| Full Transcript- source 2 |
| A prison governor who asked some of the inmates in his prison, how they had committed their crimes wrote this. In this source an inmate describes how to break into a house. |
| (Catalogue ref: HO 73/2) "There are various methods of gaining an entrance into Houses. Besides those described, an entry is frequently obtained by getting into an empty house nearest adjoining the one intended to be robbed, going along the tops of the houses and entering at the attic windows, or by opening a ground floor window and sending in a Boy who either packs up all portable articles in the room and hands them out, or he secretes himself 'till the family retire for the night; according to the direction of his employers, whom he admits when all is quiet - if the boy is discovered, his excuse is that he met a man whom he never saw before who obliged him to come in at the window but he did not tell him what to do. His eyes are speedily suffused - tears have a mighty effect, thieves say, in honest people - some good-natured dame in the family pities the boy - attributes all the blame to some unknown naughty bad man and sends the boy away with perhaps a few pence in his hand to meet his confederates round the first corner, gain at the credulity of their fellow creatures and to try their luck upon some other and perhaps less fortunate neighbour" |
