The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1884-10-23

Parts Of tho CITY Given Over To Young
Ruffians

Parts Of tho CITY Given Over to Young
HUMANS
The whsle Of the very large district
extending from Duncan terrace, south
OF the Angel, Islington. around to
Kings Cross, northward, and on by
Guilford street, to the borders of the
holy land" of Russell and the adjoining
squares, writes correspondent to the
London Standard, is infested-and has
been for years-with both day and night
rufiianism. This composition of it takes
the form of gangs of "unlicked cubs" of
from IA to ~ years of age, whose fond
amusement is to pelt people with hard
clay, and break he windows with stones.
Neither man, woman, nor child can es-
cape them. If they are demonstrated
with by passefby, they at once fol-
Low him, yelling in his ears the now
established boy yell of the streets; and
II he happens to reside near their meet
ing quarters, they wait for him every
time he goes into or leaves his house.
Our correspondent knows an elderly
gentleman who has been prosecuted
tortured Is more correct expression
IN this way for many months; indeed,
to such an unbearable extent that he is
endeayoring to find somewhere within
the metropolitan area where he can
come home from his days professional
work and be In quiet. He told m.
when they we're speaking upon the sub
ject last week that the roughs had pa
raded with their yell-chorus up and
down in front of his sitting-room win
dow. When they are in gangs of three
and four they have girls with them who
give the signals for the approach Of
police and of victims. They never go
into the squares, the reason being, as
two of them said, 20, we should get
locked up If we went to have our games
there" M and his friends, however,
who are equally ratepayers in the old
suburban neighborhoods, are to have
their evening lives made wretched be-
cause they do not live "in the squares"
and all this with police army of eleven
thousand men. A friend of his, who
resides in another district, says that he
has had conversations with the police
upon the subject, and they have ex-
pressed the strongest indignation that
their powers are so crippled in the mat-
ter, and, as if to demonstrate that Grip
y
door, one of gang with two girls went
by. They looked at us as they passed,
and when they got about fifty yards on
they set up their unearthy yells, end
ing with shouts of defiant laughter, and
took to their heels. The utterly unac-
countable leniency of the police mag
istrates was clearly shown to lie ut
the bottom of such shocking state of
things-a state that would be impos-
sible in the smallest town or village in
England. Surely the overburdened
ratepayers of London are entitled to
the overflow of some of that consider
alton which is now costing millions in
the land of the pyramids. A gentle
man, in another case, has repeatedly TO
walk on sentry in front of his own house
to keep these juvenile ruffans from
making his door-porch their headquar-
tiers. He said to me: "They have
broken some of my windows for what
am doing now, and have further
threatened me. L have spoken to the
police, but"-and here he shrugged his
shoulders as yelling chorus opened
out not fifty feet away from us.