ABSTRACT
A retrospect of a quarter of a century’s active work among crime and criminals recalls many curious memories, most of them of a not altogether pleasant or agreeable character. This chapter gives the impression that, at the end of the nineteenth century, many areas of the larger industrial cities were terra incognita, populated by legions of professional criminals. At that time, in every large city in the kingdom, professional criminals carried on their operations on a scale of magnitude, and with an amount of audacity, which are absent in the present day. And the “nurseries” of crime which existed under the very eyes of the police, and which was then the prolific source of so much villainy have gradually disappeared. In those days many families were known to live by open theft and fraud, and whole districts might be said to be almost exclusively occupied by the criminal classes.
