He was an excellent writer, and had a respectable appearance—so the unwary were deceived, and he was enriched.
It was said that he obtained some thousands of pounds by his mendacious statements.
When any account of a shipwreck appeared in the newspaper which seemed likely to suit his purpose he would write out a new statement (slum), and provide a new book (delicate), and then set to work with the utmost zeal to obtain subscribers.
Polish counts, who had been driven from the land of their birth by Russian tyranny, used at one time to infest London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol, but this form of begging has gone out of fashion.
“The victims of accidents,” wholly counterfeit, “the sufferers from sickness,” quite unreal, “the deaf and dumb lurkers,” who seem to be deprived of speech and hearing, “the servant out of place,” who cajoles the domestics at gentlemen’s houses, “the colliers who have suffered from water suddenly bursting into a coal pit,” and yet who never saw a coal pit, “the starved-out weavers,” who go about with printed papers or small hand-bills, representing that they are out of employ, although they have never seen a loom, “the cotton-spinning lurk,” with that trick of leaving printed appeals and calling again for them and alms, though they know as much about diamond mounting as cotton-spinning, are a few of the dodges of active, cunning, and shameless mendicants.
There was, some years ago, a celebrated man named “Cheshire Bill,” who was at one time a cotton-spinning lurker.
He travelled throughout various parts of England for more than fifteen years as a vagrant. Once he was a “shallow cove,” and represented himself as a shipwrecked sailor. Then he was a “carpet weaver in distress,” and sang through the streets to obtain “browns and wedge” (halfpence and silver). Then he was a cotton weaver from Manchester, singing through the streets in company with others, having a clean white apron round him. After this he was on the collier’s lurk, and carried a written paper, stating that he had suffered from a dreadful accident at Bilston in a coal pit.
Then he turned watch-seller, afterwards a simple roadside beggar, and finally a cotton-spinner out of employ, selling cotton said to be of his own spinning, and out of which he managed to make a profit of a hundred per cent.
“The calenderer’s lurk” is another trick, and the doggerel poetry, in which their appeal is made to the “kind and generous public,” contains amongst a variety of other verses the following record of their own virtues and charity when, as they pretend, they knew better days:—
Whene’er we saw one in distress