University of Virginia Library

STATEMENT OF A BEGGAR.

A beggar decently attired, and with a simple
and what some would call even a respectable look,
gave me the following account: —

"I am now twenty-eight, and have known all
connected with the begging trade since I was four-
teen. My grandfather (mother's father) was rich,
owning three parts of the accommodation houses
in St. Giles's; he allowed me 2s. a week pocket-
money. My grandfather kept the great house, the
old Rose and Crown, in Church-lane, opposite
Carver-street, best known as the `Beggar's Opera.'
When a child of seven, I have seen the place
crowded — crammed with nothing but beggars,
first-rates — none else used the house. The money
I saw in the hands of the beggars made a great
impression upon me. My father took away my
mother's money. I wish my mother had run
away instead. He was kind, but she was always
nagging. My father was a foreman in a foundry.
I got a situation in the same foundry after my
father cut. Once I was sent to a bank with a
cheque for 38l. to get cashed, in silver, for wages.
In coming away, I met a companion of mine, and
he persuaded me to bolt with the money, and go
to Ashley's. The money was too much for my
head to carry. I fooled all that money away. I
wasn't in bed for more than a fortnight. I bought
linnets in cages for the fancy of my persuader. In
fact, I didn't know what use to put the money to.
I was among plenty of girls. When the money
was out I was destitute. I couldn't go back to my
employers, and I couldn't face my mother's temper
— that was worse; but for that nagging of hers I
shouldn't have been as I am. She has thrashed
me with a hand broom until I was silly; there's the
bumps on my head still; and yet that woman would
have given me her heart's blood to do me a good.
As soon as I found myself quite destitute, I
went wandering about the City, picking up the
skins of gooseberries and orange peel to eat, to
live on — things my stomach would turn at now.
At last my mother came to hear that I tried
to destroy myself. She paid the 38l., and my
former employers got me a situation in Padding-
ton. I was there a month, and then I met him
an advised me to steal the money before — he's
called the ex-king of the costermongers now.
Well he was crying hareskins, and advised me
again to bolt, and I went with him. My mind
was bent upon costermongering and a roving
life. I couldn't settle to anything. I wanted to
be away when I was at work, and when I was
away I wanted to be back again. It was difficult
for me to stick to anything for five minutes toge-
ther; it is so now. What I begin I can't finish at
the time — unless it's a pot of beer. Well, in four
days my adviser left me; he had no more use for
me. I was a flat. He had me for a "go-along,"
to cry his things for him. Then, for the first time
in my life, I went into a low lodging-house. There
was forty men and women sleeping in one room. I
had to sleep with a black man, and I slept on the
floor to get away from the fellow. There were
plenty of girls there; some playing cards and
dominoes. It was very dirty — old Mother — ,
in Lawrence-lane — the Queen of Hell she was
called. There was one tub among the lot of
us. I felt altogether disgusted. Those who
lived there were beggars, thieves, smashers, coiners,

[Description: 915EAF. Page 415.]

purchasers of begged and stolen goods, and pro-
stitutes. The youngest prostitute was twelve, and
so up to fifty. The beastliest language went on.
It's done to outrival one another. There I met
with a man called Tom Shallow (shallow is cant
for half-naked), and he took me out ballad-singing,
and when we couldn't get on at that (the songs
got dead) he left me. I made him 10s. or 12s. a
day in them days, but he only gave me my lodg-
ings and grub (but not half enough), and two
pipes of tobacco a day to keep the hunger down,
that I mightn't be expensive. I then 'listed. I
was starving, and couldn't raise a lodging. I took
the shilling, but was rejected by the doctor. I
'listed again at Chatham afterwards, but was re-
jected again. I stayed jobbing among the soldiers
for some weeks, and then they gave me an old re-
gimental suit, and with that I came to London.
One gave me a jacket, and another a pair of
military trowsers, and another a pair of old am-
munition boots, and so on. About that time a
batch of invalids came from Spain, where they
had been under General Evans. On my way up
from Chatham, I met at Gravesend with seven
chaps out on `the Spanish lurk' as they called it
— that is, passing themselves off as wounded men
of the Spanish Legion. Two had been out in Spain,
and managed the business if questions were asked;
the others were regular English beggars, who had
never been out of the country. I joined them as
a serjeant, as I had a sergeant's jacket given me
at Chatham. On our way to London — `the school
(as the lot is called) came all together — we picked
up among us 4l. and 5l. a day — no matter where
we went. `The school' all slept in lodging houses,
and I at last began to feel comfortable in them. We
spent our evenings in eating out-and out suppers.
Sometimes we had such things as sucking pigs,
hams, mince pies — indeed we lived on the best.
No nobleman could live better in them days. So
much wine, too! I drank in such excess, my nose
was as big as that there letter stamp; so that I
got a sickening of it. We gave good victuals
away that was given to us — it was a nuisance to
carry them. It cost us from 6d. to 1s. a day to
have our shoes cleaned by poor tramps, and for
clean dickies. The clean dodge is always the
best for begging upon. At Woolwich we were
all on the fuddle at the Dust Hole, and our two
spokesmen were drunk; and I went to beg of
Major — , whose brother was then in Spain —
he himself had been out previously. Meeting
the major at his own house, I said, `I was a
sergeant in the 3rd Westminster Grenadiers, you
know, and served under your brother.' `Oh! yes,
that's my brother's regiment,' says he. `Where
was you, then, on the 16th of October?' `Why,
sir, I was at the taking of the city of Irun,' says
I — (in fact, I was at that time with the coster-
monger in St. Giles's, calling cabbages, `white
heart cabbages, oh!') Then said the major,
`What day was Ernani taken on?' `Why,' said
I (I was a little tipsy, and bothered at the ques-
tion), `that was the 16th of October, too.' `Very
well, my man,' says he, tapping his boots with a
riding whip he held, `I'll see what I can do for
you;' and the words were no sooner out of his
mouth than he stepped up to me and gave me a
regular pasting. He horsewhipped me up and
down stairs, and all along the passages; my flesh
was like sassages. I managed at last, however,
to open the door myself, and get away. After
that `the school' came to London. In a day we
used to make from 8l. to 10l. among us, by walk-
ing up Regent-street, Bond-street, Piccadilly, Pall-
mall, Oxford-street, the parks — those places were
the best beats. All the squares were good too.
It was only like a walk out for air, and your 25s. a man for it. At night we used to go to plays,
dressed like gentlemen. At first the beaks pro-
tected us, but we got found out, and the beaks
grew rusty. The thing got so overdone, every
beggar went out as a Spanish lurksman. Well,
the beaks got up to the dodge, and all the Spanish
lurksmen in their turns got to work the universal
staircase, under the care of Lieutenant Tracy (Tot-
hill-fields treadmill). The men that had really
been out and got disabled were sent to that stair-
case at last, and I thought I would try a fresh
lurk. So I went under the care and tuition of a
sailor. He had been a sailor. I became a turn-
pike sailor, as it's called, and went out as one of
the Shallow Brigade, wearing a Guernsey shirt
and drawers, or tattered trowsers. There was a
school of four. We only got a tidy living — 16s. or 1l. a day among us. We used to call every
one that came along — coalheavers and all — sea-
fighting captains. `Now, my noble sea-fighting
captain,' we used to say, `fire an odd shot from
your larboard locker to us, Nelson's bull-dogs;'
but mind we never tried that dodge on at Green-
wich, for fear of the old geese, the Collegemen.
The Shallow got so grannied (known) in London,
that the supplies got queer, and I quitted the land
navy. Shipwrecks got so common in the streets,
you see, that people didn't care for them, and
I dropped getting cast away. I then took to
screeving (writing on the stones). I got my head
shaved, and a cloth tied round my jaws, and
wrote on the flags —

`Illness and Want,'

though I was never better in my life, and always
had a good bellyfull before I started of a morning.
I did very well at first: 3s. or 4s. a day — some-
times more — till I got grannied. There is one
man who draws Christ's heads with a crown of
thorns, and mackerel, on the pavement, in coloured
chalks (there are four or five others at the same bu-
siness); this one, however, often makes 1l. a day
now in three hours; indeed, I have known him
come home with 21s., besides what he drank on the
way. A gentleman who met him in Regent-street
once gave him 5l. and a suit of clothes to do
Christ's heads with a crown of thorns and mackerel
on the walls. His son does Napoleon's heads best,
but makes nothing like so much as the father.
The father draws cats' heads and salmon as well
— but the others are far the best spec. He will
often give thirteen-pence, and indeed fourteen-
pence, for a silver shilling, to get rid of the cop-
pers. This man's pitch is Lloyd-square, not far
from Sadler's Wells. I have seen him commence

[Description: 915EAF. Page 416.]

his pitch there at half-past eleven, to catch the
people come from the theatre. He is very clever.
In wet weather, and when I couldn't chalk, as
I couldn't afford to lose time, I used to dress tidy
and very clean for the `respectable broken-down
tradesman or reduced gentleman' caper. I wore
a suit of black, generally, and a clean dickey, and
sometimes old black kid gloves, and I used to
stand with a paper before my face, as if ashamed —

This is called standing pad with a fakement. It
is a wet-weather dodge, and isn't so good as
screeving, but I did middling, and can't bear
being idle. After this I mixed with the street
patterers (men who make speeches in the streets)
on the destitute mechanics' lurk. We went in a
school of six at first, all in clean aprons, and spoke
every man in his turn. It won't do unless you're
clean. Each man wanted a particular article of
dress. One had no shirt — another no shoes —
another no hat — and so on. No two wanted the
same. We said: —

The next of the school that spoke would change
the story somehow, and try to make it more heart-
rending still. We did well at first, making about
5s. a day each, working four hours, two in the
morning and two in the afternoon. We got a
good deal of clothing too. The man who went
without a shirt never went to a door to ask for
one; he had to show himself in the middle of the
road. The man that did go to the door would
say, `Do bestow a shirt on my poor shopmate,
who hasn't had one for some days.' It's been
said of me, when I had my shirt tied round my
waist all the time out of sight. The man who
goes without his shirt has his pick of those given;
the rest are sold and shared. Whatever trade we
represented we always had one or two really of
the trade in the school. These were always to be
met at the lodging-houses. They were out of
work, and had to go to low lodging-houses to
sleep. There they met with beggars who kiddied
them on to the lurk. The lodging-houses is good
schools for that sort of thing, and when a me-
chanic once gets out on the lurk he never cares to
go to work again. I never knew one return. I
have been out oft and oft with weavers with a
loom, and have woven a piece of ribbon in a gen-
tleman's parlour — that was when we was Co-
ventry ribbon weavers. I have been a stocking
weaver from Leicester, and a lacemaker too from
Nottingham. Distressed mechanics on their way
to London get initiated into beggar's tricks in the
low lodging-houses and the unions. This is the
way, you see, sir. A school may be at work
from the lodging-house where the mechanic goes
to, and some of the school finds out what he is,
and says, `Come and work with us in a school:
you'll do better than you can at your business,
and you can answer any questions; we'll lurk on
your trade.' I have been out with a woman and
children. It's been said in the papers that
children can be hired for that lurk at 4d. or 6d. a day — that's all fudge, all stuff, every bit of it
— there's no children to be hired. There's many
a labouring man out of work, who has a wife and
three or more children, who is glad to let them go
out with any patterer he knows. The woman is
entitled to all the clothes and grub given, and her
share of the tin — that's the way it's done; and
she's treated to a drink after her day's work,
into the bargain. I've been out on the respectable
family man lurk. I was out with a woman and
three kids the other day; her husband was on the
pad in the country, as London was too hot to
hold him. The kids draws, the younger the better,
for if you vex them, and they're oldish, they'll
blow you. Liverpool Joe's boy did so at Bury St.
Edmund's to a patterer that he was out with, and
who spoke cross to him. The lad shouted out so
as the people about might hear, `Don't you jaw
me, you're not my father; my father's at home
playing cards.' They had to crack the pitch (dis-
continue) through that. The respectable family
dodge did pretty well. I've been on the clean
family lurk too, with a woman and children.
We dressed to give the notion that, however
humble, at least we were clean in all our
poverty. On this lurk we stand by the side
of the pavement in silence, the wife in a per-
ticler clean cap, and a milk-white apron. The
kids have long clean pinafores, white as the
driven snow; they're only used in clean lurk,
and taken off directly they come home. The
husband and father is in a white flannel jacket,
an apron worn and clean, and polished shoes. To
succeed in this caper there must be no rags, but
plenty of darns. A pack of pawn-tickets is car-
ried in the waistcoat pocket. (One man that I
know stuck them in his hat like a carman's.)
That's to show that they've parted with their
little all before they came to that. They are real
pawn-tickets. I have known a man pay 2s. 6d.

[Description: 915EAF. Page 417.]

for the loan of a marriage certificate to go out
on the clean lurk. If a question is asked, I say
— `We've parted with everything, and can get
no employment; to be sure, we have had a loaf
from the parish, but what's that among my
family?' That takes the start out of the people,
because they say, why not go to the parish? Some
persons say, `Oh, poor folks, they're brought to
this, and how clean they are — a darn is better
than a patch any time.' The clean lurk is a bare
living now — it was good — lots of togs came in,
and often the whole family were taken into a house
and supplied with flannel enough to make under
clothing for them all; all this was pledged soon
afterwards, and the tickets shown to prove what
was parted with, through want. Those are some
of the leading lurks. There's others. `Fits,' are
now bad, and `paralytics' are no better. The
lucifer lurk seems getting up though. I don't
mean the selling, but the dropping them in the
street as if by accident. It's a great thing with
the children; but no go with the old 'uns. I'll
tell you of another lurk: a woman I knows sends
out her child with ¼ oz. of tea and half a quarter
of sugar, and the child sits on a door step crying,
and saying, if questioned, that she was sent
out for tea and sugar, and a boy snatched the
change from her, and threw the tea and sugar in
the gutter. The mother is there, like a stranger,
and says to the child: — `And was that your poor
mother's last shilling, and daren't you go home,
poor thing?' Then there is a gathering — some-
times 18d. in a morning; but it's almost getting
stale, that is. I've done the shivering dodge too
— gone out in the cold weather half naked. One
man has practised it so much that he can't get off
shivering now. Shaking Jemmy went on with
his shivering so long that he couldn't help it at
last. He shivered like a jelly — like a calf's foot
with the ague — on the hottest day in summer.
It's a good dodge in tidy inclement seasons. It's
not so good a lurk, by two bob a day, as it once
was. This is a single-handed job; for if one man
shivers less than another he shows that it isn't
so cold as the good shiverer makes it out — then
it's no go. Of the maimed beggars, some are
really deserving objects, as without begging they
must starve to death; that's a fact, sir. What's
a labouring man to do if he's lost any of his limbs?
But some of these even are impostors. I know
several blind men who have pensions; and I
know two who have not only pensions, but keep
lodging houses, and are worth money, and still go
out a begging — though not near where they live.
There's the man with the very big leg, who sits
on the pavement, and tells a long yarn about the
tram carriage having gone over him in the mine.
He does very well — remarkable well. He goes
tatting and billy-hunting in the country (gathering
rags and buying old metal), and comes only to
London when he has that sort of thing to dispose
of. There's Paddy in the truck too; he makes a
good thing, and sends money home to Ireland; he
has a decrepit old mother, and it's to his credit.
He never drinks. There's Jerry, the collier, he
has lost both arms, and does a tidy living, and
deserves it; it's a bad misfortune. There's Jack
Tiptoe, he can't put one heel to the ground — no
gammon; but Mr. Horsford and he can't agree,
so Jack takes to the provinces now. He did very
well indeed here. There used to be a society
among us called the Cadger's Club; if one got into
a prison there was a gathering for him when he
came out, and 6s. a week for a sick member, and
when he got out again two collections for him, the
two amounting perhaps to 1l. We paid 3d. a
week each — no women were members — for thirteen
weeks, and then shared what was in hand, and
began for the next thirteen, receiving new members
and transacting the usual business of a club. This
has been discontinued these five years; the land-
lord cut away with the funds. We get up raffles,
and help one another in the best way we can now.
At one time we had forty-five members, besides
the secretary, the conductor, and under-conductor.
The rules were read over on meeting nights — every
Wednesday evening. They were very strict; no
swearing, obscene or profane language was per-
mitted. For the first offence a fine of 1d. was
inflicted, for the second 2d., and for the third the
offender was ejected the room. There was very
good order, and few fines had to be inflicted.
Several respectable tradesmen used to pay a trifle
to be admitted, out of curiosity, to see the pro-
ceedings, and used to be surprised at their regu-
larity. Among the other rules were these: a fine
of 1d. for any member refusing to sing when called
on; visitors the same. All the fines went to the
fund. If a member didn't pay for five meeting
nights he was scratched. Very few were scratched.
The secretary was a windmill cove (sold children's
windmills in the streets), and was excused con-
tributing to the funds. He had 1d. from each
member every sharing night, once a quarter, for
his labour; he was a very good scholar, and had
been brought up well. The landlord generally
gave a bob on a sharing night. The conductor
managed the room, and the under-conductor kept
the door, not admitting those who had no right to
be there, and putting out those who behaved im-
properly. It was held in the Coachmakers' Arms,
Rose-street, Longrave-street; tip-top swells used
to come among us, and no mistake; real noble-
men, sir. One was the nephew of the Duke
of — , and was well-known to all of us by the
nick-name, Facer.

I used to smoke a very short and very black
pipe, and the honourable gent has often snatched
it from my mouth, and has given me a dozen
cigars for it. My face has been washed in the
gin by a noble lord after he'd made me drunk,
and I felt as if it was vitriol about my eyes.
The beggars are now dispersed and broken up.
They live together now only in twos and threes,
and, in plain truth, have no money to spend; they
can't get it. Upon an average, in former days a
cadger could make his two or three guineas per
week without working overtime; but now he can
hardly get a meal, not even at the present winter,
though it's been a slap up inclement season, to be
sure. The Mendicity Society has ruined us —
them men took me and gave me a month, and I

[Description: 915EAF. Page 418.]

can say from my conscience, that I was no more
guilty of begging at that time than an unborn
baby. The beggars generally live in the low
lodging-houses, and there of a night they tell their
tales of the day, and inform each other of the
good and bad places throughout London, and what
`lurks' do the best. They will also say what
beats they intend to take the next day, so that
those who are on the same lurk may not go over
the same ground as their pals. It is no use tell-
ing a lie, but the low lodging-houses throughout
London and the country are nests for beggars and
thieves. I know some houses that are wholly
supported by beggars. In almost every one of the
padding kens, or low lodging-houses in the country,
there is a list of walks written on a piece of paper,
and pasted up over the kitchen mantel-piece. Now
at St. Alban's, for instance, at the — , and at
other places, there is a paper stuck up in each of
the kitchens. This paper is headed `Walks out
of this town,' and underneath it is set down the
names of the villages in the neighbourhood at
which a beggar may call when out on his walk,
and they are so arranged as to allow the cadger to
make a round of about six miles, each day, and
return the same night. In many of those papers
there are sometimes twenty walks set down. No
villages that are in any way `gammy' are ever
mentioned in these papers, and the cadger, if he
feels inclined to stop for a few days in the town,
will be told by the lodging-house keeper, or the
other cadgers that he may meet there, what gen-
tleman's seats or private houses are of any account
on the walk that he means to take. The names
of the good houses are not set down in the paper,
for fear of the police. Most of the lodging-house
keepers buy the `scran' (broken victuals) of the
cadgers; the good food they either eat themselves
or sell to the other travellers, and the bad they
sell to parties to feed their dogs or pigs upon.
The cadgers' talk is quite different now to what
it was in the days of Billy. You see the flats
got awake to it, so in course we had to alter the
patter. The new style of cadgers' cant is nothing
like the thieves' cant, and is done all on the
rhyming principle. This way's the caper. Sup-
pose I want to ask a pal to come and have a glass of rum and smoke a pipe of tobacco, and have a
game at cards with some blokes at home with me, I
should say, if there were any flats present,
`Splodger, will you have a Jack-surpass of finger-
and-thumb, and blow your yard of tripe of nosey
me knacker, and have a touch of the broads with
me and the other heaps of coke at my drum. [In
this it will be observed that every one of the
`cant words rhymes with the words ordinarily
used to express the same idea.] I can assure you
what little we cadgers do get we earn uncommon
hard. Why, from standing shaking — that is,
being out nearly naked in the hardest frosts — I
lost the use of my left side for nearly three years,
and wasn't able to stir outside the door. I got
my living by card-playing in the low lodging-
houses all that time. I worked the oracle — they
were not up to it. I put the first and seconds on
and the bridge also. I'd play at cards with any
one. You see, sir, I was afeard to come to you at
first because I had been `a starving' on the pave-
ment only a few days ago, not a hundred yards
from your very door, and I thought you might
know me."