Lives of Famous London Beggars: With Forty Portraits of the Most Remarkable.Smith, John Thomas
History
Lives of Famous London Beggars: With Forty Portraits of the Most Remarkable.
Smith, John Thomas
Beggars -- England -- London
The author of this little work sincerely regrets the loss of a sketch
that he made from a black man, whose countenance and figure were the
most interesting of any of the tribe. He was nearly six feet in height,
rather round in the shoulders, and usually wore a covering of green
baize; indeed altogether he brought to recollection that exquisite
statue of Cicero, in the Pomfret collection of marbles at Oxford, so
beautifully engraved by Sherwin. This fellow, who had often been taken
up, has not been seen for several months.
[Illustration]
Go-cart, Billies in bowls, or Sledge-beggars, are denominations for
those cripples whose misfortunes will not permit them to travel in any
other way; and these are next presented to the reader's notice.
Men of this class are to be found in every country. The little fellow
above depicted in the cart is copied from Luca Carlevarij's 100 Views in
Venice, a set of long quarto plates, most spiritedly etched, and
published in 1703.
Hogarth, whose active eye caught Nature in all her garbs, has introduced
in his Wedding of the Industrious Apprentice, a cripple well known in
those days under the appellation of Philip in the Tub, a fellow who
constantly attended weddings, and retailed the ballad of "Jesse, or the
Happy Pair."
Dublin has ever been famous for a Billy in the Bowl. A very remarkable
fellow of this class, well known in that city, and who thought proper to
leave Ireland on the Union, was met in London by a Noble Lord, who
observed, "So you are here too!" "Yes, my Lord," replied the beggar,
"the Union has brought us all over."
The back view of the person exhibited in the following plate, is that of
Samuel Horsey, who, in December 1816, had been a London beggar for
thirty-one years. Of this man there are various opinions, and it is much
to be doubted if the truth can be obtained even from his own mouth. He
states that Mr Abernethy cut off his legs in St Bartholomew's Hospital,
but he does not declare from what cause; so that being deprived of the
power of gaining a subsistence by labour, he was forced to become a
beggar. By some persons he is styled the King of the Beggars, but
certainly without the least foundation. He says that no one has been
less acquainted with beggars than himself; and as for his having the
command of a district, that he utterly denies. His walks, or rather
movements, are not always confined; on some days he slides to Charing
Cross, but is oftener to be seen at the door of Mr Coutts's
banking-house, perhaps with an idea that persons just after they have
received money are more likely to bestow charity.
Of all other men, Horsey has the most dexterous mode of turning, or
rather swinging himself, into a gin-shop. He dashes the door open by
forcibly striking the front of his sledge and himself against it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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