For poor children living in 19th century London, every day was spooky, not just Halloween. The dark alleys of these neighborhoods were so crowded, diseased, and dirty that no respectable people cared to enter. Even the police dropped their investigations at the outer edge of these communities..
The gutters were stagnant, and the undisposed garbage sat in piles. Groups of women dressed in rags and men with nothing to do created a breeding ground for assault, theft, and coercion. Vendors of stale vegetables and rag sellers were the only merchants. Yet, somehow, many of the residents were inebriated, drink being the only real anodyne to the worst poverty.
The rookery was so crowded that, at night, the residents jockeyed to find enough space to recline. On a savage plus side, there was enough body heat to save them from freezing to death. There was no privacy anywhere. Every apartment was accessible by every other. The door frames were rotten, and the doors coming off their hinges. The rookeries were not specifically designed to breed child criminals, but the creation of such children was inevitable, given the poverty of the people who lived in these slums, combined with the lack of compulsory education.
So many unintended children were conceived due to lack of privacy and the profound temptation to anaesthetise the pain of poverty with casual sex and alcohol. It is little wonder that the children born to rookeries were often brought up on charges of petty crime.
Within these rookeries, desperate parents cast their offspring on the street to find their own food. Parents of daughters often directly or indirectly sold their children into sex work.
