ABSTRACT
Brick Lane was a hotbed of villainy. Women paraded up and down the streets, took the men to their ‘doubles’ and sold themselves for a few pence. Thieves hung about the comer of the street, waiting, like Mr Micawber, for something to turn up. In the back alleys there was garotting - some of the brides would lumber a seaman while he was drunk and then he would be dropped — ‘stringing someone up’ was the slang phrase for it. There were some wild characters about. One of them was ‘China Bob’ . I believe he was ofjewish extraction. He always carried a small chopper or hatchet in a poacher’s pocket of his coat or jacket. He once fought a duel in Dorset Street with a man named ‘Scabby’ . Coats and shirts off, both had small knives. Both had small wounds when taken to the London Hospital and had their cuts attended to. An enterprising re porter o f the Star newspaper took some photos of their bodies. May I say that both of these two men were more like animals - and wild animals at that - than human beings. They inflicted terrible injuries on each other. China Bob had many scars and half-healed cuts upon his body, he smelt of decaying flesh. He was found one morning in the gutter in Commercial Street which he had terrorised for so long. He was dead; no one was sorry, no one cared, least of all the police.1 This was after the First World War.
