BEGGARS AND CHEATS. (continued 3)

The bodily afflicted beggars of London exhibit seven varieties. 1. Those having real or pretended sores, vulgarly known as the “Scaldrum Dodge.” 2. Having swollen legs. 3. Being crippled, deformed, maimed, or paralyzed. 4. Being blind. 5. Being subject to fits. 6. Being in a decline. 7. “Shallow Coves,” or those who exhibit themselves in the streets, half-clad, especially in cold weather.

First, then, as to those having real or pretended sores. As I have said, there are few beggars of this class left. When the officers of the Mendicity Society first directed their attention to the suppression of this form of mendicancy, it was found that the great majority of those who exhibit sores were unmitigated impostors. In nearly all the cases investigated the sores did not proceed from natural causes, but were either wilfully produced or simulated. A few had lacerated their flesh in reality; but the majority had resorted to the less painful operation known as the “Scaldrum Dodge.” This consists in covering a portion of the leg or arm with soap to the thickness of a plaister, and then saturating the whole with vinegar. The vinegar causes the soap to blister and assume a festering appearance, and thus the passer-by is led to believe that the beggar is suffering from a real sore. So well does this simple device simulate a sore that the deception is not to be detected even by close inspection. The “Scaldrum Dodge” is a trick of very recent introduction among the London beggars. It is a concomitant of the advance of science and the progress of the art of adulteration. It came in with penny postage, daguerreotypes, and other modern innovations of a like description. In less scientific periods within the present century it was wholly unknown; and sores were produced by burns and lacerations which the mendicants inflicted upon themselves with a ruthless hand. An old man who has been a beggar all his life, informed me that he had known a man prick the flesh of his leg all over, in order to produce blood and give the appearance of an ulcerous disease. This man is a cripple and walks about upon crutches, selling stay laces. He is now upwards of seventy years of age. At my solicitation he made the following statement without any apparent reserve.

Seventy Years a Beggar.

“I have been a beggar ever since I was that high—ever since I could walk. No, I was not born a cripple. I was thirty years of age before I broke my leg. That was an accident. A horse and cart drove over me in Westminster. Well; yes I was drunk. I was able-bodied enough before that. I was turned out to beg by my mother. My father, I’ve heard, was a soldier; he went to Egypt, or some foreign part, and never came back. I never was learnt any trade but begging, and I couldn’t turn my hand to nothing else. I might have been learnt the shoemaking; but what was the use? Begging was a better trade then; it isn’t now though. There was fine times when the French war was on. I lived in Westminster then. A man as they called Copenhagen Jack, took a fancy to me, and made me his valet. I waited upon, fetched his drink, and so forth. Copenhagen Jack was a captain; no not in the army, nor in the navy neither. He was the captain of the Pye-Street beggars. There was nigh two hundred of them lived in two large houses, and Jack directed them. Jack’s word was law, I assure you. The boys—Jack called them his boys, but there was old men among them, and old women too—used to come up before the captain every morning before starting out for the day, to get their orders. The captain divided out the districts for them, and each man took his beat according to his directions. It was share and share alike, with an extra for the captain. There was all manner of “lays;” yes, cripples and darkies. We called them as did the blind dodge, darkies,—and “shakers” them as had fits,—and shipwrecked mariners, and—the scaldrum dodge, no; that’s new; but I know what you mean. They did the real thing then—scrape the skin off their feet with a bit of glass until the blood came. Those were fine times for beggars. I’ve known many of ’em bring in as much as thirty shillings a day, some twenty, some fifteen. If a man brought home no more than five or six shillings, the captain would enter him, make a note of him, and change his beat. Yes, we lived well. I’ve known fifty sit down to a splendid supper, geese and turkeys, and all that, and keep it up until daylight, with songs and toasts. No; I didn’t beg then; but I did before, and I did after. I begged after, when the captain came to misfortune. He went a walking one day in his best clothes, and got pressed, and never came back, and there was a mutiny among them in Pye-Street, and I nearly got murdered. You see, they were jealous of me, because the captain petted me. I used to dress in top-boots and a red coat when I waited on the captain. It was his fancy. Romancing? I don’t know what you mean. Telling lies, oh! It’s true by ——. There’s nothing like it nowadays. The new police and this b—— Mendicity Society has spoilt it all. Well, they skinned me; took off my fine coat and boots, and sent me out on the orphan lay in tatters. I sat and cried all day on the door steps, for I was really miserable now my friend was gone, and I got lots of halfpence, and silver too, and when I took home the swag, they danced round me and swore that they would elect me captain if I went on like that; but there was a new captain made, and when they had their fun out, he came and took the money away, and kicked me under the table. I ran away the next day, and went to a house in St. Giles’s, where I was better treated. There was no captain there; the landlord managed the house, and nobody was master but him. There was nigh a hundred beggars in that house, and some two or three hundred more in the houses next it. The houses are not standing now. They were taken down when New Oxford-street was built; they stood on the north side. Yes; we lived well in St. Giles’s—as well as we did in Westminster. I have earned 8, 10, 15, ay, 30 shillings a day, and more nor that sometimes. I can’t earn one shilling now. The folks don’t give as they did. They think every body an imposture now. And then the police won’t let you alone. No; I told you before, I never was anything else but a beggar. How could I? It was the trade I was brought up to. A man must follow his trade. No doubt I shall die a beggar, and the parish will bury me.”

Having Swollen Legs.

Beggars who lie on the pavement and expose swollen legs, are very rarely to be met with now. The imposture has been entirely suppressed by the police and the officers of the Mendicity Society. This is one of the shallowest of all the many “dodges” of the London beggars. On reflection any one, however slightly acquainted with the various forms of disease, must know that a mere swelling cannot be a normal or chronic condition of the human body. A swelling might last a few days, or a week; but a swelling of several years’ standing is only to be referred to the continued application of a poisonous ointment, or to the binding of the limb with ligatures, so as to confine the blood and puff the skin.

Cripples.

Various kinds of cripples are still to be found, begging in the streets of London. As a rule the police do not interfere with them, unless they know them to be impostors. A certain number of well-known cripples have acquired a sort of prescriptive right to beg where they please. The public will be familiar with the personal appearance of many of them. There is the tall man on crutches, with his foot in a sling, who sells stay laces; the poor wretch without hands, who crouches on the pavement and writes with the stumps of his arms; the crab-like man without legs, who sits strapped to a board, and walks upon his hands; the legless man who propels himself in a little carriage, constructed on the velocipede principle; the idiotic-looking youth, who “stands pad with a fakement,” shaking in every limb as if he were under the influence of galvanism. These mendicants are not considered to be impostors, and are allowed to pursue begging as a regular calling. I cannot think, however, that the police exercise a wise discretion in permitting some of the more hideous of these beggars to infest the streets. Instances are on record of nervous females having been seriously frightened, and even injured, by seeing men without legs or arms crawling at their feet. A case is within my own knowledge, where the sight of a man without legs or arms had such an effect upon a lady in the family way that her child was born in all respects the very counterpart of the object that alarmed her. It had neither legs nor arms. This occurrence took place at Brighton about eleven years ago. I have frequently seen ladies start and shudder when the crab-like man I have referred to has suddenly appeared, hopping along at their feet. I am surprised that there is no home or institution for cripples of this class. They are certainly deserving of sympathy and aid; for they are utterly incapacitated from any kind of labour. Impostors are constantly starting up among this class of beggars; but they do not remain long undetected. A man was lately found begging, who pretended that he had lost his right arm. The deception at the first glance was perfect. His right sleeve hung loose at his side, and there appeared to be nothing left of his arm but a short stump. On being examined at the police office, his arm was found strapped to his side, and the stump turned out to be a stuffing of bran. Another man simulated a broken leg by doubling up that limb and strapping his foot and ankle to his thigh. Paralysis is frequently simulated with success until the actor is brought before the police surgeon, when the cheat is immediately detected.

A Blind Beggar.

A blind beggar, led by a dog, whom I accosted in the street, made the following voluntary statement. I should mention that he seemed very willing to answer my questions, and while he was talking kept continually feeling my clothes with his finger and thumb. The object of this, I fancy, must have been to discover whether I was what persons of his class call a “gentleman” or a poor man. Whether he had any thoughts of my being an officer I cannot say.

“I am sixty years of age: you wouldn’t think it, perhaps, but I am. No, I was not born blind; I lost my sight in the small-pox, five and twenty years ago. I have been begging on the streets eighteen years. Yes, my dog knows the way home. How did I teach him that? why, when I had him first, the cabmen and busmen took him out to Camden Town, and Westminster, and other places, and then let him go. He soon learnt to find his way home. No, he is not the dog I had originally; that one died; he was five and twenty years old when he died. Yes, that was a very old age for a dog. I had this one about five years ago. Don’t get as much as I used to do? No, no, my friend. I make about a shilling a-day, never—scarcely never—more, sometimes less—a good deal less; but some folks are very kind to me. I live at Poole’s-place, Mount Pleasant. There are a good many engineers about there, and their wives are very kind to me; they have always a halfpenny for me when I go that way. I have my beats. I don’t often come down this way (Gower-street), only once a month. I always keep on this side of Tottenham Court-road; I never go over the road; my dog knows that. I am going down there,” (pointing); “that’s Chenies-street. Oh, I know where I am: next turning to the right is Alfred-street, the next to the left is Francis-street, and when I get to the end of that the dog will stop; but I know as well as him. Yes, he’s a good dog, but never the dog I used to have; he used always to stop when there was anybody near, and pull when there was nobody. He was what I call a steady dog, this one is young and foolish like; he stops sometimes dead, and I goes on talking, thinking there is a lady or gentleman near; but it’s only other dogs that he’s stopping to have a word with. No, no, no, sir.” This he said when I dropped some more coppers into his hat, having previously given him a penny. “I don’t want that. I think I know your voice, sir; I’m sure I’ve heard it before. No! ah, then I’m mistaken.” Here again he felt my coat and waistcoat with an inquiring touch: apparently satisfied, he continued, “I’ll tell you, sir, what I wouldn’t tell to every one; I’ve as nice a little place at Mount Pleasant as you would desire to see. You wouldn’t think I was obliged to beg if you saw it. Why, sir, I beg many times when I’ve as much as sixteen shillings in my pocket; leastwise not in my pocket, but at home. Why you see, sir, there’s the winter months coming on, and I lays by what I can against the wet days, when I can’t go out. There’s no harm in that, sir. Well, now, sir, I’ll tell you: there’s a man up there in Sussex-street that I know, and he said to me just now, as I was passing the public house, ‘Come in, John, and have a drop of something.’ ‘No, thank ye,’ says I, ‘I don’t want drink; if you want to give me anything give me the money.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I won’t do that, but if you come in and have something to drink I’ll give you sixpence.’ Well, sir, I wouldn’t go. It wouldn’t do, you know, for the likes of me, a blind man getting his living by begging, to be seen in a public-house; the people wouldn’t know, sir, whether it was my money that was paying for it or not. I never go into a public-house; I has my drop at home. Oh, yes, I am tired—tired of it; but I’ll tell you, sir, I think I’ll get out of it soon. Do you know how that is, sir? Well, I think I shall get on to Day and Martin’s Charity in October; I’m promised votes, and I’m in hopes this time. God bless you, sir.”

There was for many years in the city a blind man with a dog, who was discovered to be a rank impostor. The boys found it out long before the police did. They used to try and take the money out of the little basket that the dog carried in his mouth, but they never succeeded. The moment a boy approached the basket the blind man ran at him with his stick, which proved, of course, that the fellow could see. Some of my readers may recollect seeing in the papers an account of a respectable young girl who ran away from her home and took up with this blind man. She cohabited with him, in fact, and it was found that they lived in extravagance and luxury on the blind beggar’s daily takings.

Beggars subject to Fits

are impostors, I may say, wholly without exception. Some of them are the associates and agents of thieves, and fall down in the street in assumed fits in order to collect a crowd and afford a favourable opportunity to the pickpockets, with whom they are in league. The simulation of fits is no mean branch of the beggar’s art of deception. The various symptoms—the agitation of the muscles, the turning up of the whites of the eyes, the pallor of the face and the rigidity of the mouth and jaw—are imitated to a nicety; and these symptoms are sometimes accompanied by copious frothing at the mouth. I asked Mr. Horsford, of the Mendicity Society, how this was done, and received the laconic answer—“Soap.” And this brought to my memory that I had once seen an actor charge his mouth with a small piece of soap to give due vraissemblance to the last scene of Sir Giles Overreach. I was shown an old woman who was in the habit of falling down in assumed fits simply to get brandy. She looked very aged and poor, and I was told she generally had her fits when some well-dressed gentleman was passing with a lady on his arm. She generally chose the scene of her performance close to the door of a public-house, into which some compassionate person might conveniently carry her. She was never heard to speak in her fits except to groan and mutter “brandy,” when that remedy did not appear to suggest itself to those who came to her aid. An officer said to me, “I have known that old woman have so many fits in the course of the day that she has been found lying in the gutter dead drunk from the effect of repeated restoratives. She has been apprehended and punished over and over again, but she returns to the old dodge the minute she gets out. She is on the parish; but she gets money as well as brandy by her shamming.”

I have heard that there are persons who purposely fall into the Serpentine in order to be taken to the receiving-house of the Humane Society, and recovered with brandy. One man repeated the trick so often that at last the Society’s men refused to go to his aid. It is needless to say that he soon found his way out of the water unaided, when he saw that his dodge was detected.

Being in a Decline.

No form of poverty and misfortune is better calculated to move the hearts of the compassionate than this. You see crouching in a corner, a pale-faced, wan young man, apparently in the very last stage of consumption. His eyes are sunk in his head, his jaw drops, and you can almost see his bones through his pallid skin. He appears too exhausted to speak; he coughs at intervals, and places his hand on his chest as if in extreme pain. After a fit of coughing he pants pitifully, and bows his head feebly as if he were about to die on the spot. It will be noticed, however, as a peculiarity distinguishing nearly all these beggars, that the sufferers wear a white cloth bound round their heads overtopped by a black cap. It is this white cloth, coupled with a few slight artistic touches of colour to the face, that produces the interesting look of decline. Any person who is thin and of sallow complexion may produce the same effect by putting on a white night-cap, and applying a little pink colour round the eyes. It is the simple rule observed by comedians, when they make up for a sick man or a ghost. These beggars are all impostors; and they are now so well known to the police that they never venture to take up a fixed position during the day, but pursue their nefarious calling at night at public-houses and other resorts where they can readily make themselves scarce should an officer happen to spy them out.

“Shallow Coves.”

This is the slang name given to beggars who exhibit themselves in the streets half clad, especially in cold weather. There are a great many of these beggars in London, and they are enabled to ply their trade upon the sympathies of the public with very little check, owing to the fact that they mostly frequent quiet streets, and make a point of moving on whenever they see a policeman approaching. A notorious “shallow cove,” who frequents the neighbourhood of the Strand and St. Martin’s Lane, must be well known to many of my readers. His practice is to stand at the windows of bakers and confectioners, and gaze with an eager famished look at the bread and other eatables. His almost naked state, his hollow, glaring eye, like that of a famished dog, his long thin cheek, his matted hair, his repeated shrugs of uneasiness as if he were suffering from cold or vermin, present such a spectacle of wretchedness as the imagination could never conceive. He has no shirt, as you can see by his open breast; his coat is a thing of mere shreds; his trousers, torn away in picturesque jags at the knees, are his only other covering, except a dirty sodden-looking round-crowned brown felt hat, which he slouches over his forehead in a manner which greatly heightens his aspect of misery. I was completely taken in when I first saw this man greedily glaring in at a baker’s window in St. Martin’s Lane. I gave him twopence to procure a loaf, and waited to see him buy it, anxious to have the satisfaction of seeing him appease such extreme hunger as I had never—I thought—witnessed before. He did not enter the shop with the alacrity I expected. He seemed to hesitate, and presently I could see that he was casting stealthy glances at me. I remained where I was, watching him; and at last when he saw I was determined to wait, he entered the shop. I saw him speak to the woman at the counter and point at something; but he made no purchase, and came out without the bread, which I thought he would have devoured like a wolf, when he obtained the money to procure it. Seeing me still watching him, he moved away rapidly. I entered the shop, and asked if he had bought anything. “Not he, he don’t want any bread,” said the mistress of the shop, “I wish the police would lock him up, or drive him away from here, for he’s a regular nuisance. He pretends to be hungry, and then when people give him anything, he comes in here and asks if I can sell him any bits. He knows I won’t, and he don’t want ’em. He is a regular old soldier, he is, sir.”

I received confirmation of this account from Mr. Horsford, who said that the fellow had been sent to prison at least thirty times. The moment he gets out he resorts to his old practices. On one occasion, when he was taken, he had thirteen shillings in his pocket,—in coppers, sixpences and threepenny and fourpenny bits. Softhearted old ladies who frequent the pastry-cooks are his chief victims.

“Shallow coves” have recently taken to Sunday begging. They go round the quiet streets in pairs, and sing psalm tunes during church hours. They walk barefooted, without hats, and expose their breasts to show that they have no under clothing.

The “shallow cove” is a very pitiable sight in winter, standing half naked, with his bare feet on the cold stones. But give him a suit of clothes and shoes and stockings, and the next day he will be as naked and as wretched-looking as he is to-day. Nakedness and shivers are his stock in trade.

Famished Beggars.

The famished beggars, that is, those who “make up” to look as if they were starving, pursue an infinite variety of dodges. The most common of all is to stand in some prominent place with a placard on the breast, bearing an inscription to the effect that the beggar is “starving,” or that he has “a large family entirely dependent upon him.” The appeal is sometimes made more forcible by its brevity, and the card bears the single word, “Destitute.” In every case where the beggar endeavours to convey starvation by his looks and dress it may be relied upon that he is an impostor, a lazy fellow, who prefers begging to work, because it requires less exertion and brings him more money. There are some, however,—blind men and old persons—who “stand pad,” that is to say, beg by the exhibition of a written or printed paper, who are not impostors; they are really poor persons who are incapacitated from work, and who beg from day to day to earn a living. But these beggars do not get up an appearance of being starved, and indeed some of them look very fat and comfortable.

The beggars who chalk on the pavement “I am starving,” in a round scholastic hand, are not of this class. It does not require much reflection to discern the true character of such mendicants. As I have frequently had occasion to observe, the man who begs day after day, and counts his gains at the rate of from twelve to twenty shillings a week, cannot be starving. You pass one of these beggars in the morning, and you hear the coppers chinking on the pavement as they are thrown to him by the thoughtless or the credulous; you pass him again in the evening, and there is still the inscription “I am starving.” This beggar adds hypocrisy to his other vices. By his writing on the pavement he would give you to understand that he is too much ashamed to beg by word of mouth. As he crouches beside his inscription he hides his head. The writing, too, is a false pretence. “I am starving” is written in so good a hand that you are led to believe that the wretch before you has had a good education, that he has seen better days, and is now the victim of misfortune, perhaps wholly undeserved. It should be known, however, that many of these beggars cannot write at all; they could not write another sentence except “I am starving” if it were to save their lives. There are persons who teach the art of writing certain sentences to beggars, but their pupils learn to trace the letters mechanically. This is the case with the persons who draw in coloured chalk on the pavement. They can draw a mackerel, a broken plate, a head of Christ, and a certain stereotyped sea-view with a setting sun, but they cannot draw anything else, and these they trace upon a principle utterly unknown to art. There is one beggar of this class who frequents the King’s-Cross end of the New Road, who writes his specimens backwards, and who cannot do it any other way. He covers a large flag-stone with “copies” in various hands, and they are all executed in the true “copper-plate” style. They are all, however, written backwards.

The distinction made by the magistrates and the police between those who draw coloured views and those who merely write “I am starving” in white chalk, exhibits a nicety of discrimination which is not a little amusing. When the officers of the Mendicity Society first began to enforce their powers with rigour (in consequence of the alarming increase of mendicancy) they arrested these flag-stone artists with others. The magistrates, however, showed an unwillingness to commit them, and at length it was laid down as a rule that these men should not be molested unless they obstructed a thoroughfare or created a disturbance. This decision was grounded upon the consideration that these street artists did some actual work for the money they received from the public; they drew a picture and exhibited it, and might therefore be fairly regarded as pursuing an art. So the chalkers of mackerel were placed in the category of privileged street exhibitors. The “I am starving” dodge, however, has been almost entirely suppressed by the persevering activity of Mr. Horsford and his brother officers of the Mendicity Society.

One of the latest devices of famished beggars which has come under my notice I shall denominate

The Choking Dodge.

A wretched-looking man, in a state of semi-nudity, having the appearance of being half starved and exhausted, either from want of food or from having walked a long way, sat down one day on the door-step of the house opposite mine. I was struck by his wretched and forlorn appearance, and particularly by his downcast looks. It seemed as if misery had not only worn him to the bone, but had crushed all his humanity out of him. He was more like a feeble beast, dying of exhaustion and grovelling in the dust, than a man. Presently he took out a crust of dry bread and attempted to eat it. It was easy to see that it was a hard crust, as hard as stone, and dirty, as if it had lain for some days in the street. The wretch gnawed at it as a starved dog gnaws at a bone. The crust was not only hard, but the beggar’s jaws seemed to want the power of mastication. It seemed as if he had hungered so long that food was now too late. At length he managed to bite off a piece; but now another phase of his feebleness was manifested—he could not swallow it. He tried to get it down, and it stuck in his throat. You have seen a dog with a bone in his throat, jerking his head up and down in his effort to swallow: that was the action of this poor wretch on the door-step. I could not but be moved by this spectacle, and I opened the window and called to the man. He took no heed of me. I called again. Still no heed; misery had blunted all his faculties. He seemed to desire nothing but to sit there and choke. I went over to him, and, tapping him on the shoulder, gave him twopence, and told him to go to the public house and get some beer to wash down his hard meal. He rose slowly, gave me a look of thanks, and went away in the direction of the tavern. He walked more briskly than I could have conceived possible in his case, and something prompted me to watch him. I stood at my door looking after him, and when he got near the public-house he turned round. I knew at once that he was looking to see if I were watching him. The next minute he turned aside as if to enter the public-house. The entrance stood back from the frontage of the street, and I could not tell, from where I stood, whether he had gone into the house or not. I crossed to the other side, where I could see him without being noticed. He had not entered the house, but was standing by the door. When he had stood there for a few minutes he peeped out cautiously, and looked down the street towards the place where he had left me. Being apparently satisfied that all was right, he emerged from the recess and walked on. I was now determined to watch him further. I had not long to wait for conclusive evidence of the imposture which I now more than suspected. The man walked slowly along until he saw some persons at a first-floor window, when he immediately sat down on a door-step opposite and repeated the elaborate performance with the hard crust which I have already described. This I saw him do four times before he left the street, in each case getting money. It is needless to say that this fellow was a rank impostor. One of his class was apprehended some time ago—it might have been this very man—and no less than seven shillings were found upon him. These men frequent quiet bye-streets, and never, or rarely, beg in the busy thoroughfares. I will give another case, which I shall call

The Offal-Eater.

The most notable instance of this variety of the famished beggars which has come under my notice is that of a little old man who frequents the neighbourhood of Russell-square. I have known him now for two years, and I have seen him repeat his performance at least a score of times. The man has the appearance of a cutler. He wears a very old and worn, but not ragged, velveteen coat with large side pockets, a pair of sailor’s blue trousers a good deal patched, a very, very bad pair of shoes, and a chimney-pot hat, which seems to have braved the wind and rain for many years, been consigned to a dust-bin, and then recovered for wear. He is below the average height, and appears to be about seventy years of age. This little old man makes his appearance in my street about eleven o’clock in the forenoon. He walks down the pavement listlessly, rubbing his hands and looking about him on every side in a vacant bewildered manner, as if all the world were strange to him, and he had no home, no friend, and no purpose on the face of the earth. Every now and then he stops and turns his face towards the street, moving himself uneasily in his clothes, as if he were troubled with vermin. All this time he is munching and mumbling some food in a manner suggestive of a total want of teeth. As he pauses he looks about as if in search of something. Presently you see him pick up a small piece of bread which has been thrown out to the sparrows. He wipes it upon his velveteen coat and begins to eat it. It is a long process. He will stand opposite your window for full ten minutes mumbling that small piece of bread, but he never looks up to inspire compassion or charity; he trusts to his pitiful mumblings to produce the desired effect, and he is not disappointed. Coppers are flung to him from every window, and he picks them up slowly and listlessly, as if he did not expect such aid, and scarcely knew how to apply it. I have given him money several times, but that does not prevent him from returning again and again to stand opposite my windows and mumble crusts picked out of the mud in the streets. One day I gave him a lump of good bread, but in an hour after I found him in an adjacent street exciting charity in the usual way. This convinced me that he was an artful systematic beggar, and this impression was fully confirmed on my following him into a low beer-shop in St. Giles’s and finding him comfortably seated with his feet up in a chair, smoking a long pipe, and discussing a pot of ale. He knew me in a moment, dropped his feet from the chair, and tried to hide his pipe. Since that occasion he has never come my way.

PETTY TRADING BEGGARS.

This is perhaps the most numerous class of beggars in London. Their trading in such articles as lucifers, boot-laces, cabbage-nets, tapes, cottons, shirt-buttons, and the like, is in most cases a mere “blind” to evade the law applying to mendicants and vagrants. There are very few of the street vendors of such petty articles as lucifers and shirt-buttons who can make a living from the profits of their trade. Indeed they do not calculate upon doing so. The box of matches, or the little deal box of cottons, is used simply as a passport to the resorts of the charitable. The police are obliged to respect the trader, though they know very well that under the disguise of the itinerant merchant there lurks a beggar.

Beggars of this class use their trade to excite compassion and obtain a gift rather than to effect a sale. A poor half-clad wretch stands by the kerb exposing for sale a single box of matches, the price being “only a halfpenny.” A charitable person passes by and drops a halfpenny or a penny into the poor man’s hand, and disdains to take the matches. In this way a single box will be sufficient for a whole evening’s trading, unless some person should insist upon an actual “transaction,” when the beggar is obliged to procure another box at the nearest oilman’s. There are very few articles upon which an actual profit is made by legitimate sale. Porcelain shirt-buttons, a favourite commodity of the petty trading beggars, would not yield the price of a single meal unless the seller could dispose of at least twenty dozen in a day. Cottons, stay-laces, and the like, can now be obtained so cheaply at the shops, that no one thinks of buying these articles in the streets unless it be in a charitable mood. Almost the only commodities in which a legitimate trade is carried on by the petty traders of the streets are flowers, songs, knives, combs, braces, purses, portmonnaies. The sellers of knives, combs, &c., are to a certain extent legitimate traders, and do not calculate upon charity. They are cheats, perhaps, but not beggars. The vendors of flowers and songs, though they really make an effort to sell their goods, and often realize a tolerable profit, are nevertheless beggars, and trust to increase their earnings by obtaining money without giving an equivalent. A great many children are sent out by their parents to sell flowers during the summer and autumn. They find their best market in the bars of public-houses, and especially those frequented by prostitutes. If none else give prostitutes a good character, the very poor do. “I don’t know what we should do but for them,” said an old beggar-woman to me one day. “They are good-hearted souls—always kind to the poor. I hope God will forgive them.” I have had many examples of this sympathy for misfortune and poverty on the part of the fallen women of the streets. A fellow feeling no doubt makes them wondrous kind. They know what it is to be cast off, and spurned, and despised; they know, too, what it is to starve, and, like the beggars, they are subject to the stern “move on” of the policeman.

The relations which subsist between the prostitutes and the beggars reveal some curious traits. Beggars will enter a public-house because they see some women at the bar who will assist their suit. They offer their little wares to some gentlemen at the bar, and the women will say, “Give the poor devil something,” or “buy bouquets for us,” or if the commodity should be laces or buttons, they say, “Don’t take the poor old woman’s things; give her the money.” And the gentlemen, just to show off, and appear liberal, do as they are told. Possibly, but for the pleading of their gay companions, they would have answered the appeal with a curse and gruff command to begone. I once saw an old woman kiss a bedizened prostitute’s hand, in real gratitude for a service of this kind. I don’t know that I ever witnessed anything more touching in my life. The woman, who a few minutes before had been flaunting about the bar in the reckless manner peculiar to her class, was quite moved by the old beggar’s act, and I saw a tear mount in her eye and slowly trickle down her painted cheek, making a white channel through the rouge as it fell. But in a moment she dashed it away, and the next was flaunting and singing as before. Prostitutes are afraid to remain long under the influence of good thoughts. They recal their days of innocence, and overpower them with an intolerable sadness—a sadness which springs of remorse. The gay women assume airs of patronage towards the beggars, and as such are looked up to; but a beggar-woman, however poor, and however miserable, if she is conscious of being virtuous, is always sensible of her superiority in that respect. She is thankful for the kindness of the “gay lady,” and extols her goodness of heart; but she pities while she admires, and mutters as a last word, “May God forgive her.” Thus does one touch of nature make all the world akin, and thus does virtue survive all the buffets of evil fortune to raise even a beggar to the level of the most worthy, and be a treasure dearer and brighter than all the pleasures of the world.

The sellers of flowers and songs are chiefly boys and young girls. They buy their flowers in Covent Garden, when the refuse of the market is cleared out, and make them up into small bouquets, which they sell for a penny. When the flower season is over they sell songs—those familiar productions of Ryle, Catnach and company, which, it is said, the great Lord Macaulay was wont to collect and treasure up as collateral evidences of history. Some of the boys who pursue this traffic are masters of all the trades that appertain to begging. I have traced one boy, by the identifying mark of a most villanous squint, through a career of ten years. When I first saw him he was a mere child of about four years of age. His mother sent him with a ragged little girl (his sister) into public-house bars to beg. Their diminutive size attracted attention and excited charity. By-and-by, possibly in consequence of the interference of the police, they carried pennyworths of flowers with them, at other times matches, and at others halfpenny sheets of songs. After this the boy and the girl appeared dressed in sailor’s costume, (both as boys,) and sung duets. I remember that one of the duets, which had a spoken part, was not very decent; the poor children evidently did not understand what they said; but the thoughtless people at the bar laughed and gave them money. By-and-by the boy became too big for this kind of work, and I next met him selling fuzees. After the lapse of about a year he started in the shoe-black line. His station was at the end of Endell Street, near the baths; but as he did not belong to one of the regularly organized brigades, he was hunted about by the police, and could not make a living. On the death of the crossing-sweeper at the corner he succeeded to that functionary’s broom, and in his new capacity was regarded by the police as a useful member of society. The last time I saw him he was in possession of a costermonger’s barrow selling mackerel. He had grown a big strong fellow, but I had no difficulty in identifying the little squinting child, who begged, and sold flowers and songs in public-house bars, with the strong loud-lunged vendor of mackerel. I suppose this young beggar may be said to have pursued an honourable career, and raised himself in the world. Many who have such an introduction to life finish their course in a penal settlement.

There are not a few who assume the appearance of petty traders for the purpose of committing thefts, such as picking a gentleman’s pocket when he is intoxicated, and slinking into parlours to steal bagatelle balls. Police spies occasionally disguise themselves as petty traders. There is a well-known man who goes about with a bag of nuts, betting that he will tell within two how many you take up in your hand. This man is said to be a police spy. I have not been able to ascertain whether this is true or not; but I am satisfied that the man does not get his living by his nut trick. In the day-time he appears without his nuts, dressed in a suit of black, and looking certainly not unlike a policeman in mufti.

Among the petty trading beggars there are a good many idiots and half-witted creatures, who obtain a living—and a very good one too—by dancing in a grotesque and idiotic manner on the pavement to amuse children. Some of them are not such idiots as they appear, but assume a half-witted appearance to give oddness to their performance, and excite compassion for their misfortune. The street boys are the avengers of this imposition upon society.

The idiot performer has a sad life of it when the boys gather about him. They pull his clothes, knock off his hat, and pelt him with lime and mud. But this persecution sometimes redounds to his advantage; for when the grown-up folks see him treated thus, they pity him the more. These beggars always take care to carry something to offer for sale. Halfpenny songs are most commonly the merchandise.

The little half-witted Italian man who used to go about grinding an organ that “had no inside to it,” as the boys said, was a beggar of this class, and I really think he traded on his constant persecution by the gamins. Music, of course, he made none, for there was only one string left in his battered organ; but he always acted so as to convey the idea that the boys had destroyed his instrument. He would turn away at the handle in a desperate way, as if he were determined to spare no effort to please his patrons; but nothing ever came of it but a feeble tink-a-tink at long intervals. If his organ could at any time have been spoiled, certainly the boys might have done it; for their great delight was to put stones in it, and batter in its deal back with sticks. I am informed that this man had a good deal more of the rogue than of the fool in his composition. A gentleman offered to have his organ repaired for him; but he declined; and at length when the one remaining string gave way he would only have that one mended. It was his “dodge” to grind the air, and appear to be unconscious that he was not discoursing most eloquent music.

Tract-selling in the streets is a line peculiar to the Hindoos. I find that the tracts are given to them by religious people, and that they are bought by religious people, who are not unfrequently the very same persons who provided the tracts. Very few petty trading beggars take to tract-selling from their own inspiration; for in good sooth it does not pay, except when conducted on the principle I have just indicated. Some find it convenient to exhibit tracts simply to evade the law applying to beggars and vagrants; but they do not use them if they can procure a more popular article. In these remarks it is very far from my intention to speak of “religious people” with any disrespect. I merely use the expression “religious people” to denote those who employ themselves actively and constantly in disseminating religious publications among the people. Their motives and their efforts are most praiseworthy, and my only regret is that their labours are not rewarded by a larger measure of success.

An Author’s Wife.

In the course of my inquiry into the habits, condition, and mode of life of the petty trading beggars of London, I met with a young woman who alleged that the publications she sold were the production of her husband. I encountered her at the bar of a tavern, where I was occupied in looking out for “specimens” of the class of beggars, which I am now describing. She entered the bar modestly and with seeming diffidence. She had some printed sheets in her hand. I asked her what they were. She handed me a sheet. It was entitled the Pretty Girls of London. It was only a portion of the work, and on the last page was printed “to be continued.” “Do you bring this out in numbers?” I asked. “Yes, sir,” she replied, “it is written by my husband, and he is continuing it from time to time.” “Are you then his publisher?” I inquired. “Yes, sir, my husband is ill a-bed, and I am obliged to go out and sell his work for him?” I looked through the sheet, and I saw that it was not a very decent work. “Have you ever read this?” I enquired. “Oh yes, sir, and I think it’s very clever; don’t you think so, sir?” It certainly was written with some little ability, and I said so; but I objected to its morality. Upon which she replied, “But it’s what takes, sir.” She sold several copies while I was present, at twopence each; but one or two gave her fourpence and sixpence. As she was leaving I made further inquiries about her husband. She said he was an author by profession, and had seen better days. He was very ill, and unable to work. I asked her, to give me his address as I might be of some assistance to him. This request seemed to perplex her; and at length she said, she was afraid her husband would not like to see me; he was very proud. I have since ascertained that this author’s pretty little wife is a dangerous impostor. She lives, or did live at the time I met her, at the back of Clare Market, with a man (not her husband) who was well known to the police as a notorious begging-letter writer. He was not the author of anything but those artful appeals, with forged signatures, of which I have given specimens under the heading of “Screevers.” I was also assured by an officer that the pretended author’s wife had on one occasion been concerned in decoying a young man to a low lodging near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where the unsuspecting youth was robbed and maltreated.

DEPENDANTS OF BEGGARS.

The dependants of beggars may be divided into screevers proper; i.e., writers of “slums and fakements” for those who live by “screeving,” and referees, or those who give characters to professional beggars when references are required. Beggars are generally born and bred to the business. Their fathers and mothers were beggars before them, and they have an hereditary right to the calling. The exceptions to this rule are those who have fallen into mendicancy, and follow it from necessity, and those who have flown to it in a moment of distress, and finding it more lucrative than they supposed, adopted it from choice. Hence it follows that the majority are entirely destitute of education; and by education I mean the primary arts of reading and writing. Where there is demand there is supply, and the wants of mendicants who found their account in “pads,” and “slums,” and “fakements,” created “screevers.”

The antecedents of the screever are always more or less—and generally more—disreputable. He has been a fraudulent clerk imprisoned for embezzlement; or a highly-respected treasurer to a philanthropic society, who has made off with the funds entrusted to him; or a petty forger, whose family have purchased silence, and “hushed up” a scandal; or, more frequently, that most dangerous of convicts, the half-educated convict—who has served his time or escaped his bonds.

Too proud to beg himself, or, more probably, too well known to the police to dare face daylight; ignorant of any honest calling, or too idle to practise it; without courage to turn thief or informer; lazy, dissolute, and self-indulgent, the screever turns his little education to the worst of purposes, and prepares the forgery he leaves the more fearless cadger to utter.

The following are specimens of the screever’s work, copied from the original documents in the possession of Mr. Horsford, of the Mendicity Society:—

“Parish of Battersea; County of Surrey.

“This memorial sheweth that Mr. Alexander Fyfe, a native of Port Glasgow N.B. and for several years carrying on the business of a NURSERY and SEEDSMAN in this parish, became security for his son in law Andrew Talfour of Bay st. Port Glasgow who in October last privately disposed of his effects and absconded to the colonies, leaving his wife and six children totally unprovided for and the said Mr. Alexander Fyfe responsible for the sum of £1350. the sudden reverse of fortune together with other domestic afflictions so preyed on the mind of Mr. Fyfe that he is now an inmate of a LUNATIC ASYLUM.

“The said Mr. Fyfe together with his family have hitherto maintained the character of HONESTY and INDUSTRY in consideration of which I have been earnestly solicited by a few Benevolent persons to draw up this statement on behalf of the bereaved family. I have therefore taken on myself the responsibillity of so doing trusting those whom Providence has given the means will lend their timely aid in rescuing a respectable family from the ruin that inevitably awaits them.

“GIVEN under my Hand at the VESTRY in the aforesaid parish of Battersea and County of Surrey this Twenty-Fourth day of February in the year of Our Lord 1851.”

John Thomas Freeman,£3

Vestry Clerk,

J. S. Jenkinson£500

Vicar of Battersea.

Watson and Co.£5

John Forster & Co.£5

Revd. J. Twining22

Alderman J. Humphery5

Sir George Pollock5

Southlands.

£.

Henry Mitton2

Wm. Downs2

Oak wharf.

Mrs. Broadley Wilson1

Sir Henry B. Houghton£5

Mrs. Adm^l Colin Campbell11

Col. J. Mc Donall£5 paid.

Anonymous2

Mrs. Col. Forbes£3

Col. W. Mace paid5

P. H. Gillespie5

Minister of the Scotch Church

Battersea Rise

3d March /51

Messrs. Moffat, Gillespie & Co.5pd.

My readers will perceive that the above document is written in a semi-legal style, with a profuse amount of large capitals, and minute particularity in describing localities, though here and there an almost ostentatious indifference exists upon the same points. Thus we are told that the parish of Battersea is in the county of Surrey, and that Port Glasgow is in North Britain, while on the other hand we are only informed that the absconding Andrew Talfour, of Bay Street, Port Glasgow, N.B., made off to the colonies, which, considering the vast extent of our colonial possessions, is vague, to say the least of it. It must also be allowed that, the beginning the word “benevolent” in the second paragraph with a capital B is equally to the credit of the writer’s head and heart. It is odd that after having spelt “responsible” so correctly, the writer should have indulged a playful fancy with “responsibillity;” but perhaps trifling orthographical lapses may be in keeping with the assumed character of vestry-clerk. Critically speaking, the weak point of this composition is its punctuation; its strong point the concluding paragraph, “the GIVEN under my hand at the VESTRY,” which carries with it the double weight of a royal proclamation, and the business-like formality of an Admiralty contract; but the composition and caligraphy are trifles—the real genius lies in the signatures.

I wish my readers could see the names attached to this “Memorial” as they lay before me. The first, “J. S. Jenkinson,” is written in the most clerical of hands; “Watson and Co.” is round and commercial; “John Forster & Co.” the same; the “Revd J. Twining” scholarly and easy; “Alderman J. Humphery” stiff and upright. These names are evidently copied from the Red Book and Directory; some are purely fictitious; many are cleverly executed forgeries.

The ingenuity of the concocter and compiler—of the sympathiser with the woes of Mr. Alexander Fyfe of Port Glasgow, N.B.—was exercised in vain. The imposture was detected; he was taken to a police-court, condemned, and sentenced.

Here is the case of another unfortunate Scotchman from the pen of the same gifted author. The handwriting, the wording, the capitals, and the N.B.’s, are identical with those of the warm-hearted vestry-clerk of Battersea.

“These are to certify that Mr. Alexr. Malcolm Ship-Owner and General Merchant, was on his passage from FRASERBURGH. ABERDEENSHIRE. N.B. on the night of the 3d. inst when his vessel the Susan and Mary of Fraserburgh laden with Corn was run down by a “steamer name unknown” the Crew consisting of Six persons narrowly escaping with their lives.

“Mr. Malcolm sustained a loss of property by the appalling event to the amount of £370. and being a person of exemplary character with a numerous family entirely depending upon him for support his case has excited the greatest sympathy, it has therefore been proposed by a few of his friends to enter into a subscription on his behalf with a view of raising by voluntary contributions a sufficient sum to release him from his present embarrassed situation.

“I have known him for several years a constant trader to this wharf, and consider him worthy of every sympathy.”

Leith and Glasgow WharfJoseph Adams£500

London May 6th. 1847Geo. Carroll5

A. Nichol & Sonspd.5

P. Laurie5

Vivian & Sons3

J. H. Petty2pd

Messrs. Drummond£5pd.

Cranford Colvin & Co.£3

Baring Brothers5

Curries & Co.3

Jono. Price55

Reid, Irving & Co.£5

The signatures attached to this are imitations of the handwriting of various firms, each distinct, individual, and apparently genuine.

The next “screeve” takes the form of a resolution at a public meeting:—

“Notting-Hill, District Parish of Kensington August 6th, 1857

“The Gentry and Clergy of this neighbourhood will no doubt remember that the late Mr. Edward Wyatt, (for many years a respectable tradesman in this parish) died in embarrassed circumstances in 1855, leaving a Widow and Seven Children totally unprovided for, the eldest of whom a fine Girl 19 years of age having been a Cripple from her Birth has received a liberal education and is considered a competent person to superintend a SEMINARY for the tuition of young females which would materially assist her Mother in supporting a numerous family.

“A meeting was convened on Monday evening the 3rd inst (the Revd J. P. Gall, Incumbent of St. Johns, in the Chair) when it was unanimously proposed to enter into a subscription with a view of raising by voluntary contributions the sum of £40 in order to establish the afflicted girl in this praiseworthy undertaking, I have been instructed by the Parochial Authorities to draw up this statement and therefore take upon myself the responsibility of so doing knowing the case to be one meriting sympathy.

“Signed By order of the Chairman Reuben Green Vestry Clerk”

Subscriptions received at the Meeting, £11 13 6

Revd J. P. Gill£100

Mrs. W. Money100 pd

Chushington£1

Mrs Coventry paid10/

J. & W. S. Huntleypd11

Addison Terrace

Notting Hill

Mrs. Cribbpd50

The Misses Shorland76

Mrs Harris50

Miss Hall Lansdowne Crescent10/

W. Atkinsonpd50

Thos Jacomb50

Miss J. Robertsonpaid50

The Misses Howard50

The above letter is written in a better style than those preceding it. Great talent is exhibited in the imitations of “lady’s-hand.” The signatures “Mrs. Coventry,” “Mrs. Cribb,” “The Misses Howard,” and “Mrs. Harris” (surely this screever must have been familiar with the works of Dickens), are excellently done, but are surpassed by the clever execution of the letters forming the names, “The Misses Shorland” and “Miss Hall Lansdowne Crescent,” which are masterpieces of feminine caligraphy.

The following note was sent to its address, accompanied by a memorial in one of the House of Commons envelopes, but the faulty grammar, so unlike the style in which a member of Parliament ought to write, betrayed it.

“Committee Room No. 3 House of Commons

“Mr. J. Whatman presents his respectful compliments to the Revd. W. Smith Marriott at the earnest request of the poor families (whose case will be fully explained on perusal of the accompanying document in the bearer’s possession), begs to submit it for that gentlemen’s charitable consideration.

“The persons whom this concerns are natives of Cranbrook Gondhurst, Brenchley &c and bears unexceptionable characters, they have the honor of knowing Mr. Marriott at Worsmorden and trust he will add his signature to the list of subscribers, for which favour they will feel grateful.

“J. Whatman takes more than ordinary interest in this case having a knowledge of its authenticity, he therefore trusts that the motives which actuates him in complying with the request will be deemed a sufficient apology.

Friday Evening May 28, 1858”

“This Memorial sheweth that Mr. Henry Shepherd a General Carrier from EWELL, CHEAM, SUTTON &c. to LONDON VIA Mitchem, Morden, Tooting and Clapham, was returning home on the Evening of Thursday the 26th inst when near the Elephant and Castle, his Horse took fright at a Band of street Musicians and ran off at a furious pace, the Van coming in contact with a Timber carriage was dashed to pieces, the Animal received such injuries as caused its death, and Mr. SHEPHERD endeavouring to save the property entrusted to his care for delivery had his Right Leg fractured and is now an inmate of GUYS HOSPITAL.

“On further investigation We find his loss exceeds £70. and knowing him to be an Industrious, Honest man, with a large family depending upon his exertions for support We earnestly beg leave to recommend his case to the notice of the Gentry and Clergy of his neighbourhood, trusting their united Donations in conjunction with our mutual assistance will release a deserving family from their present unfortunate position in life.

“GIVEN under OurWilliam Harmer£

Hands this 30th day of 2

August in the Year of

Our Lord 1858”

Geo. Stone Ewell£2

Sir Geo. L. Glyn22

F. Gosling22

Revd W. H. Vernon£1

Morton Stubbs11

Sutton

Edmund Antrobus£22

pd to Bearer

2d/9th/58

W. R. G. Farmer£22

pd.

Revd. R. Bouchier£2 pd.

My readers must admire the ingenuity of this letter. The VIA Mitchem looks so formal and convincing. The grouping of the circumstances—the “local colouring,” as the critics would call it, which contributed to the ruin of the ill-fated general carrier Henry Shepherd—is excellent.—“Near the Elephant and Castle his horse took fright at a band of street musicians.” What more natural? “Ran off at a furious pace. The van, coming in contact with a timber carriage, was dashed to pieces. The Animal,” not the horse—that would have been tautological, and Animal with a capital A. “The Animal received such injuries as caused its death, and Mr. Shepherd, endeavouring to save the property entrusted to his care—.” Admirable man! Devoted carrier!—leaving his van to smash—his horse to perish as they might, that the goods confided to him might receive no hurt. “... endeavouring to save the property entrusted to his care for delivery, had his right leg fractured, and is now an inmate of Guy’s Hospital.”

This is as well conceived and carried out as Sheridan’s pistol-bullet that misses its mark, “strikes a bronze Hercules in the mantel-piece, glances off through the window, and wounds the postman who was coming to the door with a double letter from Northamptonshire!”

The word “Paid” and its abbreviation pd. is scattered here and there artistically among the subscriptions. A small note in a different hand, in a corner of the last page shows the fate of industry and talent misapplied. It runs:—

“Taken from Thos. Shepherd, Sept. 13. Mansion House. Lord Mayor Sir A. Carden. Committed for 3 months.

“J. W. Horsford.”

The last instance I shall cite is peculiar, from the elaborate nature of the deception, and from containing a forgery of the signature of Lord Brougham. The screever, in this case, has taken a regularly printed Warrant, Execution, or Distress for Rent, filled it up with the name of Mrs. Julia Thompson, &c., and placed an imaginary inventory to a fictitious seizure. The word “Patent” is spelt “Pattent,” which might be allowable in a broker’s man, but when “Ewer” is written “Ure,” I think he is too hard upon the orthography peculiar to the officers of the Sheriff of Middlesex, particularly as it is evident from the rest of the filling-in of the form that the error is intentional. Not only law but science is invoked in aid of this capital case of sham real distress. “Pleuro-Pneumonia” looks veterinary and veracious enough to carry conviction to the hearts of the most sceptical.

Removing any goods off the premises to avoid a distress or any person aiding, assisting, or concealing the same, will subject themselves to double the value of such effects so removed or concealed, or suffer imprisonment in the House of Correction, there to be kept to hard labour without Bail or Mainprize for Six Months, pursuant to the Act 11th George 2nd.

Sold by G. H. Beckford, Law Stationer, 122, Chancery Lane.

“TAKE NOTICE, That by the authority and on the behalf of your Landlord, Thos. Young, I have this Sixteenth day of April in the year of Our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty-six distrained the several goods and chattels specified in the Schedule or Inventory hereinunder written in

19 Praed Street in the Parish of

Paddington in the County of Middlesex, for Twenty-nine pounds, being Twelve Months and arrears Rent due to the said Mr. Thos. Young

at Ninth Febry last

and if you shall not pay the said Twelve Months and Arrears Rent so due and in arrear as aforesaid together with the costs and charges of this distress or replevy the said goods and chattels within five days from the date hereof I shall cause the said goods and chattels to be appraised and sold, pursuant to the statute in that case made and provided.

“Given under my hand the day and year above written.

“J. W. Russell. “Sworn Broker, &c.

“To Mrs. Julia Thompson.”

The Schedule or Inventory above referred to:—

Mahogany Drawers

Mahogany Dining Tables

Six Mahogany Seated Chairs

Two Arm Do. Do.

One Eight-Day clock

Six Oil Paintings Gilt Frames

One Large Pier Glass

Carpet and Hearthrug

Fender and Fire-irons

Quantity of Chimney Ornaments

Six Kitchen Chairs

One Long Table Deal

One Large Copper Boiler

Two Copper Kettles

Pattent Mangle

One Large Water Butt

Two Washing Tubs

1½ Doz. of Knifes and Forkes

Quantity of Earthenware &c. &c.

Two Feather Beds & Bedding

One Flock Do Do.

Two Mahogany Bedsteads

One French Do

Washhand stand Ure &c.

Two Hair Mattresses

Three Bedroom Chairs

One set of Bedroom Carpeting

Staircase Carpeting, Brass Rods &c.

One Milch Cow

One Cart Mare

One Dung Cart

One Wheelbarrow

Three Cwt. of Hay

Quantity of Manure

And Sundry Dairy Utensils

&c. &c. &c.

On the back of this legal document is written:

“This memorial sheweth that Mrs. Julia Thompson, widow, Cowkeeper and Dairywoman has since the demise of her husband which took place in 1849 supported a family consisting of six children by the assistance of a small Dairy the Pleuro-Pneumonia a disease Among Cattle has prevailed in the neighbourhood for several weeks during which time she has lost five Milch Cows estimated at £75. „ „ which will end in her entire ruin unless aided by the Hands of the Benevolent whose Donations in conjunction with Our mutual assistance will We trust enable Mrs. Thompson to realize some part of her lost property to follow her Business As before.

H. Peters£330

April 17th, 1856

Chaplin & Horne£2

Mrs. Gore1

Revd J. W. Buckley2

Revd John Miles1

Mrs. J. Shaw2paid

C. Lushington33

W. H. Ormsby2

C. Molyneux1

Miss Ferrers2paid

W. Emmitt22

Anonymous20

Misses Gregg22

Miss Browne1

J. B. White & Bros3pd

Thos Slater2

W. T. Bird2pd.

Miss Hamilton3paid

Revd. J. A. Toole2paid

Mr. Hopgood2Paid

A Friend to the Widow33

Paid to Mr. Pegg

Richd Green£2pd

Revd A. M. Campbell3

W. P. France1

W. M. N. Reilly22

Mrs. Forbes2pd

R. Gurney1

J. Spurling2pd

Geo. R. Ward1

Miss Brown2

Mrs Needham2Paid

Mr Davidson£2

Mrs. H. Scott Waring33

Mrs Hall11

Saml. Venables2

Revd. A. Taylor1

Revd. H. V. Le Bas1

Thomas Bunting2pd.

Mrs & Miss Vullamy3

Revd. C. Smalley5

Miss Smalley3

Lord Brougham2”

The two most notorious “screevers” of the present day are Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Johnson of Westminster, or as he is proud of being called, “Johnson the Schemer.”

Referees

are generally keepers of low lodging-houses, brothels, &c., or small tradesmen who supply thieves and beggars with chandlery, &c. When applied to for the character of any of their friends and confederates, they give them an excellent recommendation—but are careful not to overdo it. With that highest sort of artfulness that conceals artfulness, they know when to stop, and seldom or never betray themselves by saying too much.

“Mrs. Simmons!” said one of them in answer to an application for character—“ah, yes, sir, I known her a good many years, and a very honest, hard-working, industrious, sober sort of a person I always knowed her to be, at least as far as I see—I never see nothing wrong in the woman for my part. The earliest-uppest, and downest-latest woman I ever see, and well she need be, with that family of hers—nine on ’em, and the eldest girl a idiot. When first I knew her, sir, her husband was alive, and then Susan—that’s the idiot, sir, were a babe in arms—her husband was a bad man to her, sir—the way that man drunk and spent his money among all the lowest girls and corner-coves was awful to see,—I mean by corner-coves them sort of men who is always a standing at the corners of the streets and chaffing respectable folks a passing by—we call them corner-coves about here; but as to poor Mrs. Simmons, sir, that husband of hers tret her awful—though he’s dead and gone now, poor man, and perhaps I have no right to speak ill on the dead. He had some money with her too—two hundred pound I heard—her father was a builder in a small way—and lived out towards Fulham—a very deserving woman I always found her, sir, and I have helped her a little bit myself, not much of course, for my circumstances would not allow of it; I’ve a wife and family myself—and I have often been wishful I could help her more, but what can a man do as has to pay his rent and taxes, and bring up his family respectable? When her last baby but two had the ring-worm we helped her now and then with a loaf of bread—poor thing—it ran right through the family, that ring-worm did—six on ’em had it at the same time, she told us—and then they took the measles—the most unluckiest family in catching things as goes about I never saw—but as to Mrs. Simmons herself, sir, poor thing—a more hard-workinger and honester woman I never, &c., &c., &c.”

DISTRESSED OPERATIVE BEGGARS.

All beggars are ingenious enough to make capital of public events. They read the newspapers, judge the bent of popular sympathy, and decide on the “lay” to be adopted. The “Times” informs its readers that two or three hundred English navigators have been suddenly turned adrift in France. The native labourers object to the employment of aliens, and our stalwart countrymen have been subjected to insult as well as privation. The beggar’s course is taken; he goes to Petticoat Lane, purchases a white smock frock, a purple or red plush waistcoat profusely ornamented with wooden buttons, a coloured cotton neckerchief, and a red nightcap. If procurable “in the Lane,” he also buys a pair of coarse-ribbed grey worsted-stockings, and boots whose enormous weight is increased by several pounds of iron nails in their thick soles; even then he is not perfect, he seeks a rag and bottle and old iron shop—your genuine artist-beggar never asks for what is new, he prefers the worn, the used, the ragged and the rusty—and bargains for a spade. The proprietor of the shop knows perfectly well that his customer requires an article for show, not service, and they part with a mutual grin, and the next day every street swarms with groups of distressed navigators. Popular feeling is on their side, and halfpence shower round them. Meanwhile the poor fellows for whom all this generous indignation is evoked are waiting in crowds at a French port till the British Consul passed them over to their native soil as paupers.

The same tactics are pursued with manufactures. Beggars read the list of patents, and watch the effect of every fresh discovery in mechanics on the operatives of Lancashire and Yorkshire. A new machine is patented. So many hands are thrown out of work. So many beggars, who have never seen Lancashire, except when on the tramp, are heard in London. A strike takes place at several mills, pretended “hands” next day parade the streets. Even the variability of our climate is pressed into the “cadging” service; a frost locks up the rivers, and hardens the earth, rusty spades and gardening tools are in demand, and the indefatigable beggar takes the pavement in another “fancy dress.” Every social shipwreck is watched and turned to account by these systematic land-wreckers, who have reduced false signals to a regular code, and beg by rule and line and chart and compass.

Starved-out Manufacturers

parade in gangs of four and five, or with squalid wives and a few children. They wear paper-caps and white aprons with “bibs” to them, or a sort of cross-barred pinafore, called in the manufacturing districts a “chequer-brat.” Sometimes they make a “pitch,” that is, stand face to face, turning their backs upon a heartless world, and sing. The well-known ditty of

set to the tune of, “Oh let us be joyful,” was first introduced by this class of beggars. Or they will carry tapes, stay-laces, and papers of buttons, and throw imploring looks from side to side, and beg by implication. Or they will cock their chins up in the air, so as to display the unpleasantly prominent apples in their bony throats, and drone a psalm. When they go out “on the blob,” they make a long oration, not in the Lancashire or Yorkshire dialects, but in a cockney voice, of a strong Whitechapel flavour. The substance of the speech varies but slightly from the “patter” of the hand-loom weaver; indeed, the Nottingham “driz” or lace-man, the hand on strike, the distressed weaver, and the “operative” beggar, generally bear so strong a resemblance to each other, that they not only look like but sometimes positively are one and the same person.

Unemployed Agriculturists and Frozen-out Gardeners

are seen during a frost in gangs of from six to twenty. Two gangs generally “work” together, that is, while one gang begs at one end of a street, a second gang begs at the other. Their mode of procedure their “programme,” is very simple. Upon the spades which they carry is chalked “frozen-out!” or “starving!” and they enhance the effect of this “slum or fakement,” by shouting out sturdily “frozen out,” “We’re all frozen-out!” The gardeners differ from the agriculturists or “navvies” in their costume. They affect aprons and old straw hats, their manner is less demonstrative, and their tones less rusty and unmelodious. The “navvies” roar; the gardeners squeak. The navvies’ petition is made loud and lustily, as by men used to work in clay and rock; the gardeners’ voice is meek and mild, as of a gentle nature trained to tend on fruits and flowers. The young bulky, sinewy beggar plays navvy; the shrivelled, gravelly, pottering, elderly cadger performs gardener.

There can be no doubt that in times of hardship many honest labourers are forced into the streets to beg. A poor hard-working man, whose children cry to him for food, can feel no scruple in soliciting charity,—against such the writer of these pages would urge nothing; all credit to the motive that compels them unwillingly to ask alms; all honour to the feeling that prompts the listener to give. It is not the purpose of the author of this work to write down every mendicant an impostor, or every almsgiver a fool; on the contrary, he knows how much real distress, and how much real benevolence exist, and he would but step between the open hand of true charity, and the itching palm of the professional beggar, who stands between the misery that asks and the philanthropy that would relieve.

The winter of 1860-61 was a fine harvest for the “frozen out” impostors, some few of whom, happily, reaped the reward of their deserts in the police-courts. Three strong hearty men were brought up at one office; they said that they were starving, and they came from Horselydown; when searched six shillings and elevenpence were found upon them; they reiterated that they were starving and were out of work, on which the sitting magistrate kindly provided them with both food and employment, by sentencing them to seven days’ hard labour.

The “profits” of the frozen-out gardener and agriculturist are very large, and generally quadruples the sum earned by honest labour. In the February of 1861, four of these “distressed navvies” went into a public-house to divide the “swag” they had procured by one day’s shouting. Each had a handkerchief filled with bread and meat and cheese. They called for pots of porter and drank heartily, and when the reckoning was paid and the spoils equally divided, the share of each man was seven shillings.

The credulity of the public upon one point has often surprised me. A man comes out into the streets to say that he is starving, a few halfpence are thrown to him. If really hungry he would make for the nearest baker’s shop; but no, he picks up the coppers, pockets them, and proclaims again that he is starving, though he has the means of obtaining food in his fingers. Not that this obvious anachronism stops the current of benevolence or the chink of coin upon the stones—the fainting, famished fellow walks leisurely up the street, and still bellows out in notes of thunder, “I am starving!” If one of my readers will try when faint and exhausted to produce the same tone in the open air, he will realize the impossibility of shouting and starving simultaneously.

Hand-loom Weavers and Others deprived of their Living by Machinery.

As has been before stated, the regular beggar seizes on the latest pretext for a plausible tale of woe. Improvements in mechanics, and consequent cheapness to the many, are usually the causes of loss to the few. The sufferings of this minority is immediately turned to account by veteran cadgers, who rush to their wardrobes of well-chosen rags, attire themselves in appropriate costume, and ply their calling with the last grievance out. When unprovided with “patter,” they seek the literati of their class, and buy a speech; this they partly commit to memory, and trust to their own ingenuity to improvise any little touches that may prove effective. Many “screevers, slum-scribblers, and fakement-dodgers” eke out a living by this sort of authorship. Real operatives seldom stir from their own locality. The sympathy of their fellows, their natural habits, and the occasional relief afforded by the parish bind them to their homes, and the “distressed weaver” is generally a spurious metropolitan production. The following is a copy of one of their prepared orations:

“My kind Christian Friends,

“We are poor working-men from —— which cannot obtain bread by our labour, owing to the new alterations and inventions which the master-manufacturers have introduced, which spares them the cost of employing hands, and does the work by machinery instead. Yes, kind friends, machinery and steam-engines now does the work, which formerly was done by our hands and work and labour. Our masters have turned us off, and we are without bread and knowing no other trade but that which we was born and bred to, we are compelled to ask your kind assistance, for which, be sure of it, we shall be ever grateful. As we have said, masters now employs machinery and steam-engines instead of men, forgetting that steam-engines have no families of wives or children, and consequently are not called on to provide for them. We are without bread to put into our mouths, also our wives and children are the same. Foreign competition has drove our masters to this step, and we working-men are the sufferers thereby. Kind friends, drop your compassion on us: the smallest trifle will be thankfully received, and God will bless you for the relief you give to us. May you never know what it is to be as we are now, drove from our work, and forced to come out into the streets to beg your charity from door to door. Have pity on us, for our situation is most wretched. Our wives and families are starving, our children cry to us for bread, and we have none to give them. Oh, my friends, look down on us with compassion. We are poor working-men, weavers from —— which cannot obtain bread by our labour owing to the new inventions in machinery, which, &c. &c. &c.”

In concluding this section of our work, I would commend to the notice of my readers the following observations on alms-giving:—

The poor will never cease from the land. There always will be exceptional excesses and outbreaks of distress that no plan could have provided against, and there always will be those who stand with open palm to receive, in the face of heaven, our tribute of gratitude for our own happier lot. Yet there is a duty of the head as well as of the heart, and we are bound as much to use our reason as to minister of our abundance. The same heaven that has rewarded our labours, and filled our garners or our coffers, or at least, given us favour in the sight of merchants and bankers, has given us also brains, and consequently a charge to employ them. So we are bound to sift appeals, and consider how best to direct our benevolence. Whoever thinks that charity consists in mere giving, and that he has only to put his hand in his pocket, or draw a check in favour of somebody who is very much in want of money, and looks very grateful for favours to be received, will find himself taught better, if not in the school of adversity, at least by many a hard lesson of kindness thrown away, or perhaps very brutishly repaid. As animals have their habits, so there is a large class of mankind whose single cleverness is that of representing themselves as justly and naturally dependent on the assistance of others, who look paupers from their birth, who seek givers and forsake those who have given as naturally as a tree sends its roots into new soil and deserts the exhausted. It is the office of reason—reason improved by experience—to teach us not to waste our own interest and our resources on beings that will be content to live on our bounty, and will never return a moral profit to our charitable industry. The great opportunities or the mighty powers that heaven may have given us, it never meant to be lavished on mere human animals who eat, drink and sleep, and whose only instinct is to find out a new caterer when the old one is exhausted.