There are, however, other impostors amongst the begging fraternity besides those who adopt the professional dress of vagrancy, and impudently endeavour publicly to proclaim their sham distress and privation. The terrible condition of want into which thousands of the working population of London were plunged the winter before last developed the “cadger” in question in a very remarkable degree. This personage is not a demonstrative cheat. His existence is due entirely to the growing belief in decent poverty, and in the conviction that in frosty “hard-up” times much more of real destitution is endured by those whose honest pride will not permit them to clamour of their wants, and so make them known. There can be no doubt but that this is perfectly true, and, despite all that horridly blunt philanthropists say to the contrary, it is a quality to be nurtured rather than despised. As everybody knows, of late years it has been nurtured to a very large extent. At the East-end of the town, in Poplar and Shadwell, where, owing to the slackness in the trade pertaining to the building of ships, poverty was specially prevalent, quite a small army of benevolently-disposed private individuals were daily employed going from house to house, and by personal inquiry and investigation applying the funds at their disposal quietly and delicately, and to the best of then ability judiciously. There can be no question that by these means a vast amount of good was done, and many a really decent family provided with a meal that otherwise would have gone hungry; but an alarming percentage of evil clung to the skirts of the good. It is a positive fact that in the most squalid regions—those, indeed, that were most notorious for their poverty—the value of house-property increased considerably. The occupants of apartments, who during the previous summertime were unable to meet the weekly exactions of the collector, now not only met current demands, but by substantial instalments rapidly paid-up arrears of rent. Landlords who for months past had been glad to take what they could get, now became inexorable, and would insist on one week being paid before the next was due. They could afford to indulge in this arbitrary line of behaviour towards their tenants. Rents were “going up;” rooms that at ordinary times would realise not more than 2s. or 2s. 3d. each, now were worth 3s. 6d. Ragman’s-alley and Squalor’s-court and Great and Little Grime’s-street were at a premium. They were localities famous in the newspapers. Everybody had read about them; everybody had heard the story of the appalling heart-rending misery that pervaded these celebrated places. Day after day gentlefolks flocked thereto, and speedily following these visitations came tradesmen’s porters bearing meat and bread and groceries. To be a Squalor’s-alleyite was to be a person with undoubted and indisputable claims on the public purse, and to be comfortably provided for. To be a denizen of Great Grime’s-street was to reside in an almshouse more fatly endowed than the Printers’ or the Drapers’ or the Fishmongers’.
It was impossible for such a paradise to exist without its fame being blown to the most distant and out-of-the-way nooks of the town. North, west, and south the cadgers and impostors heard of it, and enviously itched to participate in the good things. And no wonder! Here was bread and meat and coals being furnished to all who asked for them, at the rate of twenty shillingsworth a-week at the least; nay, they were provided without even the asking for. It was unnecessary to cross the threshold of your door to look after them, for those whose happy task it was to distribute the prizes came knocking, and in the tenderest terms made offer of their assistance. All that was needful was to secure a lodging in Ragman’s-court or Little Grime’s-street, and pay your rent regularly, and sit down and await the result. And lodgings were so secured. It is positively true that at the height of the “famine season” at the East-end of London, when day after day saw the columns of the daily newspapers heavily laden with the announced subscriptions of the charitable, hundreds of questionable characters, “working men” in appearance, quitted other parts of the metropolis, and cheerfully paid much more rent than they had been accustomed to pay, for the privilege of squatting down in the midst of what was loudly and incessantly proclaimed to be “a colony of helpless out-o’-works, famine-stricken, and kept from downright starvation only by the daily and hourly efforts of the charitable.”
This much might of course be expected of the professed beggar and the cadger by education and breeding; but it would be interesting to learn how many shiftless ones—those semi-vagabonds who labour under the delusion that they are idle men only because work is denied them, and who are continually engaged in the vague occupation of “looking for a job”—gave way before the great temptation, and became downright cadgers from that time. With such folk the barrier to be broken down is of the flimsiest texture, and once overcome, it is difficult indeed to erect it again. Not sweeter to the industrious is the bread of their labour than to the idle and dissolute the loaf unearned, and the free gift of tobacco to be smoked at ease in working hours. It is terribly hard to struggle out of a slough of laziness in which a man has lain for a length of time, with nothing to do but open his mouth and permit other people to feed him. It is extremely unlikely that such a man would make the struggle while there remained but half a chance of his maintaining his comfortable position. Having grown so far used to the contamination of mire, he would be more likely to struggle a little deeper into it, if he saw what he deemed his advantage in doing so, and by swift degrees he would speedily be engulfed in that hopeless bog of confirmed beggary from which there is no return save those of the prison statician.
CHAPTER XV.
GENTEEL ADVERTISING BEGGARS.
The Newspaper Plan and the delicate Process—Forms of Petition—Novel Applications of Photography—Personal Attractions of the Distressed—Help, or I perish!
Besides those I have enumerated, there are at least two other specimens of the beggar tribe that deserve mention. They are genteel impostors both. One avails himself of the advertising columns of the newspaper to apprise the benevolent of his modest desires, while the other prefers the more private and delicate process insured by our modern postal system. Both affect the “reduced gentleman,” and display in their appeals an amount of artlessness and simple confidence in the charity of their fellow-creatures that tells unmistakably of their ample possession of that Christian virtue, while at the same time it conveys to the reader an idea of the select and highly-exclusive position they should properly occupy, and from which they have so disastrously descended. It is evident at a glance that they know nothing of the rough-and-ready ways of the world, or of its close-fistedness or proneness to suspicion. We know this, and pity them; otherwise we might be inclined to class them with those “cheeky” ones in whose praise the young gentleman before mentioned, of “shallow” extraction, was so hearty, and to treat their impudent attempts as they deserve. But the touching simplicity of the unfortunate creatures at once disarms us of suspicion. For instance, who could refrain from immediately responding to the subjoined “petition,” which is copied strictly from the original? It was delivered through the post, and was attached as a fly-leaf to a card on which was affixed the portraits of six young children, each of whom had evidently been “got up” with extreme care, as regards hair-curling and arrangements of dress and ribbons, for the photographic process.
“Children to save.—Advertisement sent to a few taken from the London Directory. The father of these British-born Protestant children is an elderly gentleman, ruined by competition in business, and past beginning life again; and the mother is in a very precarious state of health. To seek for adopters is against parental instinct; and besides it might ultimately come to that, as by the time their schooling is over, in ten or fifteen years, they would most likely be orphans, and their willing adopters would be quite welcome to it (sic). At present the father, in his alarm for the fate of these creatures, seeks for some that would pay, not to the father, but to good boarding-schools, for their clothing, keeping, and tuition, and after school-time to see that they should not want. Willing benefactors are therefore requested to state what they would feel inclined to do for each child, by one of the numbers given at foot, to ‘Alphabet, till called for, at the Post-office, No. 1 Liverpool-street, Moorfields, E.C.,’ enclosing card or addressed envelope to insure correct address, if a reply should be wished.”
Another method of applying the photographic art to the bolstering-up of a spurious begging petition takes a form even more outrageous than that which was adopted to exhibit the personal attractions of the distressed six British-born Protestant children. In the second case it is the portrait of a handsome young lady, aged about twenty, with a profusion of lovely hair, and an expression of countenance strikingly artless and captivating. Accompanying the portrait was a note, as follows:
“Dear Sir,—I am sure, when you learn the cause, that you will pardon the liberty I take in addressing myself to you. I am impelled to do so, not only on account of your known humanity, but because I have seen you and read in your face that you will not turn a deaf ear to an appeal frankly and trustingly made to you. The fact is, my dear sir, I am absolutely in want of a sixpence to procure a meal. I am the only child of a father whom misfortune has reduced to a condition of abject beggary. Mother I have none. One day I may have an opportunity of narrating to you the peculiar causes of our present embarrassment. I should feel it incumbent on me to do so, were I so fortunate as to make you our creditor for a small sum. Pray spare me the pain of detailing more minutely the purport of this letter. I am aware of the boldness of the step I am taking, but the misery of my wretched father must plead for me in excuse. I enclose my likeness (taken, alas, in happier times, though scarcely six months since), so that you may see that I am not a common beggar. Should my appeal move your compassion towards me, will you kindly send a note addressed, Adelaide F. T., Post-office, —?”
The gentleman to whom the above artful concoction was addressed is well known for his philanthropy, and his name appears frequently in the newspapers. He is an elderly gentleman, and has grown-up sons and daughters, consequently he was not a likely person to be trapped by the lovely Adelaide, who would “feel it incumbent on her to seek out and personally thank her benefactor,” in the event of his forwarding to her a pound or so. But it might have been different, if, instead of a plain-sailing shrewd man of the world, he had been a person afflicted with vanity. Here was this poor young handsome creature, who had seen him and read in his face that which induced her to make to him such a pitiful avowal of her poverty—her peculiar poverty! Why, the story of the “peculiar cause” that led to the sudden downfall of such a family must be worth a pound to listen to! Was it justifiable to dishonour the promise his face had assured to the poor young woman? These or similar reflections might have betrayed the better judgment of a less experienced person than Mr. L—. As it was, the artful note served but to ponder over as one of the latest curiosities in the begging-letter line; while as for the portrait, it furnished ample food for moralising on how marvellously deceptive appearances were—especially female appearances.