The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 108: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

? : ‘ aber A LET el TY ie ayes CaaS i . “. a a te THE KINCHIN - KEN 85 of both sexes, — boy-thieves and prostitutes of the most tender age; and no phase of human depravity was exhibited in more appalling hues even at the Beggar’s Staff than at the sink of profligacy of which we are speaking. Let the reader picture to himself a small room, filled with rude tables and ruder forms; then, an inner chamber of smaller dimensions still, and with the door of communication removed so as to afford uninterrupted egress and ingress between the two, the ceilings blackened with smoke, and the walls stained with innumerable spots of grease; and about three dozen boys and girls enjoying themselves in a variety of ways by the light of two or three pitiful candles. The atmosphere of the den was rendered pestiferous with the odour of strong onions, the smell of tobacco, and the fetid exhalations from the filthy garments and persons of the profligate horde. The ages of the inmates of these rooms averaged from ten to sixteen; and the boys all belonged to an organization having a captain at its head, and bearing the name of the ‘“‘ Kinchin-Prigs.”’ This chief was present on the occasion which we are now especially describing. He was lolling on a form, with a short pipe in his mouth, his right arm around the waist of a dirty drab of a girl who was his avowed mis- tress, and his left hand grasping a chairman’s hammer, which he rapped energetically upon the table whenever he con- sidered the noise to be growing too clamorous. Great def- erence was paid to the Kinchin-Grand, as this youth of sixteen was denominated; and certainly if the most hang- dog countenance ever seen, uniting in all its lineaments every sign of dissipation with inveterate profligacy, low cunning, and a certain expression of villainous shrewdness, —if such were the qualifications necessary for the chief of this pestiferous society, then did the Kinchin-Grand well ~ deserve the ‘‘ bad eminence ”’ to which he had risen. We may as well observe that his paramour was about his own age. Her face was pale and sickly with the vicious courses which she led, though her form was bloated and pre- cociously matured from the same cause; and her features indicated a compound of low cunning and brazen assurance. She was known amongst her associates as ‘‘ Shickster Sal,” the titular portion of the name being acquired from the fact that this wretched young girl had been well and even ten- (C(O) anil LA@O (C(O)