BEGGING “DODGES.”
_The Variety and Quality of the Imposture_—_Superior Accomplishments of
the Modern Practitioner_—_The Recipe for Success_—_The Power of_
“_Cheek_”—“_Chanting_” _and the_ “_Shallow Lay_”—_Estimates of their
Paying Value_—_The Art of touching Women’s Hearts_—_The Half-resentful
Trick_—_The London_ “_Cadger_”—_The Height of_ “_The Famine Season_.”
THE “dodges” to which an individual resolved on a vagrant life will
resort are almost past reckoning; and, as a natural consequence, the
quality of the imposture in modern practice is superior to that which
served to delude our grandfathers.
It can be no other. As civilisation advances, and our machinery for the
suppression and detection of fraud improves, so, if he would live at all,
must the professional impostor exert all the skill and cunning he is
endowed with to adjust the balance at his end of the beam. It is with
vagrancy as with thieving. If our present system of police had no more
formidable adversaries to deal with than lived and robbed in the days of
those famous fellows, Richard Turpin and Master Blueskin, Newgate might,
in the course of a few years, be converted into a temperance hotel, and
our various convict establishments into vast industrial homes for the
helplessly indigent. So, if the well-trained staff under the captaincy
of that shrewd scenter of make-believe and humbug—Mr. Horsford—was called
on to rout an old-fashioned army of sham blindness, and cripples whose
stumps were fictitious; and of clumsy whining cadgers, who made filthy
rags do duty for poverty, who painted horrid sores on their arms and
legs, and employed a mild sort of whitewash to represent on their
impudent faces the bloodless pallor of consumption,—we might reasonably
hope to be rid of the whole community in a month.
It is scarcely too much to say, that the active and intelligent
opposition brought to bear of late years against beggars has caused the
trade to be taken up by a class of persons of quite superior
accomplishments. I well recollect, on the memorable occasion of my
passing a night in the society of tramps and beggars, hearing the matter
discussed seriously and at length, and that by persons who, from their
position in life, undoubtedly were those to whose opinion considerable
weight attached. The conversation began by one young fellow, as he
reclined on his hay-bed and puffed complacently at his short pipe,
relating how he had “kidded” the workhouse authorities into the belief
that he had not applied for relief at that casual-ward for at least a
month previously, whereas he had been there for three successive nights.
Of course this was a joke mightily enjoyed by his audience; and a friend,
wagging his head in high admiration, expressed his wonder as to how the
feat could be successfully accomplished. “How!” replied the audacious
one; “why, with cheek, to be sure. Anything can be done if you’ve only
got cheek enough. It’s no use puttin’ on a spurt of it, and knocking
under soon as you’re tackled. Go in for it up to the heads of your —
soul bolts. Put it on your face so gallus thick that the devil himself
won’t see through it. Put it into your eyes and set the tears a-rollin’.
Swear God’s truth; stop at nothing. They’re bound to believe you. There
ain’t nothing else left for ’em. They think that there’s an end
somewhere to lyin’ and cheekin’, and they’re — fools enough to think that
they can tell when that end shows itself. Don’t let your cheek have any
end to it. _That’s_ where you’re right, my lads.”
I have, at the risk of shocking the reader of delicate sensibilities,
quoted at full the terms in which my ruffianly “casual” chamber-fellow
delivered himself of his opinion as to the power of “cheek” illimitable,
because from the same experienced source presently proceeded as handsome
a tribute to the efficiency of the officers of the Mendicity Society as
they could desire.
“What shall you do with yerself to-morrow?” one asked of another, who,
weary of song and anecdote and blasphemy, preparatory to curling down for
the night was yawning curses on the parochial authorities for supplying
him with no warmer rug. “It ain’t much you can do anyhows atween the
time when you finish at the crank and go out, till when you wants to come
in agin. It feels like frost; if it is, I shall do a bit of chanting, I
think.” (“Chanting” is vagrant phraseology for street singing.)
“I’m with you,” replied his friend; “unless it’s cold enough to work the
shaller; that’s the best game. ’Taint no use, though, without its
perishin’ cold; that’s the wust on it.”
(It may be here mentioned that the “shaller,” or more properly “shallow”
dodge, is for a beggar to make capital of his rags and a disgusting
condition of semi-nudity; to expose his shoulders and his knees and his
shirtless chest, pinched and blue with cold. A pouncing of the exposed
parts with common powder-blue is found to heighten the frost-bitten
effect, and to excite the compassion of the charitable.)
“There you are wrong,” broke in the advocate of “cheek;” “that isn’t the
wust of it. The wust of it is, that there’s no _best_ of it. It don’t
matter what you try; all games is a-growing stale as last week’s tommy”
(bread).
“It’s ’cos people get so gallus ’ard-’arted, that’s wot it is,” remarked
with a grin a young gentleman who shared the bed of the ‘cheeky’ one.
“No, that ain’t it, either; people are as soft-’arted and as green as
ever they was; and so they would shell-out like they used to do, only for
them —” (something too dreadful for printing) “lurchers of the S’ciety.
It’s all them. It ain’t the reg’lar p’lice. They’re above beggars,
’cept when they’re set on. It’s them Mendikent coves, wot gets their
livin’ by pokin’ and pryin’ arter every cove like us whenever they sees
him in the street. They gives the public the ‘office’” (information),
“and the public believes ’em, bust ’em!”
These observations evidently set the “cheeky” one thinking on times past;
for he presently took up the subject again.
“Things ain’t wot they was one time. Talkin’ about the shallow lay; Lor’
bless yer, you should have knowed what it was no longer ago than when I
was a kid, and used to go out with my old woman. Ah, it was summat to
have winter then! I’ve heerd my old woman say often that she’d warrant
to make enough to live on all the rest of the year, if she only had three
months’ good stiff frost. I recollect the time when you couldn’t go a
dozen yards without hearing the flying up of a window or the opening of a
door, and there was somebody a-beckoning of you to give you grub or
coppers. It was the grub that beat us.”
“How d’ye mean? Didn’t you get enough of it?”
“Hark at him! enough of it! We got a thunderin’ sight too much of it. A
little of it was all very well, ’specially if it was a handy-sized meaty
bone, wot you could relish with a pint of beer when you felt peckish;
but, bust ’em, they used to overdo it. It don’t look well, don’t you
know, to carry a bag or anythink, when you are on the shallow lay. It
looks as though you was a ‘reg’lar,’ and that don’t ‘act.’ The old gal
used to stow a whacking lot in a big pocket she had in her petticut, and
I used to put away a ‘dollop’ in the busum of my shirt, which it was tied
round the waist-bag hid underneath my trousers for the purpose. But,
Lor’ bless yer, sometimes the blessed trade would go that aggravatin’
that we would both find ourselves loaded-up in no time. Lor, how my old
woman would swear about the grub sometimes! It used to make me larf; it
was a reg’lar pantermime. She’d be reg’lar weighed down, and me stuffed
so jolly full that I daren’t so much as shiver even, lest a lump of tommy
or meat should tumble out in front, and all the while we’d be pattering
about us not having eat a mouthful since the day afore yesterday. Then
somebody ’ud beckon us; and p’r’aps it was a servant-gal, with enough in
a dish for a man and his dawg. And the old woman ’bliged to curtchy and
look pleased! They ought to have heard her! ‘D— and b— ’em!’ my old gal
used to say between her teeth, ‘I wish they had them broken wittles
stuffed down their busted throats; why the — can’t they give us it in
coppers!’ But she couldn’t say that to them, don’t yer know; she had to
put on a grateful mug, and say, ‘Gord bless yer, my dear!’ to the gal, as
though, if it hadn’t been for that lot of grub turning up that blessed
minute, she must have dropped down dead of starvation.”
“But scran fetched its price in them times, didn’t it, Billy? There was
drums where you might sell it long afore your time, don’t you know,
Billy?”
“Course I know. It fetched its price, cert’inly, when you could get away
to sell it; but what I’m speaking of is the inconwenience of it. We
didn’t want no grub, don’t you see; it was the sp’iling of us. S’pose
now we was served like what I just told you; got reg’lar loaded-up when
we was a couple of miles away. What was we to do? We couldn’t go on a
swearin’ as how we was starvin’ with wittles bustin’ out of us all round.
We was ’bliged to shoot the load afore we could begin ag’in. Sometimes
we had to do the ‘long trot’” (go home) “with it, and so sp’iled a whole
arternoon. If we got a chance, we shot it down a gully, or in a dunghole
in a mews. Anythink to get rid of it, don’t you see. I should like to
have just now the rattlin’ lot of grub we’ve been ’bliged to get rid of
in that there way.”
Despite the decline of the trade of “shallowing,” however, as the reader
must have observed, it is one that is regarded as worth resorting to in
“season.” A more favourite “dodge” at the present is to appear before
the public not in rags and tatters and with patches of naked flesh
disgustingly visible, but in sound thorough labour-stained attire, and
affect the style either of the ashamed unaccustomed beggar or that of the
honest working mechanic, who, desperately driven by stress of poverty,
shapes his loud-mouthed appeal in tones of indignant remonstrance that
rich and prosperous England should permit a man such as he is to be
reduced to the uncomfortable plight in which you now behold him. He is a
solitary cadger, and gets himself up in a manner so artful, that it is
only when you pay attention to his “speech,” and find that he repeats
precisely the same words over and over again, that you begin to have a
suspicion that he is not exactly what he seems. Like the “shallow cove,”
he prefers a very cold or a very wet and miserable day. He does not
enter a street walking in the middle of the road, as the common
“chanting” or “pattering” beggar does; he walks on the pavement with slow
and hesitating gait, and at frequent intervals casts hasty and nervous
glances behind him, as though fearful that he is watched or followed.
Possibly he is so afraid. At all events, should a policeman by rare
chance steal round the corner, his steps will increase in length, and he
will pass out of the street just as an ordinary pedestrian might; but
should he be free to play his “little game,” he will set about it as
follows.
After looking about him several times, he proceeds to make himself
remarkable to any person or persons who may happen to be gazing
streetward from the window. He will stand suddenly still, and button-up
his coat as though determined on some desperate action. With a
loud-sounding “hem!” he clears his throat and advances towards the
roadway; but, alas, before his feet touch the pavement’s boundary his
courage falters, and he dashes his hand across his eyes and shakes his
head, in a manner that at once conveys to beholders the impression that,
much as he desires it, he is unequal to the performance of what a moment
ago he contemplated and thought himself strong enough to perform. At
least, if this is not made manifest to the beholder, the actor has missed
his object. On he goes again just a few faltering steps—a very few—and
then he cries “hem!” again, louder and fiercer than before, and dashes
into the middle of the road.
If you had pushed him there, or set your dog at him and he had bounded
there to escape its fangs, the injured look he casts up at you could not
be surpassed. He says not a word for a full minute; he simply folds his
arms sternly and glares at you up at the window, as though he would say
not so much “What do you think of me standing here?” as “What do you
think of yourself, after having driven me to do a thing so ignominious
and shameful?” These necessary preliminaries accomplished, in a loud
impassioned voice he opens:
“WHAT!”—(a pause of some seconds’ duration)—“WHAT! will a man not do to
drive away from his door the WOLF that assails the wife of his bosom and
his innocent horfspring?”
He appears to await an answer to this, as though it were a solemn
conundrum; though from the moody contraction of his eyebrows and the
momentary scorn that wrinkles the corners of his mouth as he still gazes
all round at the windows, he seems to be aware that it is one which on
account of your complete ignorance of such matters you will never guess.
“Doubtless, my friends, you are astonished to see me in this humiliating
attitude, addressing you like a common beggar. But what else am I? What
is the man who implores you to spare him from your plenty—ay, and your
luxury—a _penny_ to save from starving those that are dearer to him than
his HEART’S blood, but a beggar? But, my friends, a man may be a beggar,
and still be not ashamed. _I_ am not ashamed. I might be, if it was for
myself that I asked your charity; but I would not do so. I would die
sooner than I would stoop to do it; but what is a HUSBAND to do, when he
has a wife weak and ill from her confinement; who is dying by HINCHES for
that nourishment that I have not to give her?” (Here a violent blowing
of his nose on a clean cotton pocket-handkerchief.) “What, my dear
friends, is a FATHER to do, when his little ones cry to him for BREAD?
Should he feel ashamed to beg for them? Ask yourselves that question,
you who have good warm fires and all that the heart can desire. I am
_not_ ashamed. It is a desperate man’s last resource; and I ask you
again, as my fellow-creatures, will you turn away from me and deny me the
small assistance I beg of you?”
Generally he is successful. Women—young mothers and old mothers
alike—find it hard to resist the artless allusion to the wife, “weak and
ill from her confinement,” and the amazingly well-acted sudden outburst
of emotion that the actor is so anxious to conceal under cover of blowing
his nose. To be sure he is not a prepossessing person, and his style of
appeal is somewhat coarse and violent; but that stamps it, in the eyes of
the unwary, as genuine. If he “knew the trade,” he would know that he
should be meek and insinuating, not loud-mouthed and peremptory. In
short, his behaviour is exactly that of a man—a hard-working fellow when
he has it to do—driven to desperation, and with a determination to raise
enough to buy a loaf somehow. It would be a monstrous thing to refuse
such a poor fellow because of his blunt inapt way of asking; and so the
halfpence come showering down. It is several months ago since I last saw
this worthy; but I have no doubt that his wife has not yet recovered from
her confinement, that his children are yet crying for bread, and that he
is still not ashamed to solicit public charity to save them from
starving.
There are other types of the shy, blunt-spoken beggar, who affect almost
to resent the charity they solicit. These abound, as indeed do all
street-beggars, chiefly in the severest months of winter. As long as one
can remember, gangs of men have perambulated the highways in the frosty
months, but until recently they were invariably “chanters,” with a legend
of coming “all the way from Manchester.” But song is eschewed in modern
times. It is found better to avoid old-fashioned forms, and appear as
men destitute and down-trodden perhaps, but still with self-respect
remaining in them. There is no occasion for them to give you a song for
your money; they are not called on to give a lengthy and humiliating
explanation as to how they came there; _you_ know all about it. You must
have read in the newspapers, “that, owing to the many stoppages of public
and private works, there are at the present time hundreds of able-bodied
and deserving labouring men wandering the streets of London, driven to
the hard necessity of begging their bread.” Well, these are of the
number. Observe the unmistakable token of their having laboured on a
“public work,” to wit, a railway-cutting, in the clay baked on their
“ankle-jacks” and fustian trousers. Regard that able-bodied individual,
the leader of the gang, with his grimy great fists and the smut still on
his face, and for a moment doubt that he is a deserving labouring man.
He is an engineer, out of work since last Christmas, and ever since so
hard-up that he has been unable to spare a penny to buy soap with. If
you don’t believe it, ask him. But to this or any other detail himself
or his mates will not condescend in a general way. All that they do, is
to spread across the street, and saunter along with their hands in their
pockets, ejaculating only, “Out of work!” “Willin’ to work, and got no
work to do!” If you followed them all day, you would find no change in
their method of operation, excepting the interval of an hour or so at
midday spent in the tap-room of a public-house. If you followed them
after that, your steps in all probability would be directed towards
Keate-street, Spitalfields, or Mint-street in the Borough, in both of
which delightful localities common lodging-houses abound; and if you were
bold enough to cross the threshold and descend into the kitchen, there
you would discover the jolly crew sitting round a table, and dividing the
handsome spoil of the day, while they drank “long lasting to the frost”
in glasses of neat rum.
At the same time, I should be very sorry for the reader to misunderstand
me, as wishing to convey to him the impression that in every instance the
gangs of men to be met with in the streets in winter-time are vagrants
and impostors. It is not difficult to imagine a company of hard-up poor
fellows genuinely destitute; mates, perhaps, on the same kind of work,
resorting to this method of raising a shilling rather than apply at the
workhouse for it. An out-o’-work navvy or a bricklayer would never think
of going out to beg alone, whereas he would see no great amount of
degradation in joining a “gang.” He thus sinks his individuality, and
becomes merely a representative item of a depressed branch of industry.
There can be no doubt that a sixpence given to such a man is well
bestowed for the time being; but it would be much better, even though it
cost many sixpences, if the labourer were never permitted to adopt this
method of supplying his needs. In the majority of cases, it may be, the
out-o’-work man who resorted to the streets to beg for money would, when
trade improved, hurry back to work, and be heartily glad to forget to
what misfortune had driven him; but there are a very large number of
labourers who, at the best of times, can live but from hand to mouth as
the saying is, and from whom it is desirable to keep secret how much
easier money may be got by begging than working. To a man who has to
drudge at the docks, for instance, for threepence an hour—and there are
thousands in London who do so—it is a dangerous experience for him to
discover that as much may be made on an average by sauntering the
ordinary length of a street, occasionally raising his hand to his cap.
Or he may know beforehand, by rumour, what a capital day’s work may be
done at “cadging,” and in bitter sweat of underpaid labour complain that
he is worse off than a cadger. It is as well to provide against giving
such a man an excuse for breaking the ice.
There are, however, other impostors amongst the begging fraternity
besides those who adopt the professional dress of vagrancy, and
impudently endeavour publicly to proclaim their sham distress and
privation. The terrible condition of want into which thousands of the
working population of London were plunged the winter before last
developed the “cadger” in question in a very remarkable degree. This
personage is not a demonstrative cheat. His existence is due entirely to
the growing belief in decent poverty, and in the conviction that in
frosty “hard-up” times much more of real destitution is endured by those
whose honest pride will not permit them to clamour of their wants, and so
make them known. There can be no doubt but that this is perfectly true,
and, despite all that horridly blunt philanthropists say to the contrary,
it is a quality to be nurtured rather than despised. As everybody knows,
of late years it _has_ been nurtured to a very large extent. At the
East-end of the town, in Poplar and Shadwell, where, owing to the
slackness in the trade pertaining to the building of ships, poverty was
specially prevalent, quite a small army of benevolently-disposed private
individuals were daily employed going from house to house, and by
personal inquiry and investigation applying the funds at their disposal
quietly and delicately, and to the best of then ability judiciously.
There can be no question that by these means a vast amount of good was
done, and many a really decent family provided with a meal that otherwise
would have gone hungry; but an alarming percentage of evil clung to the
skirts of the good. It is a positive fact that in the most squalid
regions—those, indeed, that were most notorious for their poverty—the
value of house-property increased considerably. The occupants of
apartments, who during the previous summertime were unable to meet the
weekly exactions of the collector, now not only met current demands, but
by substantial instalments rapidly paid-up arrears of rent. Landlords
who for months past had been glad to take what they could get, now became
inexorable, and would insist on one week being paid before the next was
due. They could afford to indulge in this arbitrary line of behaviour
towards their tenants. Rents were “going up;” rooms that at ordinary
times would realise not more than 2_s._ or 2_s._ 3_d._ each, now were
worth 3_s._ 6_d._ Ragman’s-alley and Squalor’s-court and Great and
Little Grime’s-street were at a premium. They were localities famous in
the newspapers. Everybody had read about them; everybody had heard the
story of the appalling heart-rending misery that pervaded these
celebrated places. Day after day gentlefolks flocked thereto, and
speedily following these visitations came tradesmen’s porters bearing
meat and bread and groceries. To be a Squalor’s-alleyite was to be a
person with undoubted and indisputable claims on the public purse, and to
be comfortably provided for. To be a denizen of Great Grime’s-street was
to reside in an almshouse more fatly endowed than the Printers’ or the
Drapers’ or the Fishmongers’.
It was impossible for such a paradise to exist without its fame being
blown to the most distant and out-of-the-way nooks of the town. North,
west, and south the cadgers and impostors heard of it, and enviously
itched to participate in the good things. And no wonder! Here was bread
and meat and coals being furnished to all who asked for them, at the rate
of twenty shillingsworth a-week at the least; nay, they were provided
without even the asking for. It was unnecessary to cross the threshold
of your door to look after them, for those whose happy task it was to
distribute the prizes came knocking, and in the tenderest terms made
offer of their assistance. All that was needful was to secure a lodging
in Ragman’s-court or Little Grime’s-street, and pay your rent regularly,
and sit down and await the result. And lodgings were so secured. It is
positively true that at the height of the “famine season” at the East-end
of London, when day after day saw the columns of the daily newspapers
heavily laden with the announced subscriptions of the charitable,
hundreds of questionable characters, “working men” in appearance, quitted
other parts of the metropolis, and cheerfully paid much more rent than
they had been accustomed to pay, for the privilege of squatting down in
the midst of what was loudly and incessantly proclaimed to be “a colony
of helpless out-o’-works, famine-stricken, and kept from downright
starvation only by the daily and hourly efforts of the charitable.”
This much might of course be expected of the professed beggar and the
cadger by education and breeding; but it would be interesting to learn
how many shiftless ones—those semi-vagabonds who labour under the
delusion that they are idle men only because work is denied them, and who
are continually engaged in the vague occupation of “looking for a
job”—gave way before the great temptation, and became downright cadgers
from that time. With such folk the barrier to be broken down is of the
flimsiest texture, and once overcome, it is difficult indeed to erect it
again. Not sweeter to the industrious is the bread of their labour than
to the idle and dissolute the loaf unearned, and the free gift of tobacco
to be smoked at ease in working hours. It is terribly hard to struggle
out of a slough of laziness in which a man has lain for a length of time,
with nothing to do but open his mouth and permit other people to feed
him. It is extremely unlikely that such a man would make the struggle
while there remained but half a chance of his maintaining his comfortable
position. Having grown so far used to the contamination of mire, he
would be more likely to struggle a little deeper into it, if he saw what
he deemed his advantage in doing so, and by swift degrees he would
speedily be engulfed in that hopeless bog of confirmed beggary from which
there is no return save those of the prison statician.