Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2.1
Metropolitan police: recorded incidents relating to dog-stealing
Source: Mayhew, H. (1968) London La
bour and the London Poor, Volume II, New York:
Dover, p. 50
was pocketed by the fifty or sixty professional dog-stealers in the city. These dog-
stealers' victims included such illustrious names as the Honourable William Ashley,
Sir Francis Burdett, the Duke of Cambridge, Sir Richard Peel and the French
Ambassador. These men were clearly no respecters of titles or status:
One of the coolest instances of the organization and boldness of the dog-
stealers was in the case of Mr. Fitzroy Kelly's 'favourite Scotch terrier.' The
'parties,' possessing it through theft, asked 12
1
. for it, and urged that it was a
reasonable offer, considering the trouble they were obliged to take. The dog-
stealers were obliged to watch every night,' they contended…'and very
diligently; Mr. Kelly kept them out very late from their homes, before they
could get the dog; he used to go out to dinner or down to the Temple, and
take the dog with him; they had a deal of trouble before they could get it.' So
Mr. Kelly was expected not only to pay more than the value of his dog, but an
extra amount on account of the care he had taken of his terrier, and for the
trouble his vigilance had given to the thieves!
(Mayhew 1968:50)
There were therefore two things that were specially striking about dog-stealing as a
criminal activity. The first was its apparent professionalism and organisation, and
the sense that this was a systematic attack on bourgeois property and propriety, as
befitting Elizabeth Barrett's
banditti
or 'Confederacy' of dog-stealers (Karlin 1990:
303). This professionalism extended to the surveillance of bourgeois homes with
valuable pets, a neat reversal of the usual relation between the bourgeoisie and the
city's poor. As in the case of Fitzroy Kelly, Elizabeth Barrett's home was said to have
been watched for some time before Flush was first snatched. Furthermore, the role
of the go-between, and 'the burlesque dignities of mediation' that went with it, to
use Robert Browning's words (Karlin 1990:308), meant that men like Taylor were
virtually immune from prosecution. Few observers failed to comment on the
ingenious and alarming system of extortion that was the result:
