What he was in
Riverside London has been disclosed by Colquhoun, the Police
Magistrate. Here he was not only a drunkard, a brawler, a torturer of
dumb beasts, a wife-beater, a profligate--he was also, with his
fellows, engaged every day, and all day long, in a vast systematic
organized depredation. The people of the riverside were all, to a man,
river pirates; by day and by night they stole from the ships. There
were often as many as a thousand vessels lying in the river; there
were many hundreds of boats, barges, and lighters engaged upon their
cargoes, They practised their robberies in a thousand ingenious ways;
they weighed the anchors and stole them; they cut adrift lighters when
they were loaded, and when they had floated down the river they
pillaged what they could carry and left the rest to sink or swim; they
waited till night and then rowed of to half-laden lighters and helped
themselves. Sometimes they went on board the ships as stevedores and
tossed bales overboard to a confederate in a boat below; or they were
coopers who carried under their aprons bags which they filled with
sugar from the casks; or they took with them bladders for stealing the
rum. Some waded about in the mud at low tide to catch anything that
was thrown to them from the ships.
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