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.