2-799-104 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Interior of the old house, 1844. Building in Clerkenwell, London. 'The mode in which this house is internally disposed denotes it to have long been "a den of thieves"; and up to the last Middlesex sessions it was tenanted by persons of dishonest and abandoned habits. It has all the conveniences of a hiding-place, with concealed means of escape - in dark closets, sliding panels, and secret recesses, and by as many trap doors as in the stage of a theatre. By passing down one of these traps, the pursued could elude the vigilance of the police, by getting through a window and crossing the Fleet Ditch over a plank which was kept at hand, and afterwards drawn into the opposite house'. From "Illustrated London News", 1844, Vol V.