ey
waited till night and then rowed of to half-laden lighters and helped
themselves. Sometimes they went on board the ships as stevedores and
tossed bales overboard to a confederate in a boat below; or they were
coopers who carried under their aprons bags which they filled with
sugar from the casks; or they took with them bladders for stealing the
rum. Some waded about in the mud at low tide to catch anything that
was thrown to them from the ships. Some obtained admission to the ship
as rat-catchers, and in that capacity were able to carry away plunder
previously concealed by their friends; some, called _scuffle-hunters_,
stood on the quays as porters, carrying bags under their long white
aprons in which to hide whatever they could pilfer. It was estimated
that, taking one year with another, the depredations from the shipping
in the Port of London amounted to nearly a quarter of a million
sterling every year. All this was carried on by the riverside people.
But, to make robbery successful, there must be accomplices,
receiving-houses, fences, a way to dispose of the goods. In this case
the thieves had as their accomplices the whole of the population of
the quarter where they lived. All the public-houses were secret
markets attended by grocers and other tradesmen where the booty was
sold by auction, and, to escape detection, fictitious bills and
accounts were given and received. The thieves were known among
themselves by fancy names, which at once indicated the special line of
each and showed the popularity of the calling; they were bold pirates,
night plunderers, light horsemen, heavy horsemen, mud-larks, game
lightermen, scuffle-hunters and gangsmen. Their thefts enabled them to
live in the coarse profusion of meat and drink, which was all they
wanted; yet they were always poor because their plunder was knocked
down for so little; they saved nothing; and they were always egged on
to new robberies by the men who sold them drinks, by the women who
took their money from them, and by the honest merchants who attended
the secret markets.

I dwell upon the past because the present is its natural legacy. When
you read of the efforts now being made to raise the living, or at
least to prevent them from sinking any lower, remember that they are
what the dead made them. We inherit more than the wealth of our
ancestors; we inherit the consequences of their misdeeds. It is a most
expensive thing to suffer the people to drop and sin