Identifier: policerecordsrecr00sava (find matches)
Title: Police records and recollections, or, Boston by daylight and gaslight : for two hundred and forty years
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Savage, Edward H. (Edward Hartwell), 1812-1893
Subjects: Police -- Massachusetts Boston
Publisher: Boston : J.P. Dale
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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hose under-ground noveltiesoccasionally seen in Boston by gaslight. Thewhereabouts, however, is not always exactly knownto the uninitiated, the proprietors generally notchoosing to either advertise or hang out a shingleto indicate the locality where the elephant is to beseen; nor when found is the establishment such aswould be likely to impress the mind with an ideaof grandeur or sublimity; at least, such has beenthe condition of those that I have seen. For many years one of these subterranean estab-lishments w^as kept at North End, which I havesometimes been called on to visit in my official ca-pacity. The establishment consisted of a bar-roomon the first floor from the street, not wide but deep,the counter running the whole length on one side.Behind this counter stood females, with vermilioncheeks and low-necked dresses, ready to deal outNe^v York gin and cabbage-leaf cigars to all whohad the dosh. At the lower end of the counter, orbar, stood a low-sized, haggard-looking cockney, 3
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Ill— --■^ NEWTORK NOXAND•^NDATIONSL POLICE RECOLLECTIONS. 161 anxiously waiting for an order to serve np a rawfrom a heap of rough shells before him, — the onlyway of dressing the bivalves known here. A bench,a few stools, and a half dozen dirty, uncouth pic-tures about the walls, completed the furniture ofthat room. In passing through this room, (which was gen-erally filled with pickpockets, petty knucks, fumesof tobacco, smoke and bad gin,) at the further endyou find a trap-door leading down a flight of stairsto the rat pit below. The pit consists of a board crib of octagon formin the centre of the cellar, about eight feet in diam-eter and three and one half feet high, tightly se-cured at the sides. On three sides of the cellar arerows of board seats, rising one above the other, forthe accommodation of spectators. On the otherside, stands the proprietor and his assistant and anempty flour barrel, only it is half full of live rats,• which are kept in their prison-house by a

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