The London Underworld in the Victorian Period: Authentic First-Person Accounts by Beggars, Thieves and Prostitutes: v. 1

by Mayhew, Henry

  “Please your honour,” he began, in a doleful exhausted voice, “bestow your charity on a poor soldier which lost his right arm at the glorious battle of Inkermann.”

  I looked at him, and having considerable experience in this kind of imposition, could at once detect that he was “acting.”

  “To what regiment did you belong?” I asked.

  “The Thirty—, sir.”

  I looked at his button and read Thirty—

  “I haven’t tasted bit o’ food, sir, since yesterday at half-past four, and then a lady give me a cruster bread,” he continued.

  “The Thirty—!” I repeated. “I knew the Thirty—. Let me see—who was the colonel?”

  The man gave me a name, with which I suppose he was provided.

  “How long were you in the Thirty—?” I inquired.

  “Five year, sir.”

  “I had a schoolfellow in that regiment, Captain Thorpe, a tall man with red whiskers—did you know him?”

  “There was a captain, sir, with large red whiskers, and I think his name was Thorpe; but he warn’t captain of my company, so I didn’t know for certain,” replied the man, after an affected hesitation.

  “The Thirty—was one of the first of our regiments that landed, I think?” I remarked.

  “Yes, your honour, it were.”

  “You impudent impostor!” I said; “the Thirty—did not go out till the spring of ’55. How dare you tell me you belonged to it?”

  The fellow blenched for a moment, but rallied and said, “I didn’t like to contradict your honour for fear you should be angry and wouldn’t give me nothing.”

  “That’s very polite of you,” I said, “but still I have a great mind to give you into custody. Stay; tell me who and what you are, and I will give you a shilling and let you go.”

  He looked up and down the road, measured me with his eye, abandoned the idea of resistance, and replied:

  “Well, your honour, if you won’t be too hard on a poor man which finds it hard to get a crust anyhow or way, I don’t mind telling you I never was a soldier.” I give his narrative as he related it to me.

  “I don’t know who my parents ever was. The fust thing as I remember was the river side (the Thames), and running in low tide to find things. I used to beg, hold hosses, and sleep under dry arches. I don’t remember how I got any clothes. I never had a pair of shoes or stockings till I was almost a man. I fancy I am now nearly forty years of age.

  “An old woman as kep a rag and iron shop by the water-side give me a lodging once for two years. We used to call her ‘Nanny’; but she turned me out when she caught me taking some old nails and a brass cock out of her shop; I was hungry when I done it, for the old gal gi’ me no grub, nothing but the bare floor for a bed.

  “I have been a beggar all my life, and begged in all sorts o’ ways and all sorts o’ lays. I don’t mean to say that if I see anything laying about handy that I don’t mouch it (i. e. steal it). Once a gentleman took me into his house as his servant. He was a very kind man; I had a good place, swell clothes, and beef and beer as much as I liked; but I couldn’t stand the life, and I run away.

  “The loss o’ my arm, sir, was the best thing as ever happen’d to me: it’s been a living to me; I turn out with it on all sorts o’ lays, and it’s as good as a pension. I lost it poaching; my mate’s gun went off by accident, and the shot went into my arm, I neglected it, and at last was obliged to go to a orspital and have it off. The surgeon as ampitated it said that a little longer and it would ha’ mortified.

  “The Crimea’s been a good dodge to a many, but it’s getting stale; all dodges are getting stale; square coves (i. e., honest folks) are so wide awake.”

  “Don’t you think you would have found it more profitable, had you taken to labour or some honester calling than your present one?” I asked.

  “Well, sir, p’raps I might,” he replied; “but going on the square is so dreadfully confining.”

  FOREIGN BEGGARS.

  THESE BEGGARS appeal to the sympathies as “strangers”—in a foreign land, away from friends and kindred, unable to make their wants known, or to seek work, from ignorance of the language.

  In exposing the shams and swindles that are set to catch the unwary, I have no wish to check the current of real benevolence. Cases of distress exist, which it is a pleasure and a duty to relieve. I only expose the “dodges” of the beggar by profession—the beggar by trade—the beggar who lives by begging, and nothing else, except, as in most cases, where he makes the two ends of idleness and self-indulgence meet,—by thieving.

  Foreign beggars are generally so mixed up with political events, that in treating of them, it is more than usually difficult to detect imposition from misfortune. Many high-hearted patriots have been driven to this country by tyrants and their tools, but it will not do to mistake every vagabond refugee for a noble exile, or to accept as a fact that a man who cannot live in his own country, is necessarily persecuted and unfortunate, and has a claim to be helped to live in this.

  The neighbourhood of Leicester Square is, to the foreign political exile, the foreign political spy, the foreign fraudulent tradesman, the foreign escaped thief, and the foreign convict who has served his time, what, in the middle-ages, sanctuary was to the murderer. In this modern Alsatia—happily for us, guarded by native policemen and detectives of every nation in the world—plots are hatched, fulminating powder prepared, detonating-balls manufactured, and infernal machines invented, which, wielded by the hands of men whose opinions are so far beyond the age in which they live, that their native land has cast them out for ever; are destined to overthrow despotic governments, restore the liberty of the subject, and, in a wholesale sort of way, regenerate the rights of man.

  Political spies are the monied class among these philanthropic desperadoes. The political regenerators, unless furnished with means from some special fund, are the most miserable and abject. Mr. Thackeray has observed that whenever an Irishman is in difficulties he always finds another Irishman worse off than himself, who talks over creditors, borrows money, runs errands, and makes hismelf generally useful to his incarcerated fellow-countryman. This observation will apply equally to foreigners.

  There is a timid sort of refugee, who lacking the courage to arrive at political eminence or cash, by means of steel, or poison, is a hanger-on of his bolder and less scrupulous compatriot. This man, when deserted by his patron, is forced to beg. The statement that he makes as to his reasons for leaving the dear native land that the majority of foreigners are so ready to sing songs in praise of, and to quit, must be, of course, received with caution.

  The French Beggar.

  My reader has most likely, in a quiet street, met a shabby little man, who stares about him in a confused manner, as if he had lost his way. As soon as he sees a decently-dressed person he shuffles up to him, and taking off a “casquette” with considerably more brim than body, makes a slight bow, and says in a plaintive voice, “Parlez Français, m’sieu?”

  If you stop and, in an unguarded moment, answer “Oui,” the beggar takes from his breast-pocket a greasy leather book, from which he extracts a piece of carefully folded paper, which he hands you with a pathethic shrug.

  The paper, when opened, contains a small slip, on which is written in a light, foreign hand—

  “You are requested to direct the bearer to the place to which he desires to go, as he cannot speak English!”

  The beggar then, with a profusion of bows, points to the larger paper.

  “Mais, m’sieu, ayez la bonté de lire. C’est Anglais.”

  The larger paper contains a statement in French and English, that the bearer Jean Baptiste Dupont is a native of Troyes, Champagne, and a fan-maker by trade; that paralysis in the hand has deprived him of the power of working; that he came to England to find a daughter, who had married an Englishman and was dwelling in Westminster, but that when he arrived he found they had parted for Australia; that he is fifty-two years of age, and
is a deserving object of compassion, having no means of returning to Troyes, being an entire stranger to England, and having no acquaintances or friends to assist him.

  This statement is without any signature, but no sooner have you read it than the beggar, who would seem to have a blind credence in the efficacy of documents, draws from his pocket-book a certificate of birth, a register of marriage, a passport, and a permission to embark, which, being all in a state of crumpled greasiness, and printed and written in French, so startles and confounds the reader, that he drops something into the man’s hand and passes on.

  I have been often stopped by this sort of beggar. In the last case I met with I held a long talk with the man—of course, in his own language, for he will seldom or never be betrayed into admitting that he has any knowledge of English.

  “Parlez Français, m’sieu?”

  “Yes, I do,” I answered. “What do you want?”

  “Deign, monsieur, to have the bounty to read this paper which I have the honour to present to monsieur.”

  “Oh, never mind the papers!” I said, shortly. “Can’t you speak English?”

  “Alas, monsieur, no!”

  “Speak French, then!”

  My quick speaking rather confused the fellow, who said that he was without bread, and without asylum; that he was a tourneur and ebeniste (turner, worker in ebony and ivory, and cabinet-maker in general) by trade, that he was a stranger, and wished to raise sufficient money to enable him to return to France.

  “Why did you come over to England?” I asked.

  “I came to work in London,” he said, after pretending not to understand my question the first time.

  “Where?” I inquired.

  At first I understood him to answer Sheffield, but I at last made out that he meant Smithfield.

  “What was your master’s name?”

  “I do not comprehend, monsieur—if monsieur will deign to read—”

  “You comprehend me perfectly well; don’t pretend that you don’t—that is only shuffling (tracasserie).”

  “The name of my master was Johnson.”

  “Why did you leave him?” I inquired.

  “He is dead, monsieur.”

  “Why did you not return to France at his death?” was my next question.

  “Monsieur, I tried to obtain work in England,” said the beggar.

  “How long did you work for Mr. Johnson?”

  “There was a long time, monsieur, that—”

  “How long?” I repeated. “How many years?”

  “Since two years.”

  “And did you live in London two years, and all that time learn to speak no English?”

  “Ah, monsieur, you embarrass me. If monsieur will not deign to aid me, it must be that I seek elsewhere—”

  “But tell me how it was you learnt no English,” I persisted.

  “Ah, monsieur, my comrades in the shop were all French.”

  “And you want to get back to France?”

  “Ah, monsieur, it is the hope of my life.”

  “Come to me to-morrow morning at eleven o’clock—there is my address.” I gave him the envelope of a letter. “I am well acquainted with the French Consul at London Bridge, and at my intercession I am sure that he will get you a free passage to Calais; if not, and I find he considers your story true, I will send you at my own expense. Good night!”

  Of course the man did not call in the morning, and I saw no more of him.

  Destitute Poles.

  It is now many years since the people of this country evinced a strong sympathy for Polish refugees. Their gallant struggle, compulsory exile, and utter national and domestic ruin raised them warm friends in England; and committees for the relief of destitute Poles, balls for the benefit of destitute Poles, and subscriptions for the relief of the destitute Poles were got up in every market-town. Shelter and sustenance were afforded to many gentlemen of undoubted integrity, who found themselves penniless in a strange land, and the aristocracy fêted and caressed the best-born and most gallant. To be a Pole, and in distress, was almost a sufficient introduction, and there were few English families who did not entertain as friend or visitor one of these unfortunate and suffering patriots.

  So excellent an opportunity for that class of foreign swindlers which haunt roulette-tables, and are the pest of second-rate hotels abroad, was of course made use of. Crowds of adventurers, “got up” in furs, and cloaks, and playhouse dresses, with padded breasts and long moustachios, flocked to England, and assuming the title of count, and giving out that their patrimony had been sequestered by the Emperor of Russia, easily obtained a hearing and a footing in many English families, whose heads would not have received one of their own countrymen except with the usual credentials.

  John Bull’s partiality for foreigners is one of his well-known weaknesses; and valets, cooks, and couriers in their masters clothes, and sometimes with the titles of that master whom they had seen shot down in battle, found themselves objects of national sympathy and attention. Their success among the fair sex was extraordinary; and many penniless adventurers, with no accomplishments beyond card-sharping, and a foreign hotel waiter’s smattering of continental languages, allied themselves to families of wealth and respectability. All, of course, were not so fortunate; and after some persons had been victimized, a few inquiries made, and the real refugee gentlemen and soldiers had indignantly repudiated any knowledge of the swindlers or their pretensions, the pseudo-Polish exiles were compelled to return to their former occupations. The least able and least fortunate were forced to beg, and adopted exactly the same tactics as the French beggar, except that instead of certificates of birth, and passports, he exhibited false military documents, and told lying tales of regimental services, Russian prisons, and miraculous escapes.

  The “destitute Pole” is seldom met with now, and would hardly have demanded a notice if I had not thought it right to show how soon the unsuccessful cheat or swindler drops down into the beggar, and to what a height the “Polish fever” raged some thirty years ago. It would be injustice to a noble nation if I did not inform my reader that but few of the false claimants to British sympathy were Poles at all. They were Russians, Frenchmen, Hungarians, Austrians, Prussians, and Germans of all sorts.

  The career of one fellow will serve to show with what little ingenuity the credulous can be imposed on. His real name is lost among his numerous aliases, neither do I know whether he commenced life as a soldier, or as a valet; but I think it probable that he had combined those occupations and been regimental servant to an officer. He came to London in the year 1833 under the name of Count Stanislas Soltiewski, of Ostralenka; possessed of a handsome person and invulnerable audacity, he was soon received into decent society, and in 1837 married a lady of some fortune, squandered her money, and deserted her. He then changed his name to Levieczin, and travelled from town to town, giving political lectures at townhalls, assembly-rooms, and theatres. In 1842 he called himself Doctor Telecki, said he was a native of Smolensk, and set up a practice in Manchester, where he contracted a large amount of debts. From Manchester he eloped with one of his patients, a young lady to whom he was married in 1845, in Dublin, in which place he again endeavoured to practise as a physician. He soon involved himself in difficulties, and quitted Dublin, taking with him funds which had been entrusted to him as treasurer of a charitable institution. He left his second wife, and formed a connexion with another woman, travelled about, giving scientific lectures, and sometimes doing feats of legerdemain. He again married a widow lady who had some four or five hundred pounds, which he spent, after which he deserted her. He then became the scourge and terror of hotel-keepers, and went from tavern to tavern living on every luxury, and, when asked for money, decamping, and leaving behind him nothing but portmanteaus filled with straw and bricks. He returned to England and obtained a situation in a respectable academy as a teacher of French and the guitar. Here he called himself Count Hohenbreitenstein-Boitzenburg.

 
Under this name he seduced a young lady, whom he persuaded he could not marry on account of her being a Protestant, and of his being a Count of the Holy Roman Empire in the pontifical degree. By threatening exposure he extracted a large sum of money from her friends, with which he returned to London, where he lived for some time by begging letters, and obtaining money on various false pretences. His first wife discovered him, and he was charged with bigamy, but owing to some technical informality was not convicted. He then enlisted in the 87th regiment, from which he shortly after deserted. He became the associate of thieves and the prostitutes who live in the neighbourhood of Waterloo Road. After being several times imprisoned for petty thefts he at length earned a miserable living by conjuring in low public-houses, where he announced himself as the celebrated Polish professor of legerdemain, Count Makvicz.

  He died in August, 1852, and, oddly enough, in a garret in Poland Street, Oxford Street.

  Of modern Polish swindlers and beggars, the most renowned is Adolphus Czapolinski. This “shabby genteel man of military appearance”—I quote the daily papers,—“has been several times incarcerated, has again offended, and been again imprisoned. His fraudulent practices were first discovered in 1860.” The following is from the Times, of June the 5th of that year:—

  “Bow STREET.—A military-looking man, who said his name was Lorenzo Noodt, and that he had served as captain in one of our foreign legions during the Crimean war, was brought before Mr. Henry on a charge of attempting to obtain money by false and fraudulent pretences from the Countess of Waldegrave.”

  Mr. George Granville Harcourt (the husband of Lady Waldegrave), deposed:

  “I saw the prisoner to-day at my house in Carlton Gardens, where he called by my request in reference to a letter which Lady Waldegrave had received from him. It was a letter soliciting charitable contributions, and enclosing three papers. The first purported to be a note from Lady Stafford, enclosing a post-office order for 3l. I know her ladyship’s handwriting, and this is like it, but I cannot say whether it is genuine. The second is apparently a note from Colonel Macdonald, sending him a post-office order for 4l. on the part of the Duke of Cambridge. The third is a note purporting to be written by the secretary of the Duke d’Aumale. This note states that the duke approves this person’s departure for Italy, and desires his secretary to send him 5l. We were persuaded that it could not be genuine, in the first place, as we have the honour of being intimate with the Duke d’Aumale. We perfectly well knew that he would not say to this individual, or to any one else, that he approved his departure for Italy; in the second place, there are mistakes in the French which render it impossible that the duke’s secretary should have written it; in the third place, the name is not that of the secretary, though resembling it. Under all the circumstances, I took an opportunity of asking both the secretary and the Duke d’Aumale whether they had any knowledge of this communication, and they stated that they knew nothing of it. The duke said that it was very disagreeable to him that he should be supposed to be interfering to forward the departure of persons to Italy, which would produce an impression that he was meddling in the affairs of that country. I wrote to the prisoner to call on me, in order to receive back his papers. At first another man called, but on his addressing me in French I said, ‘You are an Italian, not a German. I want to see the captain himself.’ To-day the prisoner called. I showed the papers, and asked him if they were the letters he had received, and if he had received the money referred to in those letters. To both questions he replied in the affirmative. The officer Horsford, with whom I had communicated in the meanwhile, was in the next room. I called him in, and he went up to Captain Noodt, telling him he was his prisoner. He asked why? Horsford replied, for attempting to obtain money by means of a forged letter. He then begged me not to ruin him, and said that the letter was not written by him.”