BILLY WATERS.
Mr. W. T. Moncrieff, the dramatist, is responsible for the following biographical notice of this old London Street Character:—“Of this meritorious and lamented individual, we had with great trouble collected from various sources, an ample and interesting Biography. But unfortunately for posterity, in the same classic regions where he lost his life, we also lost his life; and, to tell the truth under the influence of the same seductive fluid too—Daffy!—we can therefore only present our reader with a few brief notices from memory.”
Billy Waters, was born in the powerful African kingdom of Tongocongotaboo, where he was a native Prince, and bore the name of Pokikokiquanko; from this place he was at an early age, to the universal regret of his loving subjects, kidnapped, by ‘an auld Quaker,’ who bought him from his treacherous attendants, for two axes, a frying-pan and a bag of nails. This black piece of business made him a slave, in the French settlement, at Demarara, from whence however he speedly took French leave, and entered, we believe, the British navy as a cook par excellence on board the Ganymede sloop of war, under the command of Sir John Purvis, where, during a fierce engagement, he lost a leg, some say gallantly fighting the enemies of old England, though others insinuate it was through falling down the cockpit ladder, in his great hurry to hide himself. His own version was that he fell from the top-sail yard to the quarter deck during a storm, we cannot pretend to decide which was the fact, it however occasioned his being sent to England, as unfit for service. Arriving in London, he betook himself to that wild mode of life, which best suited his origin; the trammels of civilized society, had no charm for him; he scorned the mechanical rules of man, and picked up his living wherever he could find it. Born a Prince, and bearing a native princeliness in his appearance it is not to be wondered at that his associates should speedly elect him to the regal dignity of their tribe.
In the year 1812 Billy was solemnly inauguared ex cathedra into the sovereignty of mendicityship—King of the Beggars—at the cellar of St. Patrick in St Giles’, a rank he supported with great satisfaction and majesty, till the luckless period when a rival Billy (Bodkin), by being placed at the head of the mendicity society, virtually became King of the Beggars in his own right. This—as he conceived it, cruel usurpation by Bodkin, pricked Billy just a leetle too hard. From that moment he drooped as a blighted lily, and like another black hero he exclaimed—‘Othello’s occupation’s gone.’ The fickle British public refused to be as liberal as they had been, which he attributed to the production of “Tom and Jerry” with whom he was made to partake of:—
“Shoulder of veal and garnish—Turkey and appendages—Parmesan and Filberts—Port and Madeira.” Billy on hearing the above list given out as forming the “peck and booze for the evening,” exclaimed “Dat dam goot, me like a de Madery—Landlord, here, you give this bag of broken wittals, vot I had give to me to day, to some genteel dog vot pass your door: and you make haste wid de supper, you curse devil you.”
Enter LANDLORD with Supper.
Landlord. Now, your honours, here’s the rum peck, here’s the supper.
Billy. Eh, de supper! de supper! come along. (After striking Creeping Jack on the fingers with a knife) you damn nasty dog! what for you put yur dirty fingers in de gravy? you call dat gentlemans? you want your fingers in de pie, now you got him dere!