There is the occasional vagrant, who begs after pea-picking season is over and after hopping has terminated, in order to raise money to go back to London or to the county to which he belongs.
There is another class of occasional vagrants, who migrate from a district where poverty and misery assail them, to the place of their nativity or of their former brighter fortunes, seeking for halfpence on their way to provide for their daily wants as they press onwards.
The vagrants in large towns and cities, and principally in the metropolis, are the very worst class.
They are in eight cases out of ten rank impostors.
They go about with statements of losses by fire, shipwrecks, and accidents.
They obtain counterfeit signatures of clergymen and magistrates to declarations of having lost their property by fire.
In a preceding chapter we have given a description of how these precious attestations were manufactured by the “smoucher,” and the account given of this clever concoction of false documents is substantially correct.
Those who work with the slum and delicate (the statement and book of subscriptions) furnished them by the “smoucher,” often raise large sums of money, which they expend in vice and profligacy.
The shipwrecked mariner’s lurk used to be one of the most frequent and lucrative.
A person of this character, known by the nickname of Captain Johnstone, followed the lurk of a shipwrecked captain for many years.