The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 294: what you’re looking at

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

274 THE COURT OF LONDON quantities of left-off clothes, by which they make as much sometimes as twelve or fifteen shillings per day. This is one of the most lucrative systems of beggary; but it of course succeeds best in the cold weather, when the beggars manage to shiver and shake like aspens, and thus attract a vast amount of sympathy. The system of hawking is also excellent; many small shopkeepers do not make in a day so much as some of these itinerant venders. Take for instance, a pair of knit cotton braces; the hawker buys them at fourpence, and sells them at one shilling and two- pence, or at all events a shilling. He puts on the extra halfpence, expecting to be beaten down. | ‘““ Beggars not only provide themselves with lists of the residences of benevolent people in town and country, but also have lists of all charitable societies and institutions, to which they constantly apply in the winter, such as for coals, potatoes, etc., which they always sell as soon as obtained for half their value. Women get baby-linen, tickets of admission to lying-in-hospitals, etc., all of which they immediately sell for what they can get. ‘‘Of an evening in London, the beggars meet at their favourite haunts, where they eat and drink of the best. At night they generally stay indoors and get drunk; but a few of them dress themselves out in decent style and go to the cheap concerts or to low gaming-houses. In Petti- coat Lane, Whitechapel, there are several low gaming- houses, kept by Jews; and as it is chiefly here that the beggars sell the clothes which they obtain when out on the shallow, so it is hither they come to lose their ill-got money again at the gaming-table. Nearly all the Jews in Petticoat Lane are receivers of stolen goods, or fences; one or two of them keep fence-shops up at the West End as branch establishments, and even sometimes send large quantities of stolen property abroad. There are a great many publicans who buy stolen property, and then sell it again at a profit to the Jew fences. Some of these Jews go into the country once or twice a year, travel from town to town, and sell to country-dealers the plunder of the metropolis. There are many Christian jewellers and silversmiths who buy property direct from _ thieves; and it is common enough with refiners, who never ask any questions at all. The wealthiest Jew fences have CORMICIOOKS (€(0)