I remember a query being once put to me by a person who visited the Spitalfields Infant School at the time it was under my management:  “How can you account for the fact, that notwithstanding there are so many old and experienced thieves detected, convicted, and sent out of the country every session, we cannot perceive any dimunition of the numbers of such characters; but that others seem always to supply their places?” The foregoing instance of the systematized instruction of young delinquents by old adepts in the art of pilfering, affords, I think, a satisfactory answer the interrogatory.

The dexterity of experienced thieves shews, that no small degree of care and attention is bestowed on their tuition.  The first task of novices, I have been informed, is to go in companies of threes or fours, through the respectable streets and squares of the metropolis, and with an old knife, or a similar instrument, to wrench off the brass-work usually placed over the key-holes of the area-gates, &c., which they sell at the marine store-shops; and they are said sometimes to realize three or four shillings a day, by this means.  Wishing to be satisfied on the point, I have walked round many of the squares in town, and in more than a solitary experiment, have found that not one gate in ten had any brass-work over the key-hole; it had moreover been evidently wrenched off,—­a small piece of the brass still remaining on many of the gates.  Having practised this branch of the profession a considerable time, and become adepts in its execution, the next step, I have been informed, is to steal the handles and brass knockers from doors, which is done by taking out the screw with a small screw-driver:  these are disposed of in the same manner as the former things, till the young pilferers are progressively qualified for stealing brass weights, &c., and at length, become expert thieves.

The following fact will shew what extensive depredations young children are capable of committing.  I have inserted the whole as it appeared in the public papers:—­“Union Hall; Shop Lifting.—­Yesterday, two little girls, sisters, very neatly dressed, one nine, and the other seven, years of age, were put to the bar, charged by Mr. Cornell, linen-draper, of High Street, Newington; with having stolen a piece of printed calico, from the corner of his shop.

“Mr. Cornell stated, that the children came to his shop, yesterday morning; and while he was engaged with his customers at the further end of the shop, he happened to cast his eyes where the prisoners were, and observed the oldest roll up a large piece of printed calico, and put it into a basket, which her little sister carried:  the witness immediately advanced to her, and asked if she had taken any thing from off the counter; but she positively asserted that she had not.  However, on searching her basket, the calico was found; together with a piece of muslin, which Mr. Cornell identified as belonging to him,