Begging Letter Writers in 1816.
Some thousand applications by letters are made for charity to ladies, noblemen, and gentlemen in the metropolis; two thousand on an average were within the knowledge of one individual who was employed to make inquiries. Several persons subsist by writing letters; one woman profits by the practice, who receives a guinea a week as a legacy from a relation, and has laid out 200l. in the funds. Letters have been written by the same person in five or six different hands.
Persons who write begging letters are called twopenny-post beggars.
A man who keeps a school writes begging letters for 2d. each.
These extracts, culled here and there from a voluminous report, will suffice to give an idea of the state of mendicancy in the metropolis at the beginning of the century. The public were so shocked and startled by the systematic impostures that were brought to light that an effort was made to protect the charitable by means of an organized system of inquiry into the character, and condition of all persons who were found begging. The result of this effort was the establishment in 1818 of the now well-known
Mendicity Society.
The object of this Society was to protect noblemen, gentlemen, and other persons accustomed to dispense large sums in charity from being imposed upon by cheats and pretenders, and at the same time to provide, on behalf of the public, a police system, whose sole and special function should be the suppression of mendicancy.
The plan of the Society is as follows:—The subscribers receive printed tickets from the Society, and these they give to beggars instead of money. The ticket refers the beggar to the Society’s office, and there his case is enquired into. If he be a deserving person relief is afforded him from funds placed at the disposal of the Society by its subscribers. If he is found to be an impostor he is arrested and prosecuted at the instance of the Society. Governors of this Society may obtain tickets for distribution at any time. The annual payment of one guinea constitutes the donor a governor, and the payment of ten guineas at one time, or within one year, a governor for life. A system of inquiry into the merits of persons who are in the habit of BEGGING BY LETTER has been incorporated with the Society’s proceedings, and the following persons are entitled to refer such letters to the office for investigation, it being understood that the eventual grant of relief rests with the subscriber sending the case:—
I. All contributors to the general funds of the Society to the amount of twenty guineas.