Part 1 (2/2)

At this time of year, there were only seven hours of daylight, and nightfall arrived by four in the afternoon. Under the cover of Glasgow's darkest recesses, the fated duo hatched a plan to celebrate the holidays with clean clothes and fresh lamb. Theft had become their lifeline. Four friends from the streets were in on the plan, and together they targeted a gabled mansion in the rich part of town, where for several days not a single candle had flickered. The owner, a widow named Elizabeth Barbour, had likely traveled from her Fife Place home for holiday merry-making at a country estate.1 After all, it was b.l.o.o.d.y Christmas. After all, it was b.l.o.o.d.y Christmas.

As the clocks marked midnight, every ounce of Agnes's cunning centered on the task at hand. It was time to accomplish something more than mere survival in Scotland's toughest town. Since her father had disappeared and her mother had basically abandoned her, Agnes had managed to get by and make a few coins singing ballads near the Glasgow Green. Although she could neither read nor write, she'd remembered the songs her mother taught her and put together a repertoire for impromptu street performances. At twelve, the lithe la.s.sie with a bit of a voice often attracted a small crowd of pa.s.sersby, but the day had been too miserable to sing.

Friend and protector Janet Houston had taken the ever-hopeful ballad singer under her wing because she knew firsthand what it took to survive in Glasgow's unforgiving alleys. Both Janet's mother and father had pa.s.sed away. The thirteen-year-old sometimes slept at her aunt Gibson's flat, but that was not always an option; Janet also relied on a network of small-time neighborhood thieves who managed to steal enough to pay for food and shelter. They often banded together to pilfer food from street vendors, but tonight they gathered around the Glasgow Green to gamble on the higher stakes of a house break.

Creeping along the ghostly edges of the tightly built stone structures, the co-conspirators made their way through the wynds, the winding pa.s.sages that would deliver them to the city's upscale West End. The girls approached the mansion's iron gate and gave a quick glance up and down the lane. This was the moment when they would make their move. The neatly swept neighborhood seemed nearly deserted. Looking skyward toward the graceful lancet windows, Agnes paced nervously and pulled her wet shawl tighter. This had to be easier work than picking the pockets of a ”groggified” pedestrian or pilfering meat from a sharp-eyed butcher. It seemed simple enough. Breaking a rear kitchen window provided the typical point of entry for small-time burglars. A quick smash of the pane and they'd be in, out, and gone. The scraggly housebreakers held their breath as the sound of shattering gla.s.s settled into the night. They waited for a moment, ears tuned, hearts pounding, ready to flee at the first sound of a footstep.

The older, more street-savvy Janet reached through the jagged gla.s.s. She lifted the bolt and unlatched the door. Ever so carefully she leaned her shoulder into the heavy ash frame and cracked it open, sending the smoky smell of mutton into the damp night air. The well-stocked larder was bolted shut to prevent the maids from stealing. Hunger, all too familiar, would need to wait. Out of the wind in the still of the mansion, fully charged with adrenaline, the girls set to work. Gold watches, silver spoons, silk scarves, and fas.h.i.+onable gloves were the prime targets for young thieves. There was no time to ponder how much the wealthy could afford to lose. The gang of six quickly s.n.a.t.c.hed up items they could hide inside their shawls and sell unquestioned at the p.a.w.nshop. They had ten minutes, at most, to complete the heist.

Mission completed, the nervous trespa.s.sers darted through the swinging back gate, confident that this was going to be a holiday they would enjoy. They were wrong, terribly wrong. Agnes McMillan, Janet Houston, and the rest of the troop charged straight into the grasp of a waiting constable, who knew all too well what the sound of breaking gla.s.s meant. They must have been novices. Experienced thieves took the time to learn the regular route for police patrols and took advantage of a force too lean to keep up with the rising tide of Glasgow crime.

Flushed and gasping for air, Agnes ”lied with a latchet,” the Scottish term for telling a big fib. She did her best to talk her way out of being trapped with the others, but there was no escape. According to Glasgow court records, the grey-eyed waif told the officer that her name was Agnes Reddie, perhaps out of shame, or out of naive desire that a different name would protect her from wearing the chains that rattled in his pocket. This was the first arrest for the pink-cheeked street urchin, but she had already faced off against bad tidings more times than she could count. She would confront this latest predicament with Janet at her side.

Goosedubbs Street.

Agnes McMillan was born to an age of extremes in social cla.s.s, politics, and physical environment. The years leading to her parents' marriage had been tangled in one national disaster after another. As Mary Henderson and Michael McMillan moved into adulthood, climate, political upheaval, and geography conspired against their future.

The year 1815 opened with the promise of peace when Britain ended its three-year war with America on February 18. Any euphoria, however, was short-lived. That March, Napoleon returned to power and terrorized Europe yet again. Michael McMillan, like thousands of young Scots, was conscripted under the command of the Duke of Wellington and the Seventh Coalition. Thankfully, by June the coalition had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. Unfortunately, as one war ended, a battle of a different sort exploded.

On a remote Indonesian island called Sumbawa, the jungle grew silent and the ground began to shudder as Mt. Tambora spewed its molten heart into the atmosphere. Though it occurred five years before Agnes's birth, the most powerful eruption in ten thousand years, and the largest ever recorded, changed the world's climate and magnified the struggle her parents would face to put bread on the table. The ma.s.sive surge of volcanic ash circling the globe could be neither stopped nor controlled. When Michael McMillan returned to Glasgow from the Belgium battlefields in 1816, brown snow fell throughout Europe. It was ”the year without a summer.” Birds fell frozen from the sky. Crops failed all across the British Isles, and families went to bed hungry night after night. ”Bread or blood” became their battle cry as food riots broke out, protesting the skyrocketing price of wheat.

Amid this chaos and uncertainty, Mary Henderson fell in love with Michael McMillan. Many young women, including Mary, married after the return of the soldiers, prompting a baby boom. This population explosion was ill-timed to coincide with an implosion of the British economy, but Michael was lucky and found a steady job working for the railroad.

Scottish citizens were part of Great Britain's kingdom, joined by the Act of Union in 1707 and subject to the laws of Parliament. Mary and Michael McMillan would certainly have despaired over their daughter's future had they known how people like themselves were described in a report to Parliament on administration of the Poor Laws in Scotland: ”The people who dwell in those quarters of the city are sunk to the lowest possible state of personal degradation in whom no elevated idea can be expected to arise, and who regard themselves, from the hopelessness of their condition, as doomed to a life of wretchedness and crime. . . . They nightly issue to disseminate disease and to pour upon the town every species of abomination and crime.”2 Agnes's parents were likely spared this prediction because nearly all the poor were illiterate. Agnes's parents were likely spared this prediction because nearly all the poor were illiterate.

Agnes was born on September 11, 1820, in a tenement flat on Goosedubbs Street, a narrow lane in the center of Glasgow's worst slum. It was a gruesome affair, a.s.sisted by a midwife who would not have washed her hands nor cleaned the dingy muslin in which Agnes was wrapped. A woman's strength in surviving childbirth bode well for a baby born in the pre-Victorian era. Twenty percent of mothers died in labor.

In stark contrast to most new citizens, the future Queen Victoria was birthed with the a.s.sistance of a female obstetrician and several attending doctors. Baby Victoria entered the world ”as plump as a partridge”3 the year before Agnes was born and held the honor of being the first member of the royal family vaccinated against smallpox. the year before Agnes was born and held the honor of being the first member of the royal family vaccinated against smallpox.

As a parent, Mary McMillan carried the additional responsibilities of a factory laborer and was expected to be on her feet for fourteen-hour s.h.i.+fts throughout her pregnancy. A woman who worked in a mill since childhood commonly paid the price of a narrow and deformed pelvis, which made labor difficult and increased infant mortality. This deformity was caused by the stress of standing without movement coupled with malnutrition. As Mary stumbled toward what she hoped would be a better future, the only work available endangered her health and the life of her unborn child.

Like her co-workers, Mary McMillan returned to work two weeks after giving birth, fearful of losing a prized job. Some mothers were allowed to bring their infants to the mill, tied in a sling and quieted with a pacifier made from a dirty rag soaked in milk and water. Agnes may have been cared for by an elderly neighbor or by a youngster unable to find employment. Reliable child care was rare and unaffordable for most parents, but the poor looked out for one another and invited their young neighbors in for porridge or bread whenever they had an extra morsel to share.

From an early age, ”weans,” as children were called, often spent their days alone inside a one-room flat while their parents worked. Toddlers were given ”pap” to eat, a watery paste made from bread and water. Some mothers used laudanum, a cheap and readily available derivative of opium, to drug their children during the day. An ounce cost the same as a pint of beer and suppressed hunger as it fueled an addiction. Others silenced crying babies with G.o.dfrey's Cordial, a mixture of opium, sa.s.safras, brandy, caraway seeds, and treacle. Gin was another widely used comforter, an all-purpose soother from cradle to grave, as cheap as beer and sold on every street corner to young and old alike. Not until the twentieth century was the purchase of alcohol limited to adults. Liquor often provided the main source of calories for entire families, and it was safer to drink than the tainted water from the river.

Peeking out onto Goosedubbs Street as a five-year-old on her own, Agnes saw a world of cobblestone and brick, full of misery and manure. Coal particles stung her eyes at every blink. Each sip of water she drank from the brackish public well carried the risk of dysentery or typhoid fever. She and everyone else who lived near the mills coughed out pieces of black grit breathed in from Glasgow's raging industrial fires. Neighbors overhead tossed their garbage out the window onto the walkway. Most had witnessed some unfortunate soul drop dead in the street or on the job. The grey-eyed five-year-old had already proven to be lucky, since half the Scottish children born in 1820 had already been laid in the ground by their parents. In the slums, dunghills and raw sewage blanketed the crowded s.p.a.ce with a sticky black glaze. This was Agnes's playground and schoolyard.

Children dashed around the wynds playing tag, hide-and-seek, and peever-the Scottish version of hopscotch. Boys picked up sticks to bat whatever they could hit in the air. An old barrel hoop started a contest for who could spin it the farthest. Street waste offered an abundance of possibilities for games and entertainment. Clever mothers sewed dolls from sc.r.a.ps of cloth. Discarded shoe heels, hammered with nails resembling eyes and a mouth, formed the perfect face for the doll. Pieces of rope were s.n.a.t.c.hed up for skipping along the bank of the River Clyde. Nothing went unused, and nearly everything was used again and again with renewed purpose.

Among the laboring cla.s.s, a child's role included the duty of earning a living. By age seven, Agnes would have been expected to contribute to the McMillan household income. Every penny mattered. Children her age, and younger, worked full time as chimney sweeps or factory workers, hired for the ability to reach small crevices and machine parts. Weans sometimes earned more than their parents because of the market value attached to their small size. Mine owners employed five- and six-year-olds to crawl through muddy sc.u.m deep inside the shafts and scurry back with a heavy load tied over their shoulders.

Hunger and hopelessness incited families to commit unthinkable acts. Some parents relied on punishment to make their children earn money or commit a crime, whatever it took to keep the family afloat. Five-year-olds were forced to st.i.tch gloves until the midnight hour. Six-year-olds were booted into the streets and ordered to steal a pocketbook or grab a loaf of bread. Small bodies with fast legs made good criminals. Other parents made valiant attempts to protect their sons and daughters from miscreant street influences, sometimes hiding their clothing so they could not venture outside.

Most Glasgow families lived in poverty. Even with two incomes, subsistence wages were not enough to lift a family out of dest.i.tution. Absent the availability of homegrown meat or vegetables, the average city dweller spent at least 60 percent of earnings on food, some spending up to 90 percent. Members of the laboring cla.s.s, like the McMillans, lived on oatmeal for breakfast and potatoes for dinner. Bread, beer, and lard rounded out their diet. Luxury items like milk, b.u.t.ter, cheese, or a piece of pork were rarely purchased. The largest meal portions were reserved for Michael McMillan, the primary breadwinner, especially when he could afford meat. When food ran short, mothers and children were expected to go without and sacrifice for the survival of the household.

A Glasgow father spent very little time in the home. When his s.h.i.+ft ended late into the evening, he generally headed straight for the flash house to ”swallow a hare” at the pub. Workmates in tow, he drank heartily into the wee hours. Glasgow taverns, one for every fourteen people, guaranteed escape from the bleakness of a one-room flat. ”Drunken statistics” published in the Scotsman Scotsman revealed that Glasgow residents drank more than five times the amount of their London counterparts because of worse housing and less a.s.sistance for Scotland's poor. Like their parents, the young took solace under alcohol's haze, as described by a fourteen-year-old stonecutter: ”Usquebaugh (whiskey) was simply happiness doled out by the gla.s.s and sold by the gill.” revealed that Glasgow residents drank more than five times the amount of their London counterparts because of worse housing and less a.s.sistance for Scotland's poor. Like their parents, the young took solace under alcohol's haze, as described by a fourteen-year-old stonecutter: ”Usquebaugh (whiskey) was simply happiness doled out by the gla.s.s and sold by the gill.”4 The comfort of the bottle expanded Glasgow's generation of abandoned children. Police commissions investigating the cause of juvenile delinquency in the early nineteenth century linked alcoholic parents to criminal children. ”It is likely that drunkenness was often the result of indigence rather than simply baccha.n.a.lian pleasures. Many families of juvenile delinquents seem to have been engaged in a fight between dest.i.tution and respectability in the struggle to keep their heads above water from day to day.”5 Among the poor and middle cla.s.s, it was a woman's duty to try to protect the family from the lure of the bottle, to ensure that a man's paycheck wasn't spent entirely at the pub. On payday, she would wait, children in hand, along the rail tracks or outside the factory exit. Money spent on prost.i.tutes was another problem. Marriage in the Regency era was a loose concept at best, fidelity an uncommon one. As unemployment rose, so, too, did wife beating. If a woman found the courage to take her mate to court, he claimed that she had been drinking, fully aware that drunken wives could be gaoled by their husbands' testimony. Desertion was commonplace among men. Without warning, many ran away from the Glasgow tenements in search of better employment or an easier life.

These were the stresses that robbed childhoods from the thousands of Scottish children who ended up on the street or in a factory. Agnes McMillan was no different. Her father abandoned the family early in her life. She never learned why he left, but there are many possible explanations. Railway men worked fifteen-hour s.h.i.+fts, seven days a week, with only one holiday a year. Michael McMillan's job of coal porter entailed lugging a wheelbarrow back and forth, loading and unloading mound upon mound of dusty fuel. So pitiful was the pay for this backbreaking work that many resorted to larceny. Men Michael's age often surrendered to arrest, alcoholism, or the grave. The average life expectancy for a Glasgow native was just under thirty-one years.

Nearly 30 percent of Glasgow households were headed by a woman. Some were widows and others abandoned wives like Mary. Many Scottish la.s.ses had never married because of the availability of jobs in the mills coupled with a shortage of men. If a woman lost her job or her mate, her options for employment were severely more limited than a man's. If the sole breadwinner didn't work, she ended up on Glasgow's streets. There were no alternatives, no safety nets. If a woman was poor, it was considered her fault. If her children went hungry, it was blamed on her flawed character.

Poverty was treated as a crime, conveniently alleviating the conscience of the upper cla.s.ses. Poorhouses were designed to be as miserable as possible to discourage use by people who needed help most. When Agnes was born, local counties couldn't handle the swelling number of women, men, and children who were without food, a place to sleep, or prospects for employment. The few admitted to a workhouse were called ”inmates” and were required to wear uniforms. Each inmate performed hard labor. Men worked breaking stones with axes. Women and children pulled apart old hemp rope that would be reused on s.h.i.+ps, tearing their flesh as they teased dirt and tar from the rough fibers. In The Borough The Borough, British poet George Crabbe described this ”pauper-palace”6: Those gates and locks, and all those signs of power: It is a prison, with a milder name, Which few inhabit without dread or shame.

If Mary McMillan had lost her job and been forced into a poorhouse, the overseer would have separated her from Agnes. He would have shorn Agnes's hair to three inches, thereby reinforcing her beggar rank and discouraging a return to ”poor relief.” Mother and child would have gone to sleep hungry. Food rations, deemed ”an efficient test of poverty,” were half the amount served in prisons, just enough to keep the worker inmates on their feet.7 In gaol, hard labor was generally not required, so, in effect, poverty was punished more harshly than stealing. The workhouse was a death sentence for 23 percent of those who entered, a mortality rate more than double that for the homeless. In gaol, hard labor was generally not required, so, in effect, poverty was punished more harshly than stealing. The workhouse was a death sentence for 23 percent of those who entered, a mortality rate more than double that for the homeless.

The End of Eden.

For a time, Mary McMillan was able to provide for Agnes by laboring at the nearby woolen manufactory, as the mill was called. The work was stifling and dangerous, but because she was paid based on her productivity, she trudged on. There was no ventilation, nor privies, nor provisions for water. Agnes's mother considered herself fortunate to have a job, but toxic tedium and twelve years on her feet had finally ground her down. In theory, the Industrial Revolution offered women the potential for economic freedom. In reality, most earned between one-third and one-half of what a man brought home.

No matter how Mary scrimped and saved, she was always behind. With wages on the order of four s.h.i.+llings per week, there was little chance to make ends meet. Her basic expenses required at least five s.h.i.+llings, exceeding her earnings in spite of working overtime. In neighborhoods like Goosedubbs Street, weekly rent cost one s.h.i.+lling, sixpence; oatmeal and flour, one s.h.i.+lling, ten pence; potatoes, five pence for a large sack; candles and fuel, one s.h.i.+lling, two pence.

Facing the numbing struggle to make it through the next day, Mary McMillan found optimism beyond her grasp. Whether it was despair, drink, or a different reason, Mary ultimately gave up on motherhood. Unable to cope with work and parenting, she often left Agnes to fend for herself. By age twelve, Agnes was left entirely to her own resources. Her mother still allowed her to sleep at the flat, but Agnes spent many a night wandering the wynds. Luckily, she made friends easily, thanks to ”a spirited demeanor,” as described by her descendants. Deserted by her family and consigned to wretchedness by her government's grim prediction in Parliament's Poor Laws report, the Goosedubbs Street girl found protection in what would be called a street gang today.

Janet Houston, a year older, adopted the abandoned little songstress. Agnes's alliance with a surrogate big sister provided a sense of belonging and a semblance of a family, at least for a while. Agnes sang to whoever would listen, and Janet collected coins from pa.s.sersby. Together the best friends looked out for each other as they managed a lean existence along the River Clyde. Life on the dingy streets was certainly hard, yet these two independent souls had decided that sleeping in an alleyway was preferable to the workhouse or the factory. Now, however, the sunken-cheeked twelve-year-old was under arrest, chains shackled to her wrists. As the iron door closed, leaving her and Janet in the damp silence of the holding cell, Agnes cursed her bad luck. She knew what justice meant for the poor. b.l.o.o.d.y Christmas, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.

If a society is judged on how it treats children and the downtrodden, the British Empire failed on all fronts during Agnes's lifetime. Voices of reason were few and rare, even among leading intellectuals. Francis Hutcheson, one of the founders of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment, suggested that benevolence arose from the instinctive human commitment toward ”the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.” Man's morality, he believed, would inspire ”a determination to be pleased with the happiness of others and to be uneasy at their misery.”8 Enlightened optimism like Hutcheson's faded in favor of luminaries voicing more cynical views about the future of humanity. In his famous Essay on the Principle of Population Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus argued that in accordance with the laws of nature, famine and starvation would weed out the poor, thus alleviating the strain of population growth on modern civilization. He recommended that the underprivileged be prevented from marrying and having children.9 A father of three, he felt exempt from this proclamation because of his wealth. Following his logic, Agnes McMillan should not have been born. A father of three, he felt exempt from this proclamation because of his wealth. Following his logic, Agnes McMillan should not have been born.

A controversial celebrity of his time, Malthus advocated against the Poor Laws and any a.s.sistance that might help sustain the struggling. This was the brand of popular thinking that permitted the abuses of power under the Transportation Act, including s.h.i.+pping twenty-five thousand girls and women to the other side of the world, Agnes and Janet among them.

Throughout the British Isles, madness and hypocrisy permeated politics and everyday life. In 1820, a child who stole clothing could be banished and worked to death in Australia, but George IV, a known bigamist and suspected murderer, would be crowned king. King George IV humiliated Queen Caroline when he continued his relations.h.i.+p with a commoner to whom he'd been secretly married years earlier. Her Highness, too, engaged in scandalous behavior, including dressing in see-through gowns during alleged affairs with her servants. Her death in 1821 was widely attributed to poisoning by His Majesty.

The Industrial Revolution heightened society's imbalances. It fattened the prosperous and starved the weak, widening the chasm between cla.s.ses and creating an incubator for juvenile criminals like Agnes and Janet. In earlier decades, parish schools in rural villages welcomed children during the slower farming cycles and fostered a relatively high literacy rate. Had Agnes been born into an agrarian family, hard labor would still have been her fate, but she would have eaten better food, grown up in healthier surroundings, and perhaps learned to read. Though farm hands labored long and hard, there were changes in pace and a variety in ch.o.r.es, unlike the perpetual monotony that poisoned the factory floor. Farm children were valued by their parents, if for no other reason than their ability to work the fields. This bond helped keep rural families intact.

Factories, on the other hand, demanded labor every day of the week, every month of the year. As industry enhanced technology, it stunted education for the poor, and literacy declined. There were simply not enough hours in the day for children to learn to read and write. The lowest cla.s.ses, following the lure of progress, traded a self-sufficient agrarian lifestyle for enslavement in an urban jungle. From 1780 to 1830, child labor grew exponentially, largely due to the end of a family-centered economy.

Well on its way to becoming one of the largest cities in Europe and already Scotland's most congested, Glasgow had grown to a population of two hundred thousand. As daylight broke, low-lying smog erased the city's color. Ashen figures wandered hopelessly through a black-and-white world. By Christmas 1832, Agnes's hometown, unrivaled in squalor, was dirtier and more dangerous than any city in the empire.

This was a far cry from the pristine paradise enjoyed by Glasgow's seventy thousand inhabitants just thirty years earlier. The city's name came from the Gaelic Glaschu, Glaschu, or ”clean green place.” English writer Daniel Defoe described eighteenth-century Glasgow as ”one of the cleanliest, most beautiful and best cities in Great Britain.” or ”clean green place.” English writer Daniel Defoe described eighteenth-century Glasgow as ”one of the cleanliest, most beautiful and best cities in Great Britain.”10 Built along the River Clyde, this peaceful enclave was protected by steep rolling hills. Children played in the water, and men fished in the streams by tree-lined meadows. This was an urban oasis defined by nature's beauty, resplendent in its orchards, cornfields, and terraced flower gardens. Built along the River Clyde, this peaceful enclave was protected by steep rolling hills. Children played in the water, and men fished in the streams by tree-lined meadows. This was an urban oasis defined by nature's beauty, resplendent in its orchards, cornfields, and terraced flower gardens.

Agnes and Janet never knew the green, open s.p.a.ces of a more serene Glasgow. The tobacco and linen trade had set the Garden of Eden on fire. Seldom did the close companions see the magical northern lights, hidden under a murky haze that rarely lifted from their city's sky. The lazy River Clyde was widened and violated to make room for noisy steam-powered s.h.i.+ps bringing sugar and raw cotton to fuel Glasgow's new industries. The fragrance of buds in bloom was replaced by the stench of the slum. A once-glistening metropolis had lost its l.u.s.ter by the time the Goosedubbs Street girls sat before the sheriff.

Glasgow residents lived on average twelve years less than their rural counterparts, a fact attributed to urban housing: ”damp earthen, muddy floors, walls saturated with moisture . . . small closed windows admitting of no perflation [sic] of air, crowded apartments, thatched roofs saturated like a sponge with water.”11 The physical toll on the tenement dweller was devastatingly obvious. The rich were almost always taller than the poor by four inches or more. The physical toll on the tenement dweller was devastatingly obvious. The rich were almost always taller than the poor by four inches or more.12 One-third of Glasgow's children hobbled along with a disfiguring gait caused by malnutrition and rickets. One-third of Glasgow's children hobbled along with a disfiguring gait caused by malnutrition and rickets. 13 13 More were maimed by their work in factories or mines. More were maimed by their work in factories or mines.

Laborers were pitted against one another for every job, every day. A person willing to work for less landed the job only until someone more desperate arrived at the factory door. Glasgow s.h.i.+pping companies imported starving Irish citizens who eagerly accepted cheap wages, thereby putting Scottish citizens out of work. To make matters worse, peasants from the highlands crowded the city in search of a better life that did not exist. In addition, the s.h.i.+ft from hand to power looms destroyed a large cottage industry and left thousands of traditional weavers without employment and their families without food. Bleakness clung to the land like mold on an old loaf of bread.

The Glasgow wynds did not suffer fools. Like feral dogs, children on the streets learned to live according to their wits and a well-developed talent for exploiting opportunity. Alley dwellers worked their way up the street society according to a criminal hierarchy. Agnes and Janet would have started at the bottom, lifting an apple or two from a vendor cart. With small successes, the novice progressed to stealing items from stores and pa.s.sersby. The proceeds could be bartered for money through any number of fences who lurked under the cover of candle shops, street stalls, and public houses. Many lodging-house owners offered thieves a bed for the night in return for an item that could be p.a.w.ned easily. Other proprietors, fences themselves, encouraged crime as they made their boardinghouses a safe haven for gangs and a thriving underground economy from which they, too, profited.

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