and had just lighted out somebody. They cut
all her face, and beat her without any provocation.
"Next day he added: " They go on still
and cut people's faces every night! but they
shan't cut mine; —  I like it better as it is."

These street ruffians took various strange
designations. At the Restoration, they were
Muns and Tityre-Tus; then, Hectors and
Scourers; later still, Nickers (whose delight it
was to smash windows with showers of
halfpence), Hawkabites, and, lastly, Mohocks.

Johnson, in his poem on London, published
in 1738, paints a no less frightful picture of the
midnight streets. In that masterly style which
attracted the attention of Pope to the then
obscure young writer, and made him prophesy
that he would soon be unearthed, the satirist
describes the rakes of that time as

      Lords of the street and terrors of the way,

and exclaims:

      Prepare for death if here at night you roam,
      And sign your will before you sup from home.
      Some fiery fop, with new commission vain,
      Who sleeps on brambles till he kills his man,
      Some frolic drunkard, reeling from a feast,
      Provokes a broil, and stabs you for a jest.

Street ruffianism had grown to such dimensions
in 1744, that the Lord Mayor and aldermen
presented an address to the king, calling attention
to the frequency of robberies and murders in
the most public and frequented thoroughfares,
and that "at such times as were heretofore
deemed hours of security." George, in his
reply, said he would set the laws vigorously to
work; but it was many years before the town
was brought into anything like a state of
security. In the London Magazine for October,
1752, it is reported that the Common Council
of the City had just agreed to the demolition of
the wall parting Upper from Middle Moorfields.
The reason for this is stated to be that the wall
had for a long time been "a great nuisance to
the neighbourhood, as it was a screen for thieves
and the most obnoxious persons." Gay advises
the passenger, for a similar reason, to take care
of the great open desert of Lincoln's Inn-fields,
which boasted no garden then as it does now:

Where Lincoln's Inn, wide space, is rail'd around,
Cross not with venturous step; there oft is found
The lurking thief, who, while the daylight shone,
Made the walls echo with his begging tone.
That crutch which late compassion moved shall wound
Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground.

The poet proceeds to warn his readers against
trusting the linkman, especially "along the lonely
wall." He would quench his flambeau in the
middle passage, hand you into the power of
some gang of thieves, and share the booty when
all was over. In 1747, a murder of a singularly
atrocious and deliberate nature was committed
in another part of the town. The Monthly
Chronologer of the London Magazine of that
year records the following incident, under date
Wednesday, September 23:

"This night, about ten o'clock, as Captain
Joseph Johns, of Prescot-street, was going
home, he was attacked by two fellows in
Cavendish-court, near Devonshire-square, who
knocked him down, and almost cut off his nose,
robbed him of his watch and two seals, and then
made off; upon which the captain called out
' Stop thief!' and immediately one of them
returned, stabbed him in the right breast with a
sword, which went through his body, and stuck
in his backbone, whereby it broke, and then
made off undiscovered. The next night, at
eleven, one Lopez, a Jew, was taken at a house
in Petticoat-lane, for the said robbery. John
Basden, a constable, with his assistants, went in
quest of him to a public-house in that lane.
Upon their entrance, a pistol was fired, which
shot the constable in his left breast, so that his life
was despaired of; and one of the watchmen was
almost killed by a bludgeon. The master of the
house was afterwards secured, and committed to
the Compter. There are eighteen persons in this
gang, and warrants are out for apprehending
them. Mr. Richardson, the City Marshal,
being informed of the above unhappy accident,
immediately went and assembled a parcel of
watchmen with him, to go in quest of these
villains, when they found a large gang of thieves
assembled in Gravel-lane, who, immediately upon
seeing him, fired, but luckily missed him; and,
though most of the watchmen ran away, yet he
rushed in amongst them, and secured one of the
persons charged with the robbery of Captain
Johns, and brought him off, who was committed
for further examination. The Marshal afterwards
secured two other persons suspected to
be concerned in the above robbery." Captain
Johns died three nights after the attack; and the
Jew was tried and hanged for the murder.

This certainly exceeds the worst of our garotte
outrages, and the case was not an exceptional
one. It was an age when the law showed a
great deal of vindictiveness, but very little real
power; when thief-takers like Jonathan Wild
first educated their victims to the subtleties of
crime, and then betrayed them to the gallows;
when executions were so common that they
could not have possessed any terrors for the
lawless; when street riots were of frequent
occurrence, and when the mob possessed an
organisation far more effective and formidable
than that of the government and the magistracy.
Even as late as 1780, the No Popery rioters
kept London for a week in the condition of a
town taken by assault and sacked. An unknown
writer in the World (1754) speaks of the
numerous robberies and murders at that time occurring
in the metropolis, from which the provinces
appear to have been comparatively free, and
attributes them to a cause which to our modern
ears sounds sufficiently ludicrous —  viz. to " the
overgrown size of London, affording infinite
receptacles to sharpers, thieves, and villains of all
kinds." He actually proposes that the extent
of the capital should be limited by act of
parliament, and that the houses in certain " back
parts of the town" (such as Hockley-in-the