former are literally mechanics or handicraftsmen—the latter chemical manufacturers. The handicraftsmen consist of (1) The workers in silk, wool, cotton, flax, and hemp—as weavers, spinners, knitters, carpet-makers, lace-makers, rope-makers, canvas-weavers, &c. (2) The workers in skin, gut, and feathers—as tanners, curriers, furriers, feather dressers, &c. (3) The makers up of silken, woollen, cotton, linen, hempen, and leathern materials—as tailors, milliners, shirt-makers, sail-makers, hatters, glove-makers, saddlers, and the like. (4) The workers in wood, as the carpenters, the cabinet-makers, &c. (5) The workers in cane, osier, reed, rush, and straw—as basket-makers, straw-plait manufacturers, thatchers, and the like. (6) The workers in brick and stones—as bricklayers, masons, &c. (7) The workers in glass and earthenware—as potters, glass-blowers, glass-cutters, bottle-makers, glaziers, &c. (8) The workers in metals—as braziers, tinmen, plumbers, goldsmiths, pewterers, coppersmiths, iron-founders, blacksmiths, whitesmiths, anchor-smiths, locksmiths, &c. (9) The workers in paper—as the paper-makers, cardboard-makers. (10) The chemical manufacturers—as powder-makers, white-lead-makers, alkali and acid manufacturers, lucifer-match-makers, blacking-makers, ink-makers, soap-boilers, tallow-chandlers, &c. (11) The workers at the superlative or extrinsic arts—that is to say, those which have no manufactures of their own, but which are engaged in adding to the utility or beauty of others—as printing, bookbinding, painting, and decorating, gilding, burnishing, &c.

The circumstances which govern the classification of trades are totally different from those regulating the division of work. In trade the convenience of the purchaser is mainly studied, the sale of such articles being associated as are usually required together. Hence the master coachmaker is frequently a harness manufacturer as well, for the purchaser of the one commodity generally stands in need of the other. The painter and house-decorator not only follows the trade of the glazier, but of the plumber, too; because these arts are one and all connected with the “doing up” of houses. For the same reason the builder combines the business of the plasterer with that of the bricklayer, and not unfrequently that of the carpenter and joiner in addition. In all of these businesses, however, a distinct set of workmen are required, according as the materials operated upon are different.

We are now in a position to proceed with the arrangement of the several members of society into different classes, according to the principles of classification which have been here laid down. The difficulties of the task, however, should be continually borne in mind; for where so many have failed it cannot be expected that perfection can be arrived at by any one individual; and, slight as the labour of such a task may at the first glance appear to some, still the system here propounded has been the work and study of many months.

CLASSIFICATION
OF
THE WORKERS AND NON-WORKERS
OF GREAT BRITAIN.

THOSE WHO WILL WORK.

I. Enrichers, as the Collectors, Extractors, or Producers of Exchangeable Commodities.

II. Auxiliaries, as the Promoters of Production, or the Distributors of the Produce.

III. Benefactors, or those who confer some permanent benefit, as Educators and Curators engaged in promoting the physical, intellectual, or spiritual well-being of the people.

IV. Servitors, or those who render some temporary service, or pleasure, as Amusers, Protectors, and Servants.

THOSE WHO CANNOT WORK.

V. Those who are provided for by some public Institution, as the Inmates of workhouses, prisons, hospitals, asylums, almshouses, dormitories, and refuges.

VI. Those who are unprovided for, and incapacitated for labour, either from want of power, from want of means, or from want of employment.

THOSE WHO WILL NOT WORK.

VII. Vagrants.

VIII. Professional Beggars.

IX. Cheats.

X. Thieves.

XI. Prostitutes.

THOSE WHO NEED NOT WORK.

XII. Those who derive their income from rent.

XIII. Those who derive their income from dividends.

XIV. Those who derive their income from yearly stipends.

XV. Those who derive their income from obsolete or nominal offices.

XVI. Those who derive their income from trades in which they do not appear.

XVII. Those who derive their income by favour from others.

XVIII. Those who derive their support from the head of the family.

THOSE WHO WILL WORK.

I. Enrichers, or those engaged in the collection, extraction, or production of exchangeable commodities.

A. Collectors.

1. Fishermen.

2. Woodmen.

3. Sand and Clay-collectors.

4. Copperas, Cement-stones, and other finders.

B. Extractors.

1. Miners.

a. Coal.

b. Salt.

c. Iron, Lead, Tin, Copper, Zinc, Manganese.

2. Quarryers.

a. Slate.

b. Stone.

C. Growers.

1. Farmers.

a. Capitalist Farmers.

i. Yeomen, or Proprietary Farmers.

ii. Tenant Farmers.

b. Peasant Farmers.

i. Peasant Proprietors; as the Cumberland “Statesmen.”

ii. “Metayers,” or labourers paying the landlord a certain portion of the produce as rent for the use of the land.

iii. “Cottiers,” or labouring Tenant Farmers.

2. Graziers.

3. Gardeners, Nurserymen, Florists.

D. Makers or Artificers.

1. Mechanics.

a. Workers in Silk, Wool, Worsted, Hair, Cotton, Flax, Hemp, Coir.

b. Workers in Skin, Gut, and Feathers.

c. Workers in Woollen, Silken, Cotton, Linen, and Leathern Materials.

d. Workers in Wood, Ivory, Bone, Horn, and Shell.

e. Workers in Osier, Cane, Reed, Rush, and Straw.

f. Workers in Stone and Brick.

g. Workers in Glass and Earthenware.

h. Workers in Metal.

i. Workers in Paper.

2. Chemical Manufacturers.

a. Acid, Alkali, Alum, Copperas, Prussian-Blue, and other Manufacturers.

b. Gunpowder Manufacturers, Percussion-Cap, Cartridge, and Firework Makers.

c. Brimstone and Lucifer-match Manufacturers.

d. White-lead, Colour, Black-lead, Whiting, and Blue Manufacturers.

e. Oil and Turpentine Distillers, and Varnish Manufacturers.

f. Ink Manufacturers, Sealing-wax and Wafer Makers.

g. Blacking Manufacturers.

h. Soap Boilers and Grease Makers.

i. Starch Manufacturers.

j. Tallow and Wax Chandlers.

k. Artificial Manure Manufacturers.

l. Artificial Stone and Cement Manufacturers.

m. Asphalte and Tar Manufacturers.

n. Glue and Size Makers.

o. Polishing Paste, and Glass and Emery Paper Makers.

p. Lime, Coke, and Charcoal Burners.

q. Manufacturing Chemists and Drug Manufacturers.

r. Workers connected with Provisions, Luxuries, and Medicines.

i. Bakers, and Biscuit Makers.

ii. Brewers.

iii. Soda-water and Ginger-beer Manufacturers.

iv. Distillers and Rectifiers.

v. British Wine Manufacturers.

vi. Vinegar Manufacturers.

vii. Fish and Provision Curers.

viii. Preserved Meats and Preserved Fruit Preparers.

ix. Sauce and Pickle Manufacturers.

x. Mustard Makers.

xi. Isinglass Manufacturers.

xii. Sugar Bakers, Boilers, and Refiners.

xiii. Confectioners and Pastry-cooks.

xiv. Rice and Farinaceous Food Manufacturers.

xv. Chocolate, Cocoa, and other Manufacturers of Substitutes for Tea.

xvi. Cigar, Tobacco, and Snuff Manufacturers.

xvii. Quack, and other Medicine Manufacturers, as Pills, Powders, Syrups, Cordials, Embrocations, Ointments, Plaisters, &c.

3. Workers connected with the Superlative Arts, that is to say, with those arts which have no products of their own, and are engaged either in adding to the beauty or usefulness of the products of other arts, or in inventing or designing the work appertaining to them.

a. Printers.

b. Bookbinders.

c. Painters, Decorators, and Gilders.

d. Writers and Stencillers.

e. Dyers, Bleachers, Scourers, Calenderers, and Fullers.

f. Print Colourers.

g. Designers of Patterns.

h. Embroiderers (of Muslin, Silk, &c.), and Fancy Workers.

i. Desiccators, Anti-dry-rot Preservers, Waterproofers.

j. Burnishers, Polishers, Grinders, Japanners, and French Polishers.

k. Engravers, Chasers, Die-Sinkers, Embossers, Engine-Turners, and Glass-Cutters.

l. Artists, Sculptors, and Carvers of Wood, Coral, Jet, &c.

m. Modellers and Moulders.

n. Architects, Surveyors, and Civil Engineers.

o. Composers.

p. Authors, Editors, and Reporters.

⁂ Operatives are divisible, according to the mode in which they are paid, into—

1. Day-workers.

2. Piece-workers.

3. “Lump” or Contract-workers; as at the docks.

4. Perquisite-workers; as waiters, &c.

5. “Kind” or Truck-workers; as the farm servants in the North of England, Domestic Servants and Milliners, Ballast-heavers, and men paid at “Tommy-shops.”

6. Tenant-workers; or those who lodge with or reside in houses belonging to their employers. The Slop-working Tailors generally lodge with the “Sweaters,” and the “Hinds” of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland have houses found them by their employers. These “Hinds” have to keep a “Bondager,” that is, a female in the house ready to answer the master’s call, and to work at stipulated wages.

7. Improvement-workers; or those who are considered to be remunerated for their work by the instruction they receive in doing it; as “improvers” and apprentices.

8. Tribute-workers, as the Cornish Miners, Whalers, and Weavers in some parts of Ireland, where a certain proportion of the proceeds of the work done belongs to the workmen.

The wages of “society-men” among operatives are settled by custom, the wages of “non-society-men” are settled by competition.

Operatives are also divisible, according to the places at which they work, into—

1. Domestic workers, or those who work at home.

2. Shop or Factory workers, or those who work on the employer’s premises.

3. Out-door workers, or those who work in the open air; as bricklayers, agricultural labourers, &c.

4. Jobbing-workers, or those who go out to work at private houses.

5. Rent-men, or those who pay rent for

a. A “seat” at some domestic worker’s rooms.

b. “Power,” as turners, and others, when requiring the use of a steam-engine. Some operatives have to pay rent for tools or “frames,” as the sawyers and “stockingers,” and some for gas when working on their employer’s premises.

Operatives are further divisible, according to those whom they employ to assist them, into—

1. Family workers, or those who avail themselves of the assistance of their wives and children, as the Spitalfields Weavers.

2. “Sweaters” and Piece-master workers, or those who employ other members of their trade at less wages than they themselves receive.

3. “Garret-master” workers, or those who avail themselves of the labour (chiefly) of apprentices.

Operatives are moreover divisible, according to those by whom they are employed, into—

1. “Flints” and “Dungs;” “Whites” and “Blacks,” according as they work for employers who pay or do not pay “society prices.”

2. Jobbing piece-workers, or those who work single-handed for the public (without the intervention of an “employer”) and are paid by the piece. These mostly do the work at their own homes, as cobblers, repairers, &c.

3. Jobbing day-workers, or those who work single-handed for the public (without the intervention of an “employer”) and are paid by the day. These mostly go out to work at persons’ houses and frequently have their food found them. Among the tailors and carpenters this practice is called “whipping the cat.”

4. “Co-operative men,” or those who work in “association” for their own profit, obtaining their work directly from the public, without the intervention of an “employer.”

Lastly, Operatives admit of being arranged into two distinct classes, viz., the superior, or higher-priced, and the inferior, or lower-priced.

The superior, or higher-priced, operatives consist of—

1. The skilful.
2. The trustworthy.
3. The well-conditioned.

The inferior, or lower-priced operatives, on the other hand, are composed of—

1. The unskilful; as the old or superannuated, the young (including apprentices and “improvers”), the slow, and the awkward.

2. The untrustworthy; as the drunken, the idle, and the dishonest. Some of the cheap workers, whose wages are minimized almost to starvation point, so that honesty becomes morally impossible, have to deposit a certain sum of money, or to procure two householders to act as security for the faithful return of the work given out to them.

3. The inexpensive, consisting of—

a. Those who can live upon less; as single men, foreigners, Irishmen, women, &c.

b. Those who derive their subsistence from other sources; as Wives, Children, Paupers, Prisoners, Inmates of Asylums, Prostitutes, and Amateurs (or those who work at a business merely for pocket-money).

c. Those who are in receipt of some pecuniary or other aid; as Pensioners, Allottees of land, and such as have out-door relief from the workhouse.

II. Auxiliaries, or those engaged in promoting the enrichment and distributing the riches of the community.

A. Promoters of Production.

1. Employers, or those who find the materials, implements, and appurtenances for the work, and pay the wages of the workmen.

a. Administrative Employers, or those who supply wholesale or retail dealers. These are subdivisible into—

i. Standard Employers, or those who work at the regular standard prices of the trade.

ii. “Cutting” Employers, or those who work at less than the regular prices of the trade; as Contractors, &c.

b. Executive Employers, or those who work directly for the public without the intervention of a wholesale or retail dealer; as Builders, &c.

c. Distributive Employers, or those who are both producers and retail traders.

i. Those who retail what they produce; as Tailors, Shoemakers, Bakers, Eating-house Keepers, Street Mechanics, &c.

ii. Those who retail other things (generally provisions), and compel or expect the men in their employ to deal with them for those articles, as the Truck-Masters and others.

iii. Those who retail the appurtenances of the trade to which they belong, and compel or expect the men in their employ to purchase such appurtenances of them; as trimmings in the tailors’ trade, thread among the seamstresses, and the like.

d. Middlemen Employers, or those who act between the employer and the employed, obtaining work from employers, and employing others to do it; as Sub-contractors, Sweaters, &c. These consist of—

i. Trade-working Employers, or those who make up goods for other employers in the trade.

ii. Garret-masters, or those who make up goods for the trade on the smallest amount of capital, and generally on speculation.

iii. Trading Operative Employers, or those who obtain work in considerable quantities, and employ others at reduced wages to assist them in it; as “Sweaters,” “Seconders,” &c. These are either—

α. Piece Masters; as those who take out a certain piece of work and employ others to help them at reduced wages.

β. “Lumper” Employers, or those who contract to do the work by the lump, which is usually paid for by the piece, and employ others at reduced wages in order to complete it.

⁂ Employers are known among operatives as “honourable” or “dishonourable,” according as the wages they pay are those, or less than those, of the Trade Society.

2. Superintendents, or those who look after the workmen on behalf of employers.

a. Managers.

b. Clerks of the Works.

c. Foremen.

d. Overlookers.

e. Tellers and Meters, or those who take note of the number and quantity of the articles delivered.

f. Provers, or those whose duty it is to examine the quality or weight of the articles delivered.

g. Timekeepers, or those who note the time of the operatives coming to and quitting labour.

h. Gatekeepers, or those who see that no goods are taken out.

i. Clerks, or those who keep accounts of all sales and purchases, incomings, and outgoings of the business.

j. Pay Clerks, or those who pay the workmen their wages.

3. Labourers.

a. Acting as motive powers.

i. Turning wheels, working pumps, blowing bellows.

ii. Wheeling, dragging, pulling, or hoisting loads.

iii. Shifting (scenes), or turning (corn).

iv. Carrying (bricks, as hodmen).

v. Driving (piles), ramming down (stones, as paviours).

vi. Pressing (as fruit, for juice; seeds, for oil).

b. Uniting or putting one thing to another.

i. Feeding (furnace), laying-on (as for printing machines).

ii. Filling (as “fillers-in” of sieves at dust-yards).

iii. Oiling (engines), greasing (railway wheels), pitching or tarring (vessels), pasting paper (for bags).

iv. Mixing (mortar), kneading (clay).

v. Tying up (plants and bunches of vegetables).

vi. Folding (printed sheets).

vii. Corking (bottles), or caulking (ships).

c. Separating one thing from another.

i. Sifting (cinders), screening (coals).

ii. Picking (fruit, hops, &c.), shelling (peas), peeling, barking, and threshing.

iii. Winnowing.

iv. Weeding and stoning.

v. Reaping and mowing.

vi. Felling, lopping, hewing, chopping (as fire-wood), cutting (as chaff), shearing (sheep).

vii. Sawing.

viii. Blasting.

ix. Breaking (stones), crushing (bones and ores), pounding (drugs).

x. Scouring (as sand from castings), scraping (ships).

d. Excavating, sinking, and embanking.

i. Tunnelling.

ii. Sinking foundations.

iii. Boring.

iv. Draining, trenching, ditching, and hedging.

v. Embanking.

vi. Road-making, cutting.

B. Distributors of Production.

1. Dealers, or those who are engaged in the buying and selling of commodities on their own account.

a. Merchants or Importers, and Exporters.

b. Wholesale Traders.

c. Retail Traders.

d. Contracting Purveyors, or those who supply goods by agreement.

e. Contractors for work or repairs; as Road Contractors, and others.

f. Contractors for privileges, as the right of Printing the Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, or selling refreshments at Railway Stations, &c.

g. Farmers of revenues from dues, tolls, &c.

h. Itinerants, or those who seek out the Customers, instead of the Customers seeking out them.

i. Hawkers, or those who cry their goods.

ii. Pedlars, or those who carry their goods round.

2. Agents, or those who are engaged in the buying or selling of commodities for others, as Land Agents, House and Estate Agents, Colonial and East India Agents, &c., &c.

a. Supercargoes.

b. Factors, or Consignees.

c. Brokers, Bill, Stock, Share, Ship, Sugar, Cotton, &c.

d. Commission Salesmen, or Unlicensed Brokers.

e. Buyers, or those who purchase materials or goods for Manufacturers, or Dealers.

f. Auctioneers, or those who sell goods on Commission to the highest bidder.

3. Lenders and Lettors-out, or those who receive a certain sum for the loan or use of a thing.

a. Lenders or Lettors-out of commodities, as—

i. Job-horses, carriages, chairs and seats in parks, gardens, &c.

ii. Plate, linen, furniture, piano-fortes, flowers, fancy dresses, Court suits, &c.

iii. Books, newspapers, prints, and music.

b. Lettors-out of tenements and storage room, as—

i. Houses.

ii. Lodgings.

iii. Warehouse-room for imports, &c., as at wharfs.

iv. Warehouse-room for furniture and other goods.

c. Lenders of money, as—

i. Mortgagees.

ii. Bankers.

iii. Bill-discounters.

iv. Loan offices with and without policies of assurance.

v. Building and investment societies.

vi. Pawnbrokers.

vii. Dolly shopmen.

⁂ The several modes of distributing goods or money are—

1. By private contract or agreement.

2. By a fixed or ticketed price.

3. By competition, as at Auctions.

4. By games of chance, as Lotteries (with the “Art Union”), Raffles (at Fancy Fairs), Tossing (with piemen and others), Prizes for skill (with throwing sticks, &c.), Betting, Racing, &c.

The places at which goods are distributed are—

1. Fairs, or annual gatherings of buyers and sellers.

2. Markets, or weekly gatherings of buyers and sellers.

3. Exchanges, or daily gatherings of merchants and agents.

4. Counting-houses, or the places of business of wholesale traders.

5. Shops, or the places of business of retail traders.

6. Bazaars, or congregations of shops.

4. Trade Assistants.

a. Shopmen and Warehousemen.

b. Shopwalkers.

c. Cashiers or Receivers.

d. Clerks.

e. Accountants.

f. Rent-Collectors.

g. Debt-collectors.

h. Travellers, Town as well as Commercial.

i. Touters.

j. Barkers (outside shops).

k. Bill deliverers.

l. Bill-stickers.

m. Boardmen.

n. Advertizing-van Men.

5. Carriers.

a. Those engaged in the external transit of the Kingdom.

i. Mercantile Sailing Vessels.

ii. Mercantile Steam Vessels.

b. Those engaged in the internal Transit of the Kingdom.

i. Those engaged in the coasting trade from port to port.

ii. Those engaged in carrying inland from town to town, as—

α. Those connected with land carriage; as railroad men, stage coachmen, mail coachmen, and mail cartmen, post boys, flymen, waggoners, country carriers, and drovers.

β. Those connected with water carriage; as navigable river and canal men, bargemen, towing men.

iii. Those engaged in carrying to and from different parts of the same town by land and water.

α. Passengers; as Omnibus-men, Cabmen, Glass and Job Coachmen, Fly Men, Excursion-van Men, Donkey-boys, Goat-carriage boys, Sedan and Bath Chair Men, Guides.

β. Goods; as Waggoners, Draymen, Carters, Spring-Van Men, Truckmen, Porters (ticketed and unticketed, and public and private men).

γ. Letters and Messages; as Messengers, Errand Boys, Telegraph Men, and Postmen.

δ. Goods and Passengers by water; as Bargemen, Lightermen, Hoymen, Watermen, River Steamboat Men.

c. Those engaged in the lading and unlading and the fitting of vessels, as well the packing of goods.

i. Dock and wharf labourers.

ii. Coal whippers.

iii. Lumpers, or dischargers of timber ships.

iv. Timber porters and rafters.

v. Corn porters.

vi. Ballast heavers.

vii. Stevedores, or stowers.

viii. Riggers.

ix. Packers and pressers.

III. Benefactors, or those who confer some permanent benefit by promoting the physical, intellectual, or spiritual well-being of others.

A. Educators.

1. Professors.

2. Tutors.

3. Governesses.

4. Schoolmasters.

5. Ushers.

6. Teachers of Languages.

7. Teachers of Sciences.

8. Lecturers.

9. Teachers of “Accomplishments”; as Music, Singing, Dancing, Drawing, Wax-Flower Modelling, &c.

10. Teachers of Exercises; as Gymnastics.

11. Teachers of Arts of Self-Defence; as Fencing, Boxing, &c.

12. Teachers of Trades and Professions.

B. Curators.

1. Corporeal.

a. Physicians.

b. Surgeons.

c. General Practitioners.

d. Homœopathists.

e. Hydropathists.

2. Spiritual.

a. Ministers of the Church of England.

b. Dissenting Ministers.

c. Catholic Ministers.

d. Missionaries.

e. Scripture Readers.

f. Sisters of Charity.

g. Visitants.

IV. Servitors, or those who render some temporary service or pleasure to others.

A. Amusers, or those who contribute to our entertainment.

1. Actors.

2. Reciters.

3. Improvisers.

4. Singers.

5. Musicians.

6. Dancers.

7. Riders, or Equestrian Performers.

8. Fencers and Pugilists.

9. Conjurers.

10. Posturers.

11. Equilibrists.

12. Tumblers.

13. Exhibitors or Showmen.

a. Of Curiosities.

b. Of Monstrosities.

B. Protectors, or those who contribute to our security against injury.

1. Legislative.

a. The Sovereign.

b. The Members of the House of Lords.

c. The Members of the House of Commons.

2. Judicial.

a. The Judges in Chancery, Queen’s Bench, Common Pleas, Exchequer, Ecclesiastical, Admiralty, and Criminal Courts.

b. Masters in Chancery, Commissioners of the Bankruptcy, Insolvent Debtors, Sheriffs, and County Courts, Magistrates, Justices of the Peace, Recorders, Coroners, Revising Barristers.

c. Barristers, Pleaders, Conveyancers, Attorneys, Proctors.

3. Administrative or Executive.

a. The Lords Commissioners of the Treasury; the Secretaries of State for Home, Foreign, and Colonial Affairs; the Chancellor and Comptroller of the Exchequer; the Privy Council, and the Privy Seal; the Board of Trade, the Board of Control, and the Board of Health; the Board of Inland Revenue, the Poor-Law Board, and the Board of Audit; the Commissioners of Woods and Forests; the Ministers and Officials in connection with the Army and Navy, the Post Office, and the Mint; the Inspectors of Prisons, Factories, Railways, Workhouses, Schools, and Lunatic Asylums; the Officers in connection with the Registration and Statistical Departments; and the other Functionaries appertaining to the Government at home.

b. The Ambassadors, Envoys Extraordinary, Ministers Plenipotentiary, Secretaries of Legation, Chargés d’Affaires, Consuls, and other Ministers and Functionaries appertaining to the Government abroad.

c. The Governors and Commanders of British Colonies and Settlements.

d. The Lord Lieutenants, Custodes Rotulorum, High and Deputy Sheriffs, High Bailiffs, High and Petty Constables, and other Functionaries of the Counties.

e. The Mayors, Aldermen, Common Councilmen, Chamberlains, Common Sergeants, Treasurers, Auditors, Assessors, Inspectors of Weights and Measures, and other Functionaries of the Cities or incorporated Towns.

f. The Churchwardens, the Commissioners of Sewers and Paving, the Select and Special Vestrymen, the Vestry Clerks, the Overseers or Guardians of the Poor, the Relieving Officers, the Masters of the Workhouses, the Beadles, and other Parochial Functionaries.

g. The Masters and Brethren of the Trinity Corporation, the Pier and Harbour Masters, Conservators of Rivers, and other Functionaries connected with Navigation, and the Trustees and Commissioners in connection with the Public Roads.

h. The Naval and Military Powers; as the Army, Navy, Marines, Militia, and Yeomanry.

i. The Civil Forces; as Policemen, Patrole, and Private Watchmen.

j. Sheriffs’ Officers, Bailiffs’ Followers, Sponging-house Keepers.

k. Governors of Prisons, Jailers, Turnkeys, Officers on board the Hulks and Transport Ships, Hangmen.

l. The Fiscal Forces; as the Coast Guard, Custom-house Officers, Excise Officers.

m. Collectors of Imposts; as Tax and Rate Collectors, Turnpike Men, Toll Collectors of Bridges and Markets, Collectors of Pier and Harbour dues, and Light, Buoy, and Beacon dues.

n. Guardians of special localities; as Rangers, and Park-keepers, Arcade-keepers, Street-keepers, Square-keepers, Bazaar-keepers, Gate and Lodge-keepers, Empty-house-keepers.

o. Conservators; as Curators of Museums, Librarians, Storekeepers, and others.

p. Protective Associations; as Insurance Companies against Loss by fire, shipwreck, storms, railway accidents, death of cattle, Life Assurance Societies, Provident or Benefit Clubs, Guarantee Societies, Trade Protection Societies, Fire Brigade and Fire-escape Men, Humane Society Men, and Officers of the Societies for the Suppression of Mendicity, Vice, and cruelty to Animals.

Servants, or those who contribute to our comfort or convenience by the performance of certain offices for us.

1. Private Servants, regularly engaged.

a. Stewards.

b. Farm Bailiffs.

c. Secretaries.

d. Amanuenses.

e. Companions.

f. Butlers.

g. Valets.

h. Footmen, Pages, and Hall Porters.

i. Coachmen, Grooms, “Tigers,” and Helpers at Stables.

j. Huntsmen and Whippers-in.

k. Kennelmen.

l. Gamekeepers.

m. Gardeners.

n. Housekeepers.

o. Ladies’ Maids.

p. Nursery Maids and Wet Nurses.

q. House Maids and Parlour Maids.

r. Cooks and Scullery Maids.

s. Dairy Maids.

t. Maids of all work.

2. Private Servants temporarily engaged.

a. Couriers.

b. Interpreters.

c. Monthly Nurses and Invalid Nurses.

d. Waiters at Parties.

e. Charwomen.

f. Knife, boot, window, and paint Cleaners, Pot scourers, Carpet beaters.

3. Public Servants.

a. Waiters at hotels and public gardens.

b. Masters of the Ceremonies.

c. Chamber-Maids.

d. Boots.

e. Ostlers.

f. Job Coachmen.

g. Post-boys.

h. Washerwomen.

i. Dustmen.

j. Sweeps.

k. Scavengers.

l. Nightmen.

m. Flushermen.

n. Turncocks.

o. Lamplighters.

p. Horse Holders.

q. Crossing Sweepers.

THOSE WHO CANNOT WORK.

V. Those that are provided for by some Public Institution.

A. The Inmates of Workhouses.

B. The Inmates of Prisons.

1. Debtors.

2. Criminals (Some of these, however, are made to work by the authorities).

C. The Inmates of Hospitals.

1. The Sick.

2. The Insane; as Lunatics and Idiots.

3. Veterans; as Greenwich and Chelsea Hospital men.

4. The Deserted Young; as the Foundling Hospital children.

D. The Inmates of Asylums and Almshouses.

1. The Afflicted; as the Deaf, and Dumb, and Blind.

2. The Destitute Young; as Orphans.

3. The Decayed Members of the several Trades or Sects.

a. Trade and Provident Asylums and Almshouses.

b. Sectarian Asylums and Almshouses—as for aged Jews, Widows of Clergymen, &c.

E. The Inmates of the several Refuges and Dormitories for the Houseless and Destitute.

VI. Those who are Unprovided for.

A. Those who are incapacitated from Want of Power.

1. Owing to their Age.

a. The Old.

b. The Young.

2. Owing to some Bodily Ailment.

a. The Sick.

b. The Crippled.

c. The Maimed.

d. The Paralyzed.

e. The Blind.

3. Owing to some Mental Infirmity.

a. The Insane.

b. The Idiotic.

c. The Untaught, or those who have never been brought up to any industrial occupation; as Widows and those who have “seen better days.”

B. Those who are incapacitated from Want of Means.

1. Having no tools; as is often the case with distressed carpenters.

2. Having no clothes; as servants when long out of a situation.

3. Having no stock-money; as impoverished street-sellers.

4. Having no materials; as the “used-up” garret or chamber masters in the boot and shoe or cabinet-making trade.

5. Having no place wherein to work; as when those who pursue their calling at home are forced to become the inmates of a nightly lodging-house.

C. Those who are incapacitated from Want of Employment.

1. Owing to a glut or stagnation in business; as among the cotton-spinners, the iron-workers, the railway-navigators, and the like.

2. Owing to a change in fashion; as in the button-making trade.

3. Owing to the introduction of machinery; as among the sawyers, hand-loom weavers, pillow-lace makers, threshers, and others.

4. Owing to the advent of the slack season; as among the tailors and mantua-makers, and drawn-bonnet-makers.

5. Owing to the continuance of unfavourable weather.

a. From the prevalence of rain; as street-sellers, and others.

b. From the prevalence of easterly winds; as dock-labourers.

6. Owing to the approach of winter; as among the builders, brickmakers, market-gardeners, harvest-men.

7. Owing to the loss of character.

a. Culpably; from intemperate habits, or misconduct of some kind.

b. Accidentally; as when a servant’s late master goes abroad, and a written testimonial is objected to.

THOSE WHO WILL NOT WORK.

VII. Vagrants or Tramps.

Under this head is included all that multifarious tribe of “sturdy rogues,” who ramble across the country during the summer, sleeping at the “casual wards” of the workhouses, and who return to London in the winter to avail themselves of the gratuitous lodgings and food attainable at the several metropolitan refuges.

VIII. Professional Beggars and their Dependents.

A. Naval and Military Beggars.

1. Turnpike Sailors.

2. Spanish Legion Men, &c.

3. Veterans.

B. “Distressed-Operative” Beggars.

1. Pretended Starved-out Manufacturers, as the Nottingham “Driz” or Lace-Men.

2. Pretended Unemployed Agriculturists.

3. Pretended Frozen-out Gardeners.

4. Pretended Hand-loom Weavers, and others deprived of their living by Machinery.

C. “Respectable” Beggars.

1. Pretended Broken-down Tradesmen, or Decayed Gentlemen.

2. Pretended Distressed Ushers, unable to take situation for want of clothes.

3. “Clean-Family Beggars” with children in very white pinafores, their faces newly washed, and their hair carefully brushed.

4. Ashamed Beggars, or those who “stand pad with a fakement” (remain stationary, holding a written placard), and pretend to hide their faces.

D. “Disaster” Beggars.

1. Shipwrecked Mariners.

2. Blown-up Miners.

3. Burnt-out Tradesmen.

4. Lucifer Droppers.

E. Bodily Afflicted Beggars.

1. Having real or pretended sores, vulgarly known as the “scaldrum dodge.”

2. Having swollen legs.

3. Being crippled, deformed, maimed, or paralyzed.

4. Being blind.

5. Being subject to fits.

6. Being in a decline, and appearing with bandages round the head.

7. “Shallow coves,” or those who exhibit themselves in the streets half clad, especially in cold weather.

F. Famished Beggars.

1. Those who chalk on the pavement, “I am starving.”

2. Those who “stand pad” with a small piece of paper similarly inscribed.

G. Foreign Beggars.

1. Frenchmen who stop passengers in the street and request to know if they can speak French, previous to presenting a written statement of their distress.

2. Pretended Destitute Poles.

3. Hindoos and Negroes, who stand shivering by the kerb.

H. Petty Trading Beggars.

1. Tract sellers.

2. Sellers of lucifers, boot-laces, cabbage-nets, tapes, and cottons.

⁂ The several varieties of beggars admit of being sub-divided into—

a. Patterers, or those who beg on the “blob,” that is, by word of mouth.

b. Screevers, or those who beg by screeving, that is, by written documents, setting forth imaginary cases of distress, such documents being either—

i. “Slums” (letters).

ii. “Fakements” (petitions).

I. The Dependents of Beggars.

1. Screevers Proper, or the writers of slums and fakements for those who beg by screeving.

2. Referees, or those who give characters to professional beggars when a reference is required.

IX. Cheats and their Dependents.

A. Those who Cheat the Government.

1. Smugglers defrauding the Customs.

2. “Jiggers” defrauding the Excise by working illicit stills, and the like.

B. Those who Cheat the Public.

1. Swindlers, defrauding those of whom they buy.

2. “Duffers” and “horse-chaunters,” defrauding those to whom they sell.

3. “Charley-pitchers” and other low gamblers, defrauding those with whom they play.

4. “Bouncers and Besters” defrauding, by laying wagers, swaggering, or using threats.

5. “Flatcatchers,” defrauding by pretending to find some valuable article—as Fawney or Ring-Droppers.

6. Bubble-Men, defrauding by instituting pretended companies—as Sham Next-of-Kin-Societies, Assurance and Annuity Offices, Benefit Clubs, and the like.

7. Douceur-Men, defrauding by offering for a certain sum to confer some boon upon a person as—

a. To procure Government Situations for laymen, or benefices for clergymen.

b. To provide Servants with Places.

c. To teach some lucrative occupation.

d. To put persons in possession of some information “to their advantage.”

8. Deposit-Men, defrauding by obtaining a certain sum as security for future work or some promised place of trust.

C. The Dependents of Cheats are—

1. “Jollies,” and “Magsmen,” or accomplices of the “Bouncers and Besters.”

2. “Bonnets,” or accomplices of Gamblers.

3. Referees, or those who give false characters to swindlers and others.

X. Thieves and their Dependents.

A. Those who Plunder with Violence.

1. “Cracksmen”—as Housebreakers and Burglars.

2. “Rampsmen,” or Footpads.

3. “Bludgers,” or Stick-slingers, plundering in company with prostitutes.

B. Those who “Hocus,” or Plunder their Victims when Stupified.

1. “Drummers,” or those who render people insensible.

a. By handkerchiefs steeped in chloroform.

b. By drugs poured into liquor.

2. “Bug-hunters,” or those who go round to the public-houses and plunder drunken men.

C. Those who Plunder by Manual Dexterity, by Stealth, or by Breach of Trust.

1. “Mobsmen,” or those who plunder by manual dexterity—as the “light-fingered gentry.”

a. “Buzzers,” or those who abstract handkerchiefs and other articles from gentlemen’s pockets.

i. “Stook-buzzers,” those who steal handkerchiefs.

ii. “Tail-Buzzers,” those who dive into coat-pockets for sneezers (snuff-boxes,) skins and dummies (purses and pocket-books).

b. “Wires,” or those who pick ladies’ pockets.

c. “Prop-nailers,” those who steal pins and brooches.

d. “Thimble-screwers,” those who wrench watches from their guards.

e. “Shop-lifters,” or those who purloin goods from shops while examining articles.

2. “Sneaksmen,” or those who plunder by means of stealth.

a. Those who purloin goods, provisions, money, clothes, old metal, &c.

i. “Drag Sneaks,” or those who steal goods or luggage from carts and coaches.

ii. “Snoozers,” or those who sleep at railway hotels, and decamp with some passenger’s luggage or property in the morning.

iii. “Star-glazers,” or those who cut the panes out of shop-windows.

iv. “Till Friskers,” or those who empty tills of their contents during the absence of the shopmen.

v. “Sawney-Hunters,” or those who go purloining bacon from cheesemongers’ shop-doors.

vi. “Noisy-racket Men,” or those who steal china and glass from outside of china-shops.

vii. “Area Sneaks,” or those who steal from houses by going down the area steps.

viii. “Dead Lurkers,” or those who steal coats and umbrellas from passages at dusk, or on Sunday afternoons.

ix. “Snow Gatherers,” or those who steal clean clothes off the hedges.

x. “Skinners,” or those women who entice children and sailors to go with them and then strip them of their clothes.

xi. “Bluey-Hunters,” or those who purloin lead from the tops of houses.

xii. “Cat and Kitten Hunters,” or those who purloin pewter quart and pint pots from the top of area railings.

xiii. “Toshers,” or those who purloin copper from the ships along shore.

xiv. Mudlarks, or those who steal pieces of rope and lumps of coal from among the vessels at the river-side.

b. Those who steal animals.

i. Horse Stealers.

ii. Sheep, or “Woolly-bird,” Stealers.

iii. Deer Stealers.

iv. Dog Stealers.

v. Poachers, or Game Stealers.

vi. “Lady and Gentlemen Racket Men,” or those who steal cocks and hens.

vii. Cat Stealers, or those who make away with cats for the sake of their skins and bones.

c. Those who steal dead bodies—as the “Resurrectionists.”

3. Those who plunder by breach of trust.

a. Embezzlers, or those who rob their employers.

i. By receiving what is due to them, and never accounting for it.

ii. By obtaining goods in their employer’s name.

iii. By purloining money from the till, or goods from the premises.

b. Illegal Pawners.

i. Those who pledge work given out to them by employers.

ii. Those who pledge blankets, sheets, &c., from lodgings.

c. Dishonest servants, those who make away with the property of their masters.

d. Bill Stealers, or those who purloin bills of exchange entrusted to them, to get discounted.

e. Letter Stealers.

D. “Shoful Men,” or those who Plunder by Means of Counterfeits.

1. Coiners or fabricators of counterfeit money.

2. Forgers of bank notes.

3. Forgers of checks and acceptances.

4. Forgers of wills.

E. Dependents of Thieves.

1. “Fences,” or receivers of stolen goods.

2. “Smashers,” or utterers of base coin or forged notes.

XI. Prostitutes and their Dependents.

A. Professional Prostitutes.

1. Seclusives, or those who live in private houses or apartments.

a. Kept Mistresses.

b. “Prima Donnas,” or those who belong to the “first class,” and live in a superior style.

2. Convives, or those who live in the same house with a number of others.

a. Those who are independent of the mistress of the house.

b. Those who are subject to the mistress of a brothel.

i. “Board Lodgers,” or those who give a portion of what they receive to the mistress of the brothel, in return for their board and lodging.

ii. “Dress Lodgers,” or those who give either a portion or the whole of what they get to the mistress of the brothel in return for their board, lodging, and clothes.

3. Those who live in low lodging-houses.

4. Sailors’ and soldiers’ women.

5. Park women, or those who frequent the parks at night, and other retired places.

6. Thieves’ women, or those who entrap men into bye streets for the purpose of robbery.