My method of dealing with the sardine boxes and other tins seems to have created quite an industry, but led two ‘Gubbins’ into trouble, for, quite three months after my visit to the shoot, two young fellows were charged with the unlawful possession of a number of ‘sticks of solder.’ A detective had followed them into a marine-store dealer’s, where they offered the metal for sale. In vain they said that they had obtained it at the shoot; the detective’s experience told him that the metal was not found there, so they were charged. I happened to be in court when they were before the magistrate. The youths told the magistrate how they had obtained it, and said that the missionary from the court had shown them how to do it. When the magistrate looked inquiringly at me, I had to own up, and the youths were discharged. Their metal was, of course, given back to them, so, while they were signing the ‘Prisoners’ Property Book,’ and acknowledging receipt of their knives, etc., I examined the metal, and also came to the conclusion that it had not been procured from the ‘shoot,’ and that in all probability it had been stolen. I did not tell the police, but I took the young fellows aside, and asked them what they knew about me, and they said: ‘Didn’t you come on to the shoot and show us how to do it?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I did not, for I have never seen you in my life before.’ ‘Well, we saw you.’ ‘No lies!’ I said. ‘This metal has never been on the shoot. You vagabonds have stolen it, and then tell this tale, and it’s pretty clever of you, for it has got you off.’ I found on further inquiry that they had lived for a time in the shoot, and knew about my visit there, but they had never obtained any metal from the old tins.
I paid no further visits to the ‘Gubbins’; they knew too much for me, and my last visit has been paid to Arcadia, for Hackney Wick knows it no more. I saw the last of it, and a sad and singular sight it was. The inhabitants were being ‘moved off.’ For months they had lived in their unclean simplicity, with no sanitary arrangements, and cut off from clean water. It was one dull day at the latter end of April; the rain fell gently all the day long, and the atmosphere was of a leaden hue. They had struck their tents, and were packing up when I got there, so I waited to see the last of them. My friends the midgets had packed their few boards, some sacking, an old kettle and saucepan, etc., on the barrow, and the little man pushing it, with his sister carrying her two babes--for the younger one had kept her word, and, with her bit of humanity, had gone into the workhouse--moved off in the dull mist, but where I never knew, for they would give me no information on the subject. The three young women had already gone. The poor fellow and his wife had their belongings on a wheelbarrow, and were ‘moving off.’ The caravans, with their ancient horses and numerous children, ‘moved off.’ Tent after tent was struck; in different directions the occupants ‘moved off,’ and Arcadia was no more.