The occupation of hawkers and pedlars has been regulated in the United Kingdom, and the two classes have also been technically distinguished. The Pedlars Act 1871 defines a pedlar as “any hawker, pedlar, petty chapman, tinker, caster of metals, mender of chairs, or other person who, without any horse or other beast bearing or drawing burden, travels and trades on foot and goes from town to town or to other men’s houses, carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods, wares or merchandise ... or selling or offering for sale his skill in handicraft.” Any person who acts as a pedlar must have a certificate, which is to be obtained from the chief officer of police of the police district in which the person applying for the certificate has resided during one month previous to his application. He must satisfy the officer that he is above seventeen years of age, is of good character, and in good faith intends to carry on the trade of a pedlar. The fee for a pedlar’s certificate is five shillings, and the certificate remains in force for a year from the date of issue. The act requires a register of certificates to be kept in each district, and imposes a penalty for the assigning, borrowing or forging of any certificate. It does not exempt any one from vagrant law, and requires the pedlar to show his certificate on demand to certain persons. It empowers the police to inspect a pedlar’s pack, and provides for the arrest of an uncertificated pedlar or one refusing to show his certificate. A pedlar’s certificate is not required by commercial travellers, sellers of vegetables, fish, fruit or victuals, or sellers in fairs. The Hawkers Act 1888 defines a hawker as “any one who travels with a horse or other beast of burden, selling goods,” &c. An excise licence (expiring on the 31st of March in each year) must be taken out by every hawker in the United Kingdom. The duty imposed upon such licence is £2. A hawker’s licence is not granted, otherwise than by way of licence, except on production of a certificate signed by a clergyman and two householders of the parish or place wherein the applicant resides, or by a justice of the county or place, or a superintendent or inspector of police for the district, attesting that the person is of good character and a proper person to be licenced as a hawker. There are certain exemptions from taking out a licence—commercial travellers, sellers of fish, coal, &c., sellers in fairs, and the real worker or maker of any goods. The act also lays down certain provisions to be observed by hawkers and others, and imposes penalties for infringements. In the United States hawkers and pedlars must take out licences under State laws and Federal laws.
HAWKESWORTH, JOHN (c. 1715-1773), English miscellaneous writer, was born in London about 1715. He is said to have been clerk to an attorney, and was certainly self-educated. In 1744 he succeeded Samuel Johnson as compiler of the parliamentary debates for the Gentleman’s Magazine, and from 1746 to 1749 he contributed poems signed Greville, or H. Greville, to that journal. In company with Johnson and others he started a periodical called The Adventurer, which ran to 140 numbers, of which 70 were from the pen of Hawkesworth himself. On account of what was regarded as its powerful defence of morality and religion, Hawkesworth was rewarded by the archbishop of Canterbury with the degree of LL.D. In 1754-1755 he published an edition (12 vols.) of Swift’s works, with a life prefixed which Johnson praised in his Lives of the Poets. A larger edition (27 vols.) appeared in 1766-1779. He adapted Dryden’s Amphitryon for the Drury Lane stage in 1756, and Southerne’s Oronooko in 1759. He wrote the libretto of an oratorio Zimri in 1760, and the next year Edgar and Emmeline: a Fairy Tale, was produced at Drury Lane. His Almoran and Hamet (2 vols., 1761) was first of all drafted as a play, and a tragedy founded on it by S. J. Pratt, The Fair Circassian (1781), met with some success. He was commissioned by the admiralty to edit Captain Cook’s papers relative to his first voyage. For this work, An Account of the Voyages undertaken ... for making discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere and performed by Commodore Byrone, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret and Captain Cook (from 1764 to 1771) drawn up from the Journals ... (3 vols., 1773), Hawkesworth is said to have received from the publishers the sum of £6000. His descriptions of the manners and customs of the South Seas were, however, regarded by many critics as inexact and hurtful to the interests of morality, and the severity of their strictures is said to have hastened his death, which took place on the 16th of November 1773. He was buried at Bromley, Kent, where he and his wife had kept a school. Hawkesworth was a close imitator of Johnson both in style and thought, and was at one time on very friendly terms with him. It is said that he presumed on his success, and lost Johnson’s friendship as early as 1756.
HAWKHURST, a town in the southern parliamentary division of Kent, England, 47 m. S.E. of London, on a branch of the South-Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1901), 3136. It lies mainly on a ridge above the valley of the Kent Ditch, a tributary of the Rother. The neighbouring country is hilly, rich and well wooded, and the pleasant and healthy situation has led to the considerable extension of the old village as a residential locality. The Kent Sanatorium and one of the Barnardo homes are established here. The church of St Lawrence, founded from Battle Abbey in Sussex, is Decorated and Perpendicular and its east window, of the earlier period, is specially beautiful.
HAWKINS, CAESAR HENRY (1798-1884), British surgeon, son of the Rev. E. Hawkins and grandson of the Sir Caesar Hawkins (1711-1786), who was serjeant-surgeon to Kings George II. and George III., was born at Bisley, Gloucestershire, on the 19th of September 1798, was educated at Christ’s Hospital, and entered St George’s Hospital, London, in 1818. He was surgeon to the hospital from 1829 to 1861, and in 1862 was made serjeant-surgeon to Queen Victoria. He was president of the College of Surgeons in 1852, and again in 1861; and he delivered the Hunterian oration in 1849. His success in complex surgical cases gave him a great reputation. For long he was noted as the only surgeon who had succeeded in the operation of ovariotomy in a London hospital. This occurred in 1846, when anaesthetics were unknown. He did much to popularize colotomy. A successful operator, he nevertheless was attached to conservative surgery, and was always more anxious to teach his pupils how to save a limb than how to remove it. He reprinted his contributions to the medical journals in two volumes, 1874, the more valuable papers being on Tumours, Excision of the Ovarium, Hydrophobia and Snake-bites, Stricture of the Colon, and The Relative Claims of Sir Charles Bell and Magendie to the Discovery of the Functions of the Spinal Nerves. He died on the 20th of July 1884. His brother, Edward Hawkins (1789-1882), was the well-known provost of Oriel, Oxford, who played so great a part in the Tractarian movement.
HAWKINS, or Hawkyns, SIR JOHN (1532-1595), British admiral, was born at Plymouth in 1532, and belonged to a family of Devonshire shipowners and skippers—occupations then more closely connected than is now usual. His father, William Hawkins (d. 1553), was a prosperous freeman of Plymouth, who thrice represented that town in parliament, and is described by Hakluyt as one of the principal sea-captains in the west parts of England; his elder brother, also called William (d. 1589), was closely associated with him in his Spanish expeditions, and took an active part in fitting out ships to meet the Armada; and his nephew, the eldest son of the last named and of the same name, sailed with Sir Francis Drake to the South Sea in 1577, and served as lieutenant under Edward Fenton (q.v.) in the expedition which started for the East Indies and China in 1582. His son, Sir Richard Hawkins, is separately noticed.
Sir John Hawkins was bred to the sea in the ships of his family. When the great epoch of Elizabethan maritime adventure began, he took an active part by sailing to the Guinea coast, where he robbed the Portuguese slavers, and then smuggled the negroes he had captured into the Spanish possessions in the New World. After a first successful voyage in 1562-1563, two vessels which he had rashly sent to Seville were confiscated by the Spanish government. With the help of friends, and the open approval of the queen, who hired one of her vessels to him, he sailed again in 1564, and repeated his voyage with success, trading with the Creoles by force when the officials of the king endeavoured to prevent him. These two voyages brought him reputation, and he was granted a coat of arms with a demi-Moor, or negro, chained, as his crest. The rivalry with Spain was now becoming very acute, and when Hawkins sailed for the third time in 1567, he went in fact, though not technically, on a national venture. Again he kidnapped negroes, and forced his goods on the Spanish colonies. Encouraged by his discovery that these settlements were small and unfortified, he on this occasion ventured to enter Vera Cruz, the port of Mexico, after capturing some Spaniards at sea to be held as hostages. He alleged that he had been driven in by bad weather. The falsity of the story was glaring, but the Spanish officers on the spot were too weak to offer resistance. Hawkins was allowed to enter the harbour, and to refit at the small rocky island of San Juan de Ulloa by which it is formed. Unfortunately for him, and for a French corsair whom he had in his company, a strong Spanish force arrived, bringing the new viceroy. The Spaniards, who were no more scrupulous of the truth than himself, pretended to accept the arrangement made before their arrival, and then when they thought he was off his guard attacked him on the 24th of September. Only two vessels escaped, his own, the “Minion,” and the “Judith,” a small vessel belonging to his cousin Francis Drake. The voyage home was miserable, and the sufferings of all were great.