Browse Primary Sources
"Undercover Film Exposes 'Fagin School' Teaching Bulgarians to Pick Pockets" - Ian Gallagher - London Daily Mail
"The Kardarashi lead ordered, comfortable lives and compared with other Roma groups they enjoy a high standard of living. They choose to live in the suburbs of Stara Zagora, rather than more ramshackle settlements in the city centre. " . . . Even by Roma standards, the clan is particularly insular and conservative. Disputs are always settled internally by a strictly hierarchical leadership and there is little interaction with mainstream authority. The police simply leave them alone. " 'Yes, we train our children to pick pockets but we educate them properly too and want them to get good jobs. Pickpocketing is just part of our heritage. . . . "
London Daily Mail 2013-11-30
"Patrick Mercer declares payment he accepted from undercover reporters" - Peter Dominiczak - The Telegraph
". . .A Daily Telegraph and BBC Panorama investigation found that the MP for Newark, had tabled five questions to government ministers and put down a parliamentary motion after being paid a total of £4,000 as part of a contract he believed would earn him £24,000 a year. The parliamentary questions were based on a draft given to him by an undercover reporter purporting to be a lobbyist for businesses with interests in Fiji. . ."
The Telegraph 2013-06-18
"Fakes, fraud and forgery in Lloyds PPI selling scandal" - James Dean - The Times (London)
". . .An investigation by The Times into Lloyds Banking Group has found that contractors employed at its largest PPI complaint handling unit were taught how to play the system to the detriment of clients. . ."
The London Times Tuesday, June 11, 2013
"A Night in a Workhouse" - James Greenwood - Pall Mall Gazette
". . . This mysterious figure was that of the present writer. He was bound for Lambeth workhouse, there to learn by actual experience how casual paupers are lodged and fed, and what the 'casual' is like, and what the porter who admits him, and the master who rules over him; and how the night passes with the outcasts whom we have all seen rowding about workhouse doors on cold and rainy nights. Much has been said on the subject -- on behalf of the paupers -- on behalf of the officials; but nothing by any one who, with no motive but to learn and make known the truth, had ventured the experiment of passing a night in a workhouse, and trying what it actually is to be casual. . . . "
The Pall Mall Gazette 1866-01-12
"My Life As a Secret Policeman" - Mark Daly - BBC News (UK)
". . .We wanted to see what steps were being taken to eradicate this. But more importantly, we needed to see if they were working. The only way we could find out what was really happening was to become a police officer - asking questions openly as a journalist would not have uncovered the truth. . ."
BBC News 2003-10-21
II-"The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" - W. T. Stead - Pall Mall Gazette
I described yesterday a scene which took place last Derby day, in a well known house, within a quarter of a mile of Oxford-circus. It is no means one of the worst instances of the crimes that are constantly perpetrated in London, or even in that very house. The victims of the rapes, for such they are to all intents and purposes, are almost always very young children between thirteen and fifteen. The reason for that is very simple. The law at present almost specially marks out such children as the fair game of dissolute men. The moment a child is thirteen she is a woman in the eye of the law, with absolute right to dispose of her person to any one who by force or fraud can bully or cajole her into parting with her virtue. It is the one thing in the whole world which, if once lost, can never be recovered, it is the most precious thing a woman ever has, but while the law forbids her absolutely to dispose of any other valuables until she is sixteen, it insists upon investing her with unfettered freedom to sell her person at thirteen. The law, indeed, seems specially framed in order to enable dissolute men to outrage these legal women of thirteen with impunity. For to quote again from "Stephen's Digest," a rape in fact is not a rape in law if consent is obtained by fraud from a woman or a girl who was totally ignorant of the nature of the act to which she assented. Now it is a fact which I have repeatedly verified that girls of thirteen, fourteen, and even fifteen, who profess themselves perfectly willing to be seduced, are absolutely and totally ignorant of the nature of the act to which they assent. I do not mean merely its remoter consequences and the extent to which their consent will prejudice the whole of their future life, but even the mere physical nature of the act to which they are legally competent to consent is unknown to them. Perhaps one of the most touching instances of this and the most conclusive was the exclamation of relief that burst from a Birmingham girl of fourteen when the midwife had finished her examination."It's all over now," she said, "I am so glad." "You silly child," said the procuress, "that's nothing. You've not been seduced yet. That is still to come." How could she know any better, never having been taught? All that the procuress had told her was that if she consented to meet a rich gentleman she would get lots of money. Even when an attempt is made to explain that there will be some physical pain, the information is so shrouded in mystery that in cases that have come under my own personal knowledge if the man had run a needle into the girl's thigh and told her that she was seduced, she would have believed it.
The Pall Mall Gazette 1885-07-07