The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-12 00:00:00

satisfied, very considerably to popularize it. • The
authoress has advanced from a consideration of
" the general" in " Female Life in Prison"—to a con-
aideration of " the particular" in these very dread-
ful but also very affecting " Memoirs of Jane
Cameron." The Female Convict, so entitled, has
her wretched history recounted thus mercifully
under a pseudonym. Dates and localities are also
here transformed—as a kindly shelter of the
poor creature referred to from the chance of
identification. Otherwise the narrative is, from
first to last, miserably veracious. It so assumes to
,e, And we needs must credit the validity of the
claim thus put forth. The work has a purpose. It
undertakes to show, and indeed we may assert at
once that it does quite comprehensibly demon-
state that "the poor and ignorant are led into crime
and are in innumerable instances taught to regard
it as simply a business, the evil nature of which
is to them not apparent." Nor is this all—tor
the thread cf the narrative, while affording a clue
to the mystery of temptation, leads the practical
philanthropist on, thereby, to the detection of what
ought, in truth, to constitute the first endeavour
made by him in order to bring about the criminal's
reclamation. The unfortunate, hero called by the
name of Jane Cameron, it should be said, at once, is
before the close of the book, veritably reclaimed.
She dies, but dies penitent. Transformed from a
heinous offender, from a thief and a prostitute, into
a repentant sinner, who enacts, in her later years,
the humble part of an honest and virtuous domestic,
Jane Cameron, as we read of her here, at the ter-
mination of her adventures, in and out of prison,
remains (we are told) "to the last a good servant
and a faithful friend. She died," it is added by
the authoress, " truly penitent for all past sins,
and truly thankful for all the mercies which had
been vouchsafed to her. This was the last news
of Jane Cameron the last and the best."
Having quoted which simple, but most touching
comment upon the poor Female Convict's life
and death, we may say at once confidently enough
that—although the history of Jane Cameron is at
times very frightful indeed as a revelation of the
filthiest depravity, and of the most utter
abandonment, it may, in the N.ecollection of
her death, be regarded at any rate with some
sentiments of consolation, even at its end of actual
satisfaction. Born and bred in Croiley's Land, in
that swarming and festering back slum of the vast
and populous city of Glasgow, called the New
Venue', Jane becomes at a very tender age, indeed,
one of the 240,000 children who are known to be
given up to a life of theft in the various towns and
cities of the United Kingdom. One of that little
infant army of 240,000 thieving children ! The
fact that there is fully that number of young
criminals scattered among our population is unde-
niable. It is proved beyond a doubt by reliable
statistics. And—one of that youthful swarm, one of
that childish host of the depraved to the number of
240,000 in all, one of those ill-fated little ones, not
brought up, as Charles Lamb has it, but dragged
up, is Jane Cameron ! When a mere toddle of five
or six she is—what shall we call it ?—a confirmed
cadger. At twelve she has as her " cash"—a boy of
fourteen. When, herself, barely but fifteen she is
already a mother. "I didna think muckle o' the
wee bairn the first nicht," she says, " but on
the second day I loved it awfully !" Ah,
the poor soul ! but her " wee bairn" dies, and
therewith " dies out with the child she had loved,"
the little spark of her own better nature! Her first
fall had come to her from that source of evil to so
many children elsewhere than in the purlieus of the
Glasgow Vennel—the dancing saloons! The low
penny dancing saloons called in the squallid Glasgie
Life—
THE SIEELS I

Entrance to these dancing " skeels" is generally by an
unlighted close, up a common stair to a large room on the
first floor. The door of this room—on which "Dancing
here" is legibly inscribed—is kept by a scowling individual
—probably the proprietor of the establishment—who receives
the pennies of his young patrons, unlocks• the door, admits
them, and locks them in.
In this room, lighted by gas or candles according to the
taste or means of the proprietors, a hundred or a hundred
and fifty are speedily assembled—ranged around the room
on forms placed against the wall. They are of all ages
from the boy and girl of seven or eight years old to the men
and women of two or three and twenty, but the majority are
girls and boys averaging from 12 to 15 years. The boys
are chiefly apprentices or young thieves ; the girls are of the
usual poor class—more than usually poor perhaps—throe-
fourths of them without shoes and stockings, and all of
them bonnetless, as is usual amongst the Scotch girls. The
boys are several degrees removed from clean, but the
"lassies," as they are generally termed, are, without an
exception, bright-faced, glossy-haired damsels, who have
evidently been at no ordinary pains to render themselves
attractive and presentable. Here and there is evident a
little effort at finery in the shape of a pair of ear-rings, or
a necklace of sham coral, and their poor and scanty gar-
ments are in many cases destitute of any signs of ragged-