the family, or some of the neighbourhood, are not apprised of them at the moment of perpetration; at the least, I have never gone into an enquiry on one of them, that persons have not been awake to the business, more or less. Is it not very strange, for instance, that an opposite neighbour's servant should discern a man traversing from house to house, along the parapets, or the roofs, at fall of the evening (or indeed any time of the day) but apprise no one of it? But such is the fact with regard to several robberies in Westminster and other parts of that end of town. Again, eight or ten persons heard, or saw, the sawing of the window shutter next to the watchhouse, in Newgate Street, (March, 1815),—even the sufferer himself heard—but no one had the presence of mind, or the activity, to interrupt them; and "although twenty-two watchmen, patrols, or constables passed within two yards of the place while the business was in hand, yet the thieves were not driven from their purpose, but exchanged the time of the morning with the watchmen," (See Times newspaper, and others of March 4) one of whom was apparently upon good terms with them. Whether he was so or not, may be collected from the additional circumstance of his pulling down, repeatedly, the bills
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