"VOIDING KNIFE," "VOIDER," AND "ALMS-BASKET."
(Vol. vi., pp. 150. 280.; Vol. viii., p. 232.)
In later times (the sixteenth century) the good old custom of placing an alms-dish on the table was discontinued, and with less charitable intentions came the less refined custom of removing the broken victuals after a meal by means of a voiding-knife and voider: the latter was a basket into which were swept by a large wand, usually of wood, or voiding-knife, as it was termed, all the bones and scraps left upon the trenchers or scattered about the table. Thus, in the old plays, Lingua, Act V. Sc. 13.: "Enter Gustus with a voiding-knife;" and in A Woman killed with Kindness, "Enter three or four serving men, one with a voider and wooden knife to take away."
The voider was still sometimes called the alms-basket, and had its charitable uses in great and rich men's houses: one of which was to supply those confined in gaols for debt, and such prisoners as had no means to purchase any food.
In Green's Tu Quoque, a spendthrift is cast into prison; the jailer says to him:
"If you have no money, you had best remove into some cheaper ward; to the twopenny ward, it is likeliest to hold out with your means; or, if you will, you may go into the hole, and there you may feed for nothing."
To which he replies:
"Ay, out of the alms-basket, where charity appears in likeness of a piece of stinking fish."
Even this poor allowance to the distressed prisoners passed through several ordeals before it came to them; and the best and most wholesome portions were filched from the alms-basket, and sold by the jailers at a low price to people out of the prison. In the same play it is related of a miser, that—
"He never saw a joint of mutton in his own house these four-and-twenty years, but always cozened the poor prisoners, for he brought his victuals out of the alms-basket."
In the ordinances of Charles II. (Ord. and Reg. Soc. Ant. 367.), it is commanded—
"That no gentleman whatsoever shall send away my meat or wine from the table, or out of the chamber, upon any pretence whatsoever; and that the gentlemen-ushers take particular care herein, that all the meate that is taken off the table upon trencher-plates be put into a basket for the poore, and not undecently eaten by any servant in the roome; and if any person shall presume to do otherwise, he shall be prohibited immediately to remaine in the chamber, or to come there again, until further order."
The alms-basket was also called a maund, and those who partook of its contents maunders.
W. Chaffers.
Old Bond Street.