money which he has had to make good to his
employer.

In connexion with that employer I heard
some curious tales which I believe to be
perfectly true, and which show the extraordinary
way in which the law is administered in
England. There are six or eight—I forget the
exact number—sheriff's officers under the Sheriff
of Middlesex. Their appointments are so good—
the business of capturing debtors is so profitable
that each one who is appointed has to give
security to the amount of ten thousand pounds. The
popular superstition is, that all sheriff's officers
are Jews. This, however, is a fable. Of those
who hold these situations only two are Jews,
and one of the others is a woman. It must not,
however, be imagined that these sheriff's officers
go themselves to take debtors captive. They
are wealthy, keep their broughams, live in highly
respectable streets, and give dinner-parties. They
no more do the executive part of their busIness
than Baron Rothschild carries his own
banknotes or cheques to the Bank of England.
The taking of men's bodies is left to the officers
of the sheriff's officers. Of these, every sheriff's
officer has a certain number. When an attorney
is determined to do his worst upon a creditor,
he puts the execution, or capias, into the hands
of a sheriff's officer—each of the latter has a
certain number of the larger firms of solicitors
who employ him, and not his fellows; these
lawyers he, curiously enough, talks of as his
"clients"—who directly hands it to one of his
men. The latter gets a guinea for an ordinary
capture, but there are instances when that fee
has been increased a hundred-fold. The lady
sheriff's officer is the widow of a defunct officer
—amongst themselves they always use the word
"officer," without any prefix—who on the death
of her husband was allowed to carry on the
business upon giving the required security. Until
latterly there were two of the sheriff's officers
who kept sponging-houses—the one a Jew, the
other a Christian. Somehow or other the
establishment of the former did not pay, and he
gave it up in consequence. The latter has kept
on his "hotel," and now enjoys a monopoly of
the business. For this the former keeper of
the other sponging-house loves him not, and
often removes a customer from Bream's-buildings
to Whitecross-street without any reason
assigned. The sheriff's officer, through whose
men a capture is made, has the option to allow
his prisoner to remain in the sponging-house or
not, as seemeth good to himself. So long as
the debtor remains there, the sheriff's officer
who has captured him is responsible for him.
Should he by any means manage to get away, it
is the sheriff's officer who would have to make
good the debt for which he is arrested. But
once made over to Whitecross-street prison,
that responsibility ceases, and devolves
altogether upon the governor of the jail. If the
debtor have been captured by one of the men
employed by the sheriff's officer who owns the
establishment in Bream's-buildings, he is safe to
remain there as long as he likes, or, at any
rate, as long as he can pay the guinea a day.
But not so if he have been taken by the agency
of the gentleman who formerly kept the rival
hotel. In that case the probability is that he
will be removed at a moment's notice without
any reason assigned, but that the great man who
"took" him wills it so.

And yet, with all its faults, I love Bream's
buildings still—that is, I love it more than I
afterwards loved Whitecross-street prison. Some
of the inmates of the coffee-room had been there
for weeks, others had only come that morning.
Three or four had been arrested that day, and
before night-time paid or arranged their debt,
and were free. There was a young Guardsman
who remained only three hours in the place.
He had been arrested when breakfasting in the
Regent's Park Barracks, the debt being on a bill
of exchange which he had backed for a friend.
He took the matter coolly, knowing that he
had the means to pay the amount, and that he
would get out of limbo that day. The arrest did
not even interfere with his appetite for breakfast,
as he told a friend who came to see him
when in durance vile. He had offered the sheriff's
officer's man a "tenner," ready money, to wait
outside the barrack gate, and then to follow
him to a cab-stand, so that the men of the
regiment might not suspect there was anything
wrong. The "officer" took the money, and
did what was required of him, the Guardsman
giving his word of honour that he would not
attempt to escape in any way. He would have
paid the money there and then, but this could
not be done. According to the extraordinary
rules of debtor-capturing in this country, when
an individual is "taken" he must go to prison
—that is, either to Bream's-buildings or Whitecross-
street—and must remain there until the
sheriff's books are searched to see whether
there are any other detainers out against him.
This searching of the books takes time, and
is the cause of a deal of annoyance. Suppose
Mr. Robinson is taken in execution for forty
pounds. He may have the money ready. But
in the mean time another creditor has, perhaps,
heard of his being in trouble, and lodged a
detainer against him. He might have been able
to pay debt number one! but debt number two
is more than he can manage, and there is nothing
for him but to file his petition, and go through
the Bankruptcy Court. Had he been out of
prison he might, and very likely would, have
made some better arrangement about his debts.

The company at Bream's-buildings was composed
of all classes, from the Guardsman to the
commercial traveller, myself. I had hardly
entered the buildings of Bream, when a specimen
of the extortion practised there was brought
before me. The assistant "officer"—the
insolvent publican—who had helped to capture
me, came and asked me for half-a-crown to search
the sheriff's office for any other detainers against
me. Against this charge I remonstrated, upon
two grounds: firstly, that I had heard that the
sheriff's books could be searched for one shilling;
secondly, that as I could not make any arrangements