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dealer, they dispose of it for ready money. Others are employed in the collection of rags, and other articles purloined in the country, which are conveyed to town in "single horse carts," kept by itinerant Jews, and other doubtful characters, who travel to Portsmouth, Chatham, Woolwich, and Deptford, for the purpose of purchasing metals, &c. from persons who are in the habit of embezzling the king's stores.

Robbery and theft have been long reduced to a regular system. Houses intended to be entered during the night, are previously reconnoitered and examined for days preceding. If one or more of the servants are not already associated with the depredators, the most artful means are used to obtain their assistance; and when every previous arrangement is made, the mere operation of robbing a house becomes a matter of little difficulty. This information should serve as a caution to every person in the choice both of their male and female servants, since the latter, as well as the former, are not unfrequently accomplices in the most atrocious robberies.

Night coaches promote, in many instances, the perpetration of burglaries, and other felonies. Bribed by a high reward, the coachmen enter into the pay of nocturnal depredators, and wait in the neighbourhood until the robbery is completed, and then draw up, at the moment the watchmen are going their rounds, or off their stands, for the purpose of conveying the plunder to the house of the receiver, who is generally waiting the issue of the enterprise. These hack

ney coachmen, in the cant phrase, are called flashmen.

Different Classes of Sharpers and Swindlers.

As it may be not only interesting, but useful to the stranger, we have given from the above mentioned excellent work, a compressed account of various classes of sharpers who prey upon the public in this extended metropolis.

1. Sharpers who obtain licenses to become pawnbrokers. These are uniformly receivers of stolen goods, and under this cover do much mischief.

2. Swindlers, who obtain licenses to act as hawkers and pedlars. These men establish fraudulent raffles, substitute plated goods for silver, sell, and utter base coin, deal in smuggled goods, and receive stolen goods with a view to dispose of them in the country. 3. Swindlers, who take out licenses as auctioneers. These open shops in different parts of the metropolis, with persons at the door, usually denominated barkers, to invite strangers to walk in. In these places, various articles of silver plate, and household goods," are offered for sale, made up on a slight principle, and of little intrinsic value. Associates, called puffers, are in waiting, to raise the article beyond its value, when, on the first bidding of a stranger, it is immediately knocked down to him; and, when it is too late, he discovers the snare he has fallen into.

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4. Swindlers, who raise money, by pretending to be discounters of bills, and money brokers. These chiefly prey upon young men of property, who have lost their money at play, or spent it in extravagant amusements.

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5. Jews, who are found in every street, lane, and alley, in and near the metropolis, and under the pretence of purchasing old clothes, and metals of various sorts, prowl about the houses of men of rank and fortune, holding out temptations to their servants to pilfer and steal small articles, which they purchase at a trifling portion of their value. It is calculated that fifteen hundred of these depraved people have their daily rounds.

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Swindlers, who associate together for the purpose of defrauding tradesmen of their goods. One assumes the character of a merchant, hires a genteel house, with a countinghouse, and every appearance of business: one or two of his associates, take upon them the appearance of clerks, while others occasionally wear a livery; and sometimes a carriage is set up, in which the ladies of the party visit the shops, in the style of persons of fashion, ordering goods to their apartments. Thus circumstanced, goods are obtained on credit, which are immediately pawned or sold, and the produce used as the means of obtaining more, and procuring recommendations, by offering to pay ready money, or discount bills. After circulating notes to a considerable amount, and completing their system of fraud,

by possessing as much of the property of others as is possible, without risk of detection, they decamp, -assume new characters, and elude all possible pursuit.

7. Sharpers, who take elegant lodgings, dress fashionably, and assume false names. These

men pretend to be related to persons of real credit and fashion, produce letters familiarly written, to prove intimacy, show these letters to tradesmen, and others, on whom they mean to practise, and when they have secured their good graces, purchase wearing apparel, and other articles, and then disappear with the booty.

There are villains also who associate systematically together, for the purpose of discovering and preying upon persons from the country, or any ignorant person who is supposed to have money, or who has visited London with the view of selling goods, who prowl about the streets where shopmen and boys are carrying parcels, and who attend inns at the time that coaches and waggons are loading and unloading. These have recourse to a variety of stratagems, according to the peculiar circumstances of the case, and in a multitude of instances succeed. A species of cheats, called duffers, go about the streets offering bargains, and attend public houses, inns, and fairs, pretending to sell smuggled goods, of India and other foreign manufacture. By offering their goods for sale, they discover, by long exercised acuteness, the proper objects to practise upon, and seldom fail to

deceive the unwary purchaser, and to pass off forged country or other bank notes, or hase coin, in the course of dealings of any extent.

There are many female sharpers, who dress elegantly, personate women of fashion, attend masquerades, and instances have been known, in which, by extraordinary effrontery, they have forced themselves into the circle at St. James's. One is said to have appeared in a style of peculiar elegance on the king's birthday, in the year 1795, and to have pilfered, in conjunction with her husband, who was dressed as a clergymen, to the amount of 1700l. without discovery or suspicion. Houses are kept where female cheats dress and undress for public places. Thirty or forty of these generally attend all masquerades, in different characters, where they generally realize a considerable booty.

Mendicity.

THE report made at the close of a late session of parliament, on the state of mendicity and vagrancy in the metropolis, was accompanied by such a body of evidence, as to ascertain beyond all possibility of doubt, the gross and monstrous frauds practised by mendicants in the capital, and in its immediate neighbourhood.

In the course of evidence before the committee of the House of Commons, the following facts were ascertained.

That considerable sums of money have been

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