MENDICANCY.
I think that some useful information may be blended with amusement by
offering to my readers a few anecdotes in reference to mendicancy and
the laws intended for its repression. Two persons were charged before me
at the Head Police Office, in 1843, with begging in the public streets.
One was detected in Castle Street and the other in Palace Street. They
were male and female, and stated themselves to be brother and sister.
Neither denied the commission of the offence. Having been searched at
the station-house, the man was found to have £300 in his possession, and
the woman had £180. I do not recollect what names they gave, but I am
sure they were not the real ones. They were committed, each for a
calendar month, with hard labor; but during the period of their
imprisonment their subsistence was charged on the rates of the city of
Dublin, and the £480 were returned to them at their discharge. I have
been informed that the law of Scotland authorises the support of
vagrants, when committed to gaol, to be defrayed from money found in
their possession. If such be the case, I would suggest to our Irish
Members to have the law of this country, in cases of vagrancy,
assimilated to the Scotch system as quickly as possible.
Very soon after the occurence which I have mentioned, a gentleman who
resided at Kingstown, arrived there by train between seven and eight
o'clock, p.m. He was walking up the Forty-foot Road, when he was
accosted by a man of humble but decent appearance, who kept by his side
whilst addressing him. "I came out, sir," said this individual, "early
in the day, on an appointment with Mr. Herbert, of Tivoli Terrace, as he
promised to let me have a few pounds that he owes me; but I found that
he had to start suddenly for Bray on some particular business, and he
left word for me that he would be back about ten o'clock, so I have to
wait: and I declare, sir, that I had only enough when I left home to get
a return ticket, and I have not had a bit to eat since morning. Might I
ask you for as much as would get me a crust of bread and a mug of milk."
On reaching George's Street, the gentleman handed him a sixpence, and
received the expression of an earnest prayer for his earthly prosperity
and eternal happiness. On the following evening, the gentleman arrived
at the same time, proceeded up the same road, and not being recognized,
was accosted by the same person, who told the same tale, concluding with
a wish for "the crust and mug of milk." A constable happened to be in
view, and the hungry applicant was arrested and charged as a vagrant
beggar. He had two ten-pound notes and three of five pounds, with
eighteen shillings in silver and copper coin. The vagrant stated his
name to be Richard Bryan, and a most extraordinary document was found on
him. It was soiled and partly torn, but it was signed, "Your loving
brother, John Bryan," was dated, "Borris, August 30th, 1843," and
contained a suggestion which was fully acted on, and which I could not
allow to escape my recollection. Here it is:--
"We have got in the barley all right, and we are going at the oats
to-morrow. I had to lend the horses to-day to Mr. Kimmis. I
couldn't refuse, for you know he is a good warrant to obleege us
when we want a turn. Nolan is bothering about the rent. He is very
cross. You must see and make it out for him, _if you were even to
beg for it_."
One month's imprisonment, with hard labour, provided the mendicant with
some "crusts" and "mugs of milk" at the cost of the county. The
delinquent did not, I believe, resume his solicitations within our
district. The office sergeant who escorted him, with some other
prisoners, to Kilmainham, told the clerk at Kingstown on the following
morning, that Mr. Bryan stigmatized my decision as "most uncharitable
and disgusting."
I did not find mendicancy so persistent in any part of the police
district as in Kingstown. If a vagrant was brought up and punished for
begging in Rathmines or the Pembroke township, or if the detection
occurred at Inchicore, or in the more respectable parts of the city, it
was not at all probable that the beggar would be soon found again in the
same locality. The Kingstown vagrants, as soon as they were discharged
from Kilmainham, generally started off to return and resume their
solicitations at the piers and jetty, or about the streets and terraces,
which were more devoted to healthful recreation than to professional or
commercial affairs. I have no doubt that mendicants from distant places
receive more at Kingstown or Bray, from visitors whom they recognize, or
who recognize them, than would be given to them if both parties were at
home. A lady with whom I was personally acquainted, and whose family
residence was near Carlow, has several times, in my presence, given
sixpences to beggars who belonged to her own neighbourhood, and I have
heard her tell them that Kingstown was a better and more lucky place for
them than ever they would find Carlow to be. I shall close my
observations on street begging, by deliberately stating from my personal
and official experience, that not one penny can be given to any
mendicant on our thoroughfares in real, efficient, and merited charity.
I would now warn my readers against another kind of begging, which
avails itself of very systematic and elaborate means, and sometimes
displays considerable educational acquirements, namely, written
applications to charitable individuals to alleviate dire distress or
succour unmerited misfortune. I know that this system is extensively
practised in London, and I have heard that it is reviving in Dublin. I
use the term "reviving," because it was completely crushed here in 1844
by the intelligence and activity of the detective division. At that time
it was discovered that a confederacy of impostors had been formed in
Bridgefoot Street, and that the members of this nefarious association
were levying contributions on all in whose dispositions they had
ascertained charity and credulity to be united. Forty-one of them were
arrested and brought before me, and I committed them for trial on
charges of "conspiring to defraud, obtaining money under false
pretences, and forgery at common law." They were, however, consigned to
Newgate, exactly at the time when the State prosecutions against
O'Connell had been commenced; and it was the received opinion in police
quarters that they owed their escape--for they were not prosecuted--to a
feeling on the part of the attorney-general of that period, that all his
attention was demanded in bringing down the eagle, and that none of his
energies could be spared to scatter a flock of kites. But they were not
relinquished by the detectives, and were brought in detail under the
castigation of the law until the confederacy was broken up. Their
begging letters and petitions were addressed to all whom they considered
likely to yield the slightest attention to their requests. These
productions were termed in their slang "_Slums_." One impostor
represented that she was a clergyman's widow, with four female children,
the eldest only eleven years of age; that her pious, exemplary, and most
affectionate partner had died of malignant fever, contracted whilst
whispering the words of Christian consolation to the departing sinner,
and imparting the joyful assurance, that the life flickering away, the
socket glimmer of a mere earthly light, would be rekindled in a lamp of
everlasting duration and unvarying brilliancy. That resigned to her
suffering, and adoring the hand from which she had experienced
chastening, she was not forbidden to hope that the blessed spirit of
charity would be manifested in her relief, and in shielding her
helpless, artless babes from the privations of distress in their
infancy, and from the still more fearful danger of being, in advanced
youth, exposed to the snares of sin and its depraving consequences. A
contribution, however small, addressed to Mrs. ----, at No. --
Bridgefoot Street, Dublin, would, it was respectfully hoped, be accorded
by Lord ----, or Mr. or Mrs. ----, whose well-known, though
unostentatious benevolence, must plead the poor widow's apology for such
an intrusion. Another was an unfortunate man, who for many years had
earned a respectable livelihood as a commercial agent, and supported a
numerous and interesting family by his industry and intelligence, but
having unfortunately been in the County of Tipperary, when a contested
election was in progress, he unguardedly expressed a wish for the
success of the Conservative candidate, and although not a voter, he was
set upon by a horde of savage ruffians, and beaten so as to produce
paralysis of his lower extremities, and that now nothing remained for
him but to entreat the humane consideration of one who could not, if the
public testimony of his, or her generous disposition, was to be
credited, refuse to sympathize with a parent whose helplessness
compelled him to witness, with unavailing anguish, the poignant
miseries of the offspring he had hoped, by his honest exertions, to have
supported and reared, without submitting to the galling necessity of
soliciting that aid which nothing but the most absolute destitution
could reconcile him to implore. A _military lady_ announced herself as
the widow of color-sergeant Robert Maffett, who having served faithfully
for twenty-three years, the four last having been in India, had been
severely wounded in a decisive battle in Scinde, and when invalided and
pensioned, was unfortunately drowned at Blackwall, in consequence of the
boat which was conveying him ashore being accidentally upset. That she
and her eight poor orphans had no resource on reaching her native city,
where she found that all her relations had died or emigrated, and where
she was friendless and alone, but to throw herself upon the charitable
feelings of one whose character emboldened her to hope that the humble
appeal of the soldier's widow, for herself and her poor orphans, would
not be unavailing. These and a thousand other _slums_ were manufactured
in Bridgefoot Street, alias Dirty Lane, not an unsuitable name for the
locale of such proceedings, and they were invariably accompanied by
lists of subscriptions, and magisterial or municipal attestations,
admirably got up in the first style of forgery. In the first case to
which I have adverted, the "hapless widow" succeeded in getting five
pounds from the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland (Pennefather). In the
instance of the "military widow," Lady Blakeney was lightened of three
pounds. Another _slum_ was circulated by a scoundrel who represented
himself to be the son of a gentleman in the south of Ireland, of an old
family, and of the pristine faith; that he had been educated at Louvain,
had an ardent wish to become a Catholic clergyman, and that one of the
most distinguished dignitaries of that church was inclined to ordain
him, but his father had died in debt, without leaving him the means of
providing even the most humble outfit for such a vocation. One of his
missives produced the effect of relieving an alderman's lady of five
pounds sterling, which the excellent and worthy matron piously
suggested might be useful in providing the embryo priest _with
vestments_.
This confederacy was not confined to Dublin. Its branches extended
through Leinster, Connaught, Munster, and in almost every important town
in England its connections were established. It is, however, very
curious that the Scots and our Northern countrymen were left
comparatively free from its attacks. Why? Is it because the rascally
crew conceived the natives of Scotland and Ulster to be more cautious or
less benevolent than their respective Southern neighbours? The reader
may judge for himself; but swindlers are not, in general, very wrong in
their estimate of character or disposition.
The head-quarters of the society were in an obscure country town in an
inland county of Ireland, and there the _materiel_ of the association
was seized, according to my recollection, in April, 1844. There was
found at the source of their system, a chest of very elegant
manufacture, and containing, in compartments, admirably executed
counterfeits of the public seals of Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Sligo,
Drogheda, Dublin, Liverpool, Bristol, Hamburg, Havre, and New York.
These were used to seal forged certificates and attestations, which were
transmitted for use to more populous places; but the seals were
cunningly kept in a remote, and for a long time, an unsuspected
locality.