There are women who, on Sunday mornings when there are no carts about, frequent Thames Street, and the adjoining lanes inhabited by Lisbon merchants, to pick up from the kennels the refuse of lemons, after they have been squeezed for their juice. These they sell to the Jew distillers, who extract a further portion of liquor, and thus afford them the means of selling, at a considerably reduced price, lemon drops to the lower order of confectioners.
It is seldom that the common beggars eat the food given to them; and it is a well-known fact, that they sell their broken bread to the lowest order of the biscuit bakers, who grind it for the purpose of making "tops and bottoms," &c.
This was also the practice in former days, as appears in an old ballad, from which the following is an extract:—
THE BEGGAR'S WEDDING;
OR, THE JOVIAL CREW.
Printed with allowance, October 19, 1676.
"Then Tom a Bedlam winds his horn at best,
Their trumpet 'twas to bring away their feast;
Pickt marybones they had, found in the street,
Carrots kickt out of kennels with their feet;
Crusts gathered up for bisket, twice so dry'd;
Alms-tubs, and olla podridas, beside