Statement of boy to London society, aim of which to rescue juvenile criminals, demonstrating pernicious influence of penny dreadfuls: "Bill couldn't read a bit, but he knowed boys that could, and he used to hear 'em reading about Knights of the Road, and Claude Duval and Skeleton Crews, till I suppose his head got regler stuffed with it. He never had no money to buy a pen'orth when it came out, so he used to lay wait for me, carrying my younger sister over his shoulder, when I came out of school at dinner time, and gammon me over to come along with him to a shop on the corner of Rosamond street in Clerkenwell, where there used to be a whole lot of the penny numbers in the window. They was all of a row, Wildfire Jack, the Boy Highwayman, Dick Turpin, and ever so many others -just the first page, don't you know, and the picture. Well, I liked it too, and I used to go along o' Bill and read to him all the reading on the front page and look at the pictures until -'specially on Mondays when there was altogether a new lot -Bill would always get so worked up with the aggravatin' little bits, which always left off where you wanted to turn over and see what was on the next leaf..."