Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/127

Rh made himself busy with the thing, at the waggon-office in Friday Street.

These fag-ends of a low profession descend so very low, as to run off with a hare, that hangs at the corner of the stage-delivery carts; cut off ropes at the ends of town-carts; attend at the markets to make prey of any packages of dead meat, flats of butter, or any other article that may come in their way, even to the very whips with which the butchers and green-grocers come to our markets. The curious part of our readers will be surprised to bear, that a poor fellow in Leadenhall market, and another at Newgate market, get a subsistance by taking care of the whips only, whilst the owners are in the market; for which he receives a precarious recompence. When meat or other articles are bargained for, and booked (as it is called), they must be taken away to the cart immediately, or left at the peril of the purchaser. Here again is a good scope for the dodgers: the buyer having been watched into a distant part of the market, away runs the rogue in great haste, calling out "here, you, Mr. Such-a-one's two fore-quarters of beef," and away he goes with one of them. In the winter of 1816–17, a cart-load of meat was driven from Ivy-lane and found in Type Street, Moorfields, and thereabouts was