The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [20]
In Sketches by Boz, published in 1836, Charles Dickens observes the tragic drama of two London girls the same ages as Agnes and Janet: “These things pass before our eyes, day after day, and hour after hour—they have become such matters of course, that they are utterly disregarded. The progress of these girls in crime will be as rapid as the flight of a pestilence, resembling it too in its baneful influence and wide-spreading infection. Step by step, how many wretched females, within the sphere of every man’s observation, have become involved in a career of vice, frightful to contemplate; hopeless at its commencement, loathsome and repulsive in its course; friendless, forlorn, and un-pitied, at its miserable conclusion!”1
Meandering through the morning’s damp mist in search of Janet, Agnes considered her options—though certainly with a bit more optimism than Dickens, or she might have given up entirely. Fortunately, she’d been blessed with a bit of talent, and her singing brought in a few shillings every now and again. Yet her days as a street performer were dwindling. Though there was nothing cuter than a wean belting out a lively tune from a doorway, she was a betwixt-and-between awkward adolescent, emaciated like everyone else but not nearly as pathetic as young mothers crooning with babes in arms.
Agnes could not return to the mill. She’d rather die in the alley. Nearly fourteen, she was old enough to work as a housemaid or cook, but she needed references to be considered. Moreover, why would anyone risk hiring a convicted criminal with so many others in line for a job? From an economic perspective, it made sense to be a thief. For girls her age, the rewards of theft were higher than those of millwork—and the hours much shorter. Thieving was also preferable to prostitution.
Nineteenth-century British social reformer Mary Carpenter echoed this reality as she lobbied for the education of children like Agnes: “If a helping hand be not extended to raise them . . . these form the perishing classes . . . who unblushingly acknowledge that they can gain more for the support of themselves and their parents by stealing than by working.”2
Agnes understood, and followed, Carpenter’s conclusion. With true-blue friend Janet Houston, she returned to the life she knew best. Her first heist was for newer clothes. Pawnshops and secondhand stores thrived in abundance around the Glasgow Green. Many residents operated cellar shops located underneath their homes. Entered from a flight of steps off the alley, they were the cheapest places to find used shoes and boots. The prize selection for a girl like Agnes was a sturdy pair of low-heeled half boots that tied just above the ankle. Well broken in by several previous owners, the leather was a soft and pliable shabby brown. Cellar shoppers also hunted for thick wool socks, practical and warm albeit thoroughly dingy. Homeless youngsters either bartered for clothing with freshly pilfered booty or purchased it with coins received from stolen merchandise they sold to fences.
For some, the instinct to survive fueled the unseemly practice of literally stealing clothes off the backs of the weak and gullible. According to Henry Mayhew, a journalist of the time: “This is generally done by females, old debauched drunken hags who watch their opportunity to accost children passing in the streets, tidily dressed with good boots and clothes. They entice them away to a low or quiet neighbourhood for the purpose, as they say, of buying them sweets. . . . When they get into a convenient place, they give them a halfpenny or some sweets, and take off the articles of dress, and tell them to remain till they return, when they go away with the booty.”3
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