Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-05-21 00:00:00

)rotessional commr

the gip
particulars, in reading the accounts of the various
tricks and stratagems of the rogues of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, we seem to be reading the
frauds of London and other large towns in the
nineteenth.

and in thi

:cation, rest

mbling
as well as in many other

In fact, much as we may admire the dexterity of
modern swindling, scarcely a single trick is of recent

adroitness in the reigns of James and

cut purses, we learn, for instance (purses were then
worn outside the clothes,) used instruments of the
finest steel, made by the choicest workmen of Italy.
There were schools, too, in London, where the rising
generation were regularly trained in every variety
of fraud. One way in which the children were
taught to pick a pocket adroitly is said to be still
practised in the metropolis. (1.) A pocket, or purse,
was suspended from the ceiling, and hung round
with small bells, and the young learner was required
to finger and empty it, without ringing the slightest
alarm. All the common knaveries of the town, in
short, were the same with which we are made
familiar by our police reports every day. Rustic
squires coining to London were frequently fleeced, or
worse handled, and sent home to horrify their fire-
sides with &lei of metropolitan ingenuity. They
had gazed at some London marvel, and their purses
had vanished the while, as if at the touch of fairy
fingers. They had been hailed by city kinsmen, of
whom they had never heard, and to whom they were
persuaded to entrust their property, but their cousins
had cozened them, and disappeared with their goods.
Rings and gems of price had glittered in their path ;
and, just as they picked them up, some bystander
claimed a share in the spoil, and was bought off by
'a considerable sum 'of money, and then the golden
gaud became brags, and the diamond worthless•
crystal. Kind gentlewomen, pitying their ignorance,
had directed them to comfortable lodgings ; but at
midnight the window had softly opened—hooks and

pincers had entered—'and their clothes had risen and
departed. With a blanket wrapt round them, they
had stolen at an early hour to the inn at which their
horses had been left, intending to mount and flee ;
but their cousins of yesterday had been there before
them, and had carried off their cattle by some
plausible tale or token.

While.the streets of London, and even the inferior
towns, were tilled with sharpers who practised such
tricks as those on travellers, the highways were
equally. infested with robbers. The mounted high-
wayman, a marauder known to our generation only
from books, was to be found on every main road. (2.)
Among the chief places of 'resort were Salisbury
Plain and Gadshill in Kent ; the latter place having
been long.of Such repute in this way that Shakspere
selected it as the scene , of Fallstaff's achievement
The Cathbric
they approached Epping. Forest, even in the broai

ize sc

mbled wher

day:liglit. Seamen who had Just been paid off a
Chatham were often compelled to deliver their purse
Gadshill. The same historian from whom I have

just quoted, goes on to state, that the public
authoritieB were at a loss how to deal with those

That at one tir

a pardon

offered to a robber if he would give up

some rough diamonds, of immense value, which h
had take 4 when he stopped t
while a: Wort thri

Harw

appeared another

proclamation, warning tlin innl

pers that the eye

govermout ryas upon them

Their crimin