A woman with twins who never grew older sat for ten years at the corner of a street.
Children let out by the day, who carried to their parents 2s. 6d. a day as the price paid by the persons who hired them.
A little boy and a little girl earned 8s. a day. An instance is stated of an old woman who kept a night school for instructing children in the street language, and how to beg.
The number of beggars infesting London at this time (1816) was computed to be 16,000, of which 6,300 were Irish. We glean further from the report respecting them.
It appears by the evidence of the person who contracts for carrying vagrants in and through the county of Middlesex, that he has passed as many as 12,000 or 13,000 in a year; but no estimate can be formed from that, as many of them are passed several times in the course of the year. And it is proved that these people are in the course of eight or ten days in the same situation; as they find no difficulty in escaping as soon as they are out of the hands of the Middlesex contractor.
A magistrate in the office at Whitechapel, thinks there is not one who is not worthless.
The rector of Saint Clement Danes describes them as living very well, especially if they are pretty well maimed, blind, or if they have children.
Beggars scarify their feet to make the blood come; share considerable sums of money, and get scandalously drunk, quarrel, and fight, and one teaches the other the mode of extorting money; they are the worst of characters, blasphemous and abusive; when they are detected as impostors in one parish they go into another.
They eat no broken victuals; but have ham, beef, &c.
Forty or fifty sleep in a house, and are locked in lest they should carry anything away, and are let out in the morning all at once.