Archenholz, the German traveller, writing circa 1784, describes the streets of London as crowded with beggars. “These idle people,” says this curious observer, “receive in alms three, four, and even five shillings a day. They have their clubs in the parish of St. Giles’s, where they meet, drink and feed well, read the papers, and talk politics. One of my friends put on one day a ragged coat, and promised a handsome reward to a beggar to introduce him to his club. He found the beggars gay and familiar, and poor only in their rags. One threw down his crutch, another untied a wooden leg, a third took off a grey wig or removed a plaister from a sound eye; then they related their adventures, and planned fresh schemes. The female beggars hire children for sixpence and sometimes even two shillings a day: a very deformed child is worth four shillings.” In the same parish the pickpockets met to dine and exchange or sell snuff-boxes, handkerchiefs, and other stolen property. About fifty years before, says Archenholz, there had been a pickpockets’ club in St. Giles’s, where the knives and forks were chained to the table and the cloth was nailed on. Rules were, however, decorously observed, and chairmen chosen at their meetings. Not far from this house was a celebrated gin-shop, on the sign-post of which was written, “Here you may get drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and straw for nothing.” The cellars of this public-spirited man were never empty. Archenholz also sketches the conjurors who told fortunes for a shilling. They wore black gowns and false beards, advertised in the newspapers, and painted their houses with magical figures and planetary emblems.[656]