So there is a continual procession through Adullam Street; very little
good enters it, and it is certain that less good passes out.

Where do its temporary inhabitants go? To prisons, to workhouses, to
hospitals, to common lodging-houses, to shelters, to the Embankment and
to death.

Although those who seek sanctuary in Adullam Street are already
inhabitants of the underworld, a brief sojourn in it dooms them to lower
depths. I suppose there must be places of temporary residence for the
sort of people that inhabit it, for they must have shelter somewhere.
But I commend this kind of property to the searching eyes of the local
authorities and the police.

But furnished apartments can tell another tale when they are not
situated in Adullam Street. For sometimes a struggling widow, or wife
with a sick husband, or a young married couple seek to let furnished
apartments as a legitimate means of income. When they do so, let them
beware of the underworld folk who happen to be better clothed and more
specious than their fellows, or they will bitterly rue it.

Very little payment will they get. Couples apparently married and
apparently respectable, but who are neither, are common enough, who are
continually on the look-out for fresh places of abode, where they may
continue their depredation.

They are ready enough with a deposit, but that is all the money they
mean to part with, and that has probably been raised by robbing their
last landlady. They can give references if required, and show receipts,
too, from their last lodgings, for they carry rent-books made out
by themselves and fully paid up for the purpose. They are adepts at
obtaining entrance, and, once in, they remain till they have secured
another place and marked another prey.

Meanwhile their poor victims suffer in kind and money, and are brought
nearer destitution. I have frequently known a week's rent paid with the
part proceeds of articles stolen from either the furnished apartments,
or some other part of the house just entered.

I could tell some sad stories of suffering and distress brought to
struggling and decent people by these pests, of whom a great number are
known to the police.

And so the merry game goes on, for while vampires are sucking the impure
blood of the wretched dwellers in Adullam Street lodgings, the dwellers
in Adullam Street in their turn prey on the community at large.

Meanwhile the honest and unfortunate poor can scarcely find