Robbing Jack Ashore - The Dens Of Tiger bay.

 From,

Matlock Visiting List - Tuesday 19th May 1903.

Robbing Jack Ashore by The Traveller.

Crimp - A keeper of a low lodging house where sailors and emigrants are trapped and fleeced.

Though many writers have painted the so called horrors of the opium den and Sir Walter Besant has given us a very pretty picture of Rotherhithe, I do not remember reading in either fact or fiction, a history of that salubrious district known as Tiger Bay.

And this is very hard on Tiger Bay - for there was a day, and not so remote, when no policeman dared to show his nose in it if he had not the company of at least six of his fellows; a day when the discovery of the dead body of a sailor, pitched from some low drinking den was almost as common as the account of a suicide from Westminster Bridge.

Alas! Tiger Bay knows it's romance no more. It is even possible for Jack to rome ashore with the knowledge that robbery and plunder at the most awaits him. No longer is there in all Shadwell a street which is really closed to the police. We have let light into the dens and the light is reflected even in the cellars which the murderers haunt.

If this happy state exists in dockland it must not be thought that the crimp has turned honest, or that the despicable creatures who hover about ships no longer make a profession of that picking and stealing against which the catechism warns us.

Though detectives have ventured into the dens, the dens remain, often hideously repulsive holes where Jack is relieved of every shilling he possesses and when penniless and speechless with drink and therefore of no more use to the crimp, he is "shanghaied" to some foreign skipper for a meagre wage.

Shanghaied.

"Ah! it was a bad job sir," said a young seaman to me the other day; "I came home last November with fifty odd pounds in my pocket and I hadn't a shilling in two days. How did I spend it? Heaven knows! A crimp came aboard before we were paid off and wheedled me like they will do."

"Jack my boy," he said, "I've got the neatest place in Shadwell; good grub, good boys and good music, why, you can dance all night. You come along with me and I'll show you what London is like." 

Shadwell slums in 1899

"I'd never signed from London before and somehow this chap seemed friendly. But, there, ain't that the gab of 'em. He took me ashore and said he'd see to my bit if I'd sign a paper he gave me. I didn't know nothing about it and I set my name down. What do you think it was? Why, a receipt for a months board and lodging at three pounds a week."

"Making you free of his place for a month?" I suggested. He laughed sorrowfully. "Oh yes, free enough, and be blamed to him. He drew twelve pounds of my money right away and then he sold me whiskey at six shillings a bottle, I was blind drunk that night and for two nights after. The third morning, when I woke up, he made me sign another paper, saying the police wanted all the names of all the men in his lodging. Well, I signed it and before I knew anything more I was aboard a dirty Dutch brig bound for the St Lawrence. That's what we call 'Shanghaied' sir."

The Question Of Crimps.

I met this man in Poplar and shortly after our chat I spoke to Zanchi on the question of crimps in general and East End dens in particular. He was wonderfully enthusiastic and could, I'm sure, have given me enough matter on this gruesome subject to have filled a column.

"It is years now," said he, "since I made a practice of hanging about the crimps' places whenever I wanted a man. But I go down there sometimes and I should be slow to admit that things are improving to the extent that some people make out. There is more police inspection, it is true, but to say that Jack is robbed the less, that his case is improving materially is all moonshine. Partly, of course, it's his own fault, sailors have altered little since the days of the press gang. Give Jack a pocket full of money and he is the greatest ass in the kingdom."

"I heard a case quite recently of a fellow landing in the docks with sixty pounds in his purse, that is he drew sixty pounds when he was discharged. Well, how did he spend it? Why, he made a sandwich of beef and bread and a five pound note to begin with and ate the lot. Then he gave four pounds to an organ grinder to play outside the crimps house all day. After that three or four pounds went on the crimps whiskey, the crimps daughter wheelded the fool into buying her a gold necklace, which cost him over ten pounds and the balance was stolen from him while he was drunk. Thus you see, a poor beggar set ashore with sixty pounds, yet penniless in less than three days."

"Then you don't think the crimps are becoming honest?"

"Do I think the moon is made of green cheese! Police or no police the rogues are much as they were. I don't say that you can't find clean lodgings for Jack and straightforward men keeping them, but I do say that such places are exceptions. I could take you to twenty houses in Shadwell and Poplar today where in nearly every bedroom which is let to sailors there is a hidden trap door or panel to admit the crimp while the victim is asleep."

"What does it mean? Why the simplest thing in the world. Jack comes ashore, is made speechless drunk, is put to bed in one of these rooms, the moment he is properly unconscious in comes the crimp's confederate who empties the sailor's pocket of every shilling it contains. There cannot be less than twenty men, at a modest computation, robbed in this way every seven days of the year."

"What improvement there is is the improvement brought about by owners who refuse to serve men afloat with rum but give them cocoa instead. That class of ship is multiplying in a very satisfactory way, but she must multiply considerably before the crimp is exterminated."

"But Jack himself, is he not growing less of a fool than he was?"

"I should doubt it, for one thing, poor fellow, the competition of rascally Dutchmen, Norwegians and Swedes is taking the biscuit out of his mouth.  And beyond that there is something in the spirit of the sea which breeds an indescribable recklessness. What can you hope from a man who comes ashore with twenty pounds and begins by buying up the stock of the first flower girl he meets, giving her three pounds for something which cost her perhaps two and sixpence, I saw that done in Rotherhithe the other day."

"Ever this folly was capped down at Barking a fortnight ago when a jolly Jack Tar met an Italian with plaster busts of Lord Salisbury and Mr Gladstone, and bought twenty of them for the sum of five pounds odd. What did he do with them you ask? Why, he went round to a neighbouring coconut shy and insisted on aiming the whole twenty busts at the nuts. Fine times, of course he thought that he had enjoyed himself immensely."

The Ripper Scare.

"Tell me," said I, "on recovering from the surprise of this remarkable investment; is it true that a detective who goes to these dens of the East End carries his life in his hand?"

"It is true in a sense, but only if he's a fool of a detective. No man possessed of his senses would hunt a rogue in Shadwell unless he had men and help at his back. Of course, if he is going there merely to spy it is another thing; and he is not likely to come to any harm unless the fact that he is 'searching' is widely known about the docks."

Rose Mylett, murdered in Poplar December 1888

"One of my prettiest experiences was had in a crimp's den at Poplar at the time of the Ripper scare. I went down there on my own hook, determined to try what I could do where so many has failed. I remember that some idiots in the force were then proclaiming that 'Jack The Ripper' was no other than the woman Pearcey, who committed that detestable crime at Kentish Town."

"The reason for the faith that was in them was the discovery in one of Mrs Pearcey's cupboards of no less than seven brass wedding rings. All the wretched creatures who were murdered in Whitechapel wore brass wedding rings, which were torn from their fingers by the madman who murdered them. The fact that this woman in Kentish Town had so many similar trophies was set down as proof that she had committed the crime."

"It was, to my way of thinking, the apotheosis of nonsense. I have always held that the assassin was a Dutch or Norwegian seaman and to this opinion I cling. Certainly I felt very strongly about it at the time of the general excitement and I must have spent a full month in Shadwell and the purlieus of the docks."

Into The Den.

"It was on the hunt for the Ripper that I came near to losing my life. I was sleeping, or rather pretending to sleep, in a foul den in Poplar. The room was crowded with dirty seamen, many of them Dutch, a few French and a few Lascars. My own bed was a dirty hammock slung upon a rope and you may judge how I enjoyed the experience when I tell you that the room was heavy with the odour of opium, stale tobacco, onions, garlic and other nauseous compounds; and that the bodies of most of the men were quite in an indescribable condition of uncleanliness."

A Poplar slum.

"My object in sleeping in a den like this was a simple one. I thought that I might learn something from the conversation of the men. I learnt nothing beyond the fact that my disguise was a very poor one. I was dressed as a fireman, my face was dyed brown, as though I had served in the East, my hands were carefully stained. The role seemed pretty enough, but I must believe that I had not been as careful as usual and when one o'clock in the morning came, I had to pay for my carelessness."

"Just about that hour, a little rogue, whom I had once laid hands upon in Liverpool for a highway robbery in that town, entered the place and took the bunk next to mine. I never thought for a moment that I was in any danger of being recognised by this man. Even if I had feared it, my suspicion would have been quelled when the fellow rolled helplessly into his bunk and began to sleep."

"Most of the others were then snoring, but one ruffian was raving with delirium tremens and two Lascars were having a little difference which promised to end in knife thrusts. After a time, however, the whole room fell to quiet and I was just preparing to dress and steal out when the rogue from Liverpool sprang from his bunk crying out that I was a 'nark' and was about to sell the lot of them."

"The fellow was half drunk, but strong as a madman; and while I struggled with him the others woke up and listened in amazement to his tale. You may judge that they were not long in joining the fray, I seemed to have a dozen a top of me before the tick of a clock had passed. The probabilities are that I should have been murdered then and there had not the crimp come running in crying that the police were in the street and were surrounding the house."

"This was an old trick of his, but happily for me it was successful on this occasion. The room was as empty as a balloon before he had done talking and the cheat was not discovered until he had smuggled me out through the attic window and I was a quarter mile from the spot."

In Conclusion.

"I tell you this little story to emphasise my description of the kind of place in which Jack often finds himself when he is ashore. To depict the multitudinous ways in which he is robbed would be to write a volume on the subject. One of the commonest of tricks is to pretend that he must write his name in the crimp's visiting book, must show what a jolly fellow he is."

"That signature, ingeniously removed and appended to a promissory note for twenty or thirty pounds has robbed Jack of half his savings again and again. Often though, the crimp meets him in the ship and says ' you just sign your name to this paper and I'll see all about your money at the office.' The crimp does see all about it. He takes precious good care that every shilling of it goes into his own pocket."

"He is always in league with a number of third rate agents and skippers for whom he provides crews of drunken and helpless men. Jack comes home looking for a jolly holiday, alas poor fellow! He is often at sea again in a week, having been carried from the crimp's house to his bunk after every shilling of his money has been stolen."