The following woodcut represents the humane manner in which cripples are conveyed from door to door in many parts of Ireland. The following description has been kindly furnished to the Author by a friend, who has frequently assisted in the conveyance, and takes no ordinary interest in the condition of the poor.
In the country parts of Ireland, beggars are treated with great tenderness and pious hospitality. Many of them are recognised as descended from ancient and powerful septs, which decayed in the revolutions of property and influence. During many years after the invasion of King Henry, the houses of hospitality (so amply described in Sir John Davis's Tracts) which were established by the Chiefs for their poor relations and the traveller, were still kept open; and to this hour, some gentry and farmers provide the itinerant beggars with a bed as well as food. The alms are generally given in meal, flax, wool, milk, or potatoes, but seldom in money, except in cities or towns. After receiving a night's lodging or alms, long and devout prayers are distinctly uttered at the door of the benefactor. Like the players in Hamlet, they are the brief chronicles of the times, and their praises of the good frequently contribute to matrimonial connections. In some parts of the country the beggars have a particular day in the week for appearing abroad, when they are plentifully supplied for the remaining six; and those who, from loss of limbs, or other infirmity, are unable to walk, are seated upon barrows, and carried or wheeled from door to door, by the servants of each house or the casual passenger, an act of piety which is not unfrequently performed by members of respectable families. The beggars are seen in crowds near places of Catholic worship, or pilgrimage, and many of them are distinguished for great piety and temperance. The English traveller is sometimes surprised at seeing a venerable figure, clothed in a hair-cloth shirt or tunic, repeating his orisons on the side of a road, with naked shivering limbs, and a beard which for years has been unconscious of a razor. Yet in Ireland, as in other places, there are pretended objects, and beggars who misapply the benefactions of the charitable. They receive no interruption from the police, except in Dublin, where a large close cart frequently returns to the workhouse full of discontented mendicants, who have an extraordinary aversion to restraint upon their freedom, or compulsion to attend the established worship, which is generally different from their own.
This class of the Irish are by no means unacquainted with the use of wit and waggery. The celebrated Dr O'Leary used to entertain his friends with some instances of their ingenuity. As he was riding to Maynooth College, a beggar accosted him for alms, declaring that he had not received a farthing for three days. The good Doctor gave him some silver, and being accosted on his return, in the evening, with a similar story, he upbraided the petitioner with his falsehood, telling him that he was Dr O'Leary. "Oh, long life to your reverence," said the beggar, "who would I tell my lies to, except my clargy?"
The parts in and near London mostly inhabited by the Irish poor, are Calmel Buildings, Orchard Street; Petty France, Westminster; Paddy's Land, near Plaistow; forty houses on the Rumford Road; and in the parish of St Giles in the Fields. This latter place, which is their principal residence, is called their colony, and is styled by them "The Holy Land;" in the centre of it there is a mass of building called "Rats' Castle."
In the time of Queen Elizabeth, St Giles's was the rendezvous of the beggars; for in "A Caveat, or Warning, for Common Cursitors, vulgarely called Vagabones, set forth by Thomas Harman, Esquire," 1567, it appears that Nicoles Genynges, the cranke, went over "the water into St George's fields," and not, according to the expectation of Mr Harman, who caused him to be dogged, toward Holborn, or St Giles's in the Fields.
It appears from a very early plan of St Giles's in the Fields, in the possession of Mr Parton, vestry clerk of that parish, that the lowest class of its inhabitants live on a portion of sixteen acres formerly called "Pittaunce Croft" (the allowance), which extended from a large mansion called Tottenhall, the fragments of which were of late supposed to have been parts of a palace of King John; they have been recently taken down. This house of Tottenhall was formerly inhabited by a Prebendary of St Paul's; it stood on the north side of that part of the road called "Tottenham Court," leading from the north end of Tottenham Court Road to Battle Bridge. The sixteen acres commenced from the above house, and went on southerly to St Giles's Church, and from thence easterly along the north side of the High Street to Red Lion Fields (now Red Lion Square).
The streets, lanes, alleys, and courts, forming the nest of houses inhabited by thieves, beggars, and the poor labouring Irish, are encompassed by a portion of the south side of Russell Street, formerly called Leonard Street, commencing from Tottenham Court Road, parts of the west sides of Charlotte and Plumtree Streets, and a part of the north and round the east of High Street to the first mentioned station of Russell Street. To the honour of Scotland, not one Scotch beggar is to be found in the dregs or lees of St Giles's. However wretched and depraved the inhabitants of this spot may now be, they certainly were worse fifty years ago, for it appears that there was then no honour among thieves; the sheets belonging to the lodging-houses, where a bed at that time was procured for twopence, having the names of the owners painted on them in large characters of red lead, in order to prevent their being bought if stolen,—as for instance,
JOHN LEA,
LAWRENCE LANE.
STOP THIEF.
At the same period, the shovels, pokers, tongs, gridirons, and purl pots of the public-houses, particularly those of the Maidenhead Inn, in Dyott Street (now changed to George Street), and which was then kept by a man of the name of Jordan, were all chained to the fire-place. At this house the beggars, after a good day's maunding, would bleed the dragon, a large silver tankard so called, and which was to be filled with punch only. There is now a house, the sign of the Rose and Crown, in Church Lane, which was formerly called the Beggars' Opera; and there was another house so denominated, the sign of the Weaver's Arms, in Church Lane, Whitechapel.