The Secret World of the Victorian Lodging House

by Joseph O'Neill

  Some gravitated to seaside resorts during the summer, where holidaymakers, giddy with the joys of recreation, were likely to be generous to a man ‘down on his luck’. Others made for the hop fields of Kent and Sussex where extra labour was always in demand during the picking season. As one professional moocher confessed with disarming frankness, ‘the work is not hard and there are a great many loose girls to be found there’.

  Brighton, with its constant supply of affluent visitors, became a magnet for beggars, and in response to their peculiar needs a host of lodging houses sprang up. Their keepers sold trifles wholesale to the faux peddlers, financed robberies and supplied the newly arrived professional beggars with information on soft-touches and profitable begging grounds.

  Various surveys of the tramp population, estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000 in 1900, suggest that only about one-sixth used casual wards. A century earlier an eminent magistrate, Patrick Colquhoun, estimated that there were 90,000 of these peripatetics; 70,000 tramps, beggars and gypsies, 10,000 wandering performers and ‘dubious peddlers’ and the same number employed in selling lottery tickets. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century crime escalated to a terrifying extent, resulting in the establishment of a modern police force with the creation of the Metropolitan Police in 1829. Added to this there were in good times 10,000 and in bad 50,000 workers moving in search of employment. Police statistics for the period 1857 to 1868 show that the number of tramps known to them varied from 33,000 to 36,000. In 1868 there were 5,648 known ‘tramps’ lodging-houses’. The 1906 Departmental Committee on Vagrancy estimated that ten per cent of the occupants of London’s lodging houses were tramps.

  Nothing attracted wandering beggars like indiscriminate charity, which drew professional scroungers from far and wide. Particularly attractive to the moocher was free accommodation. In Oxford, for instance, a hostel for the homeless was opened in Castle Street in 1847. Before long it took on the character of a ‘hotel for tramps’, attracted undesirables of all hues and aroused the ire of local residents. Even those casual wards which operated a lax regime attracted scroungers. When new casual wards were added to Oxford’s Cowley Road workhouse in 1882 they must have operated in a laid-back and undemanding manner, as they soon attracted between 4,000 and 5,000 tramps a year. Conversely, the professional scrounger very quickly learnt to avoid those tramp wards which operated a rigorous regime.

  Neither the night shelters, which sprang up in most big cities, nor food distribution centres were without their critics as many complained that they made no effort to determine the needs of those they helped: the unemployed worker and professional scrounger were treated identically. Neither was required to do anything in return for charity, with the inevitable result that these places became magnets for the feckless idlers who preyed on the benevolence of the naive. In fact, the Liverpool refuge was closed in 1848 as it was swamped by scroungers and particularly prostitutes. The police reports of every major city and town of the period contain complaints about the baleful effects of the tendency of charitable institutions to attract criminals and outcasts.

  Towards the end of the nineteenth century public emergency appeals, similar to the Lord Mayor’s Mansion House appeal, first launched in 1819, and backed by local and national newspapers, became a commonplace response to virtually every downturn in trade. The problem was that the distribution of the proceeds was invariably haphazard, offering ample scope for the practised scrounger. The 1864 Select Committee on Poor Relief recorded numerous instances of beggars abusing the system by, for instance, exchanging bread they had been given for drink. Pub landlords then sold it at reduced prices to their customers. It is estimated that at least a quarter of the £2 million raised to relieve the Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861 to 1863 was defrauded.

  Similarly, the Lords’ Select Committee of 1888 cited manifold instances of charitable aid serving only to line the pockets of landlords and to attract avaricious fraudsters and professional scroungers from far afield. When philanthropists started handing out coffee and bread to those sleeping rough around Trafalgar Square in 1889, the number of down and outs in the area immediately swelled from 20 to 400, instantly swamping all the casual wards in the area. The Charity Organisation carried out a study of these same casual wards and night shelters over the next two years and concluded that only a minute fraction of the cases were deserving.

  Charity is to beggars what the sea is to a swimmer: without one the other is impossible. Despite the impression created by many commentators, charity was central to the lives of people of all stations in Victorian society. It was, after all, widely acknowledged as a Christian’s duty to his fellow man. In 1882 one Poor Law guardian calculated that working people gave beggars at least twenty times more then they donated to official charities. One estimate reckons that professional scroungers benefitted to the tune of about £8.5 million in 1869. London’s charitable donations during the 1880s exceeded total government expenditure on the Royal Navy.

  The way in which charities operated made it easy for the undeserving to exploit the generosity of compassionate hearts: there was little or no coordination between the plethora of philanthropic outlets. Churches and sects, organisations and individuals vied to outdo each other in largesse. The professional scrounger could go from one food charity to another, eating his fill and selling the rest in a lodging house. Similarly, at a time when there was a buoyant market in second-hand clothes, it paid the enterprising tramp to retain tattered garments as his ‘working clothes’, as his rags invariably elicited an offer of a coat or a pair of trousers which he promptly sold.

  What made it difficult for the discerning benefactor to identify the deserving cause was the limitless ingenuity of beggars who were practised in every nuance of heart-string pulling. They were seldom mute implorers, merely extending an importuning hand. They invariably had a patter, a hard luck story to encourage generosity. Their approach was sharpened, many believed, by their acquaintance with the better class of eloquent rogue they encountered in lodging houses.

  When it came to begging, women had a great advantage over their male counterparts. Though most beggars were men, many women ploughed the same furrow. The majority were failed prostitutes or servants who had been sacked and could not, without a ‘character’, get another job. George Atkins Brine, known as the King of the Beggars, candidly admitted that the sexual licence tramps enjoyed was one of the lifestyle’s chief attractions. Female tramps usually hooked up with a male counterpart, moving from town to town, often staying at those lodging houses totally dependent on the patronage of beggars, before eventually going their separate ways.

  Man or woman, adult or child, every beggar had his own modus operandi. The ingenuity of those who lived by duping others could equal the creativity of the greatest minds of the time. Few members of the public could resist the appeal of whimpering children, blue with cold and pinched with hunger or the tale of the returned missionary, one of the more elaborate scams. The beauty of this was that it exploited the public’s insatiable fascination with darkest Africa, missionaries and exploration of Britain’s Empire. Sometimes known as the professional prater or bogus preacher, he needed a group of helpers to create the sort of heady atmosphere in which generosity overwhelmed prudence. Four or five enthusiastic members of the audience, properly primed, would generate interest and, together with a few banners and a couple of musicians, a large crowd soon gathered. Then it was up to the prater to work his magic.

  For the best effect he had a converted African demonstrate his enthusiasm for Christianity by spitting on a pagan idol, before leading the assembled throng in a stirring rendition of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. Almost as an afterthought, a collection was taken up and the crowd dispersed, happy in the knowledge that they were helping to spread the light of the Gospel.

  A significant section of the begging community consisted of the writers of begging letters. These practitioners came from the higher echelons of the begging fraternity; they
were literate and capable of the research necessary to ensure that they targeted those likely to be most responsive. Many badgered public figures while the more perceptive chose local philanthropists and those prominent in charitable organisations. Renowned philanthropists, clergymen of all hues, public figures, winners of lotteries and other publicised prize-winners were all favoured targets. Charles Dickens was only one of the public figures they plagued. Each presented a carefully developed persona: one was a distressed gentlewoman, another an officer’s widow; the ship-wrecked mariner, the disabled miner, unable to work after an explosion at the coal-face, and the impoverished gardener struggling in winter were all standard characters.

  One group of begging letter-writers whose activities came to light in 1850 worked out of Wards’ lodging house in Rag Row, Banbury, and consisted of a woman, a one-legged man and a one-armed man. This sort of crime was common among clerks who had come down in the world – usually as a result of their dishonesty – who were a staple of many lodging houses.

  The more audacious followed up their letter with a visit, during which a refusal to give money resulted in tears, hysterics and tantrums calculated to create such embarrassment that the victim was willing to pay the overwrought scrounger to get rid of them. More despicable still were those who targeted the recently bereaved. By trawling the obituary notices they found suitable targets, often respectable women who had recently lost their husbands. The letter-writer purported to be a former lover supported by the deceased. Implicit in the letter was the threat to make the matter public and in the majority of cases the family was glad to pay up in order to prevent any illicit relationship becoming public.

  Far subtler was the beggar who used neither the written nor the spoken word, but dressed in clothes that spoke of threadbare respectability. He usually entered a pub in a respectable working class area and looking suitably doleful, made an inept attempt to sell something of little worth – a box of matches or some tobacco – which he maintained was his only hope of raising a few coppers. As soon as someone engaged him in conversation he would recount his heart-rending tale of cruel misfortune. The astute practitioner of this ruse found it worked best on a Saturday evening when the pub was full of women having a drink after completing their shopping. Generally they still had a few shillings in their purses and were feeling, for the only occasion in the week, quite decently off. This well-being was likely to overflow into generosity.

  Disabled beggars did well but the most successful were the disfigured – the more shocking the wound, the better the impact. The ability to simulate wounds was an art as valuable as any trade or practical skill. A thick layer of soap plastered onto the arm or thigh needed only an application of vinegar to ensure that it blistered and appeared for all the world like a running wound. Similarly, a piece of raw meat tied under a clotted dressing invariably melted the hardest heart. Healed amputations guaranteed a beggar a regular income. Soap, strong vinegar and blood squeezed from raw meat and applied to the stump created such a realistic weeping sore that most passers-by averted their eyes while dropping coins into the beggar’s cup. A brisk massage with gunpowder gave the skin the colour of decaying, inflamed flesh and was a great bonus to anyone whose living depended on arousing sympathy.

  In fact, Victorian beggars showed keen insights. They knew that respectable people attached great importance to wearing sufficient clothing: apart from considerations of decency, it was believed that insufficient clothing was a major cause of ill health. One group of beggars sought to exploit this by calling door to door, while half-naked, asking for food and clothing. They realised people were more likely to give them old clothes – easily converted into cash – than money. Most of these beggars worked one prosperous suburban area after another. Occasionally, they varied their approach, posing as a travelling workman who had the promise of a job but would not be taken on in rags.

  But the most productive door-to-door beggars were women, preferably accompanied by respectably dressed children, ideally little lisping girls. Beggars in Manchester’s Strangeways area used little girls for many years. The child would accost an adult and ask for money. Almost immediately the adult partner would appear and reproach the victim for using foul language to the child. Soon the allegation was stepped up and the adult demanded money if he was not to report the matter to the police.

  The static beggar, standing on a corner, his hand pitifully beseeching a copper, was unlikely to succeed. The competition was too tough. That type of begging was monopolised by apparently respectable women, children and cripples. The police were likely to arrest or move on a man adopting this unimaginative approach, so a prop was necessary to avoid this fate. Consequently, many carried a hawker’s tray, selling needles or matches, which were merely a pretext for aggressive begging. A placard, setting out the heart-breaking circumstances under which the wearer was crippled, was another favoured prop.

  A white stick was also effective. Blindness was quite common among the poor, the result of industrial accidents, smallpox and untreated gonorrhoea. The obedient dog, lying by his master, was a common sight all over Britain. But a far better prop was a child acting as a guide. Feigning a medical condition allowed beggars to use their acting talents. Most of those with dramatic tendencies went in for fit throwing. Some alcoholics feigned collapse near a pub in the hope that some compassionate soul would fetch 6d worth of brandy to revive them.

  The shrewd beggar was well informed, and used events in the news to give his sorry tale a veneer of credibility. So, a man crippled in a recent pit disaster or bereft of his family and all his possessions after a shipwreck which was the talk of the town was sure to evoke sympathy.

  Joseph Dare was fascinated by the variety of rogues he encountered in Leicester’s lodging houses in the 1850s. In particular, he was intrigued by what he called the ‘high-flyers’, educated men who would claim acquaintance with genteel families as part of a ruse to ingratiate themselves to respectable men whom they proceeded to fleece. At the other end of the scale were the ‘forney-squarers’ who made fake gold rings which they sold to servant girls or sometimes exchanged for food and clothing.

  The ‘Widow’s Lark’, involved a woman posing as a bereaved mother – sometimes borrowing children to create the desired impression. She played on the sympathies of all she encountered, frequently using the proceeds to support a feckless husband. Others who relied on their ability to tell a heartrending tale were the ‘gridlers’ and ‘chanters’, whose misfortunes would even engage the sympathies of a pawnbroker. The gridlers specialised in singing psalms and thus adding credibility to their accounts of blameless lives blighted by cruel misfortune. Describing one pair of gridlers, an observer commented that ‘in your entire life you never saw a brace of such sanctimonious rascals’. They worked only Dissenting neighbourhoods, hoping there to more readily arouse the sympathy of the godly.

  So ubiquitous were rogues who played on others’ generosity that many respectable Victorians were afflicted by charity fatigue. Pestering by professional beggars was more than a minor annoyance – it was regarded by the successive chief constables of Manchester, for instance, as a major problem, so great in fact that no less a person than Jerome Caminada was deputed to put an end to it. The legendary detective, regarded by many as the real-life inspiration for the character of Sherlock Holmes, set about resolving the problem with his customary gusto.

  Most Manchester beggars at that time were women who would walk beside a person wailing a pitiable tale. So persistent were they that their actions amounted to a form of blackmail.

  One night shortly before 11pm, as Caminada was walking along Oxford Street, near Manchester city centre, he came across a known beggar, Soldier Mary Ann, who appeared to be comforting a child swathed in her shawl. Unaware of Caminada, she latched on to a couple emerging from the Prince’s Theatre and immediately launched into her patter, recounting her piteous tale of a deserted wife who had walked from Liverpool in a fruitless attempt to locate her wayward husband and
now had no means of feeding or sheltering her hungry child.

  At this point Caminada intervened. The baby turned out to be a young boy – who immediately took to his heels. His parents hired him out as a heart-rending prop for 3d a night. Mary Ann had so many previous convictions that she was sentenced to twelve months with hard labour. Her case deserves more detailed consideration, as she is typical of many of Manchester’s professional beggars of the period.

  Mary Ann was a woman of many aliases. This, of course, was common among criminals of all sorts, who hoped to avoid the heavier penalties imposed on habitual offenders by adopting multiple identities. Mary Ann’s real name was Ann Ryan and her offences included theft; when threatened with arrest she was quite happy to resort to violent resistance. On one occasion, when arrested for stealing corsets, she tried to fight off the police. Between 1873 and 1889 she was convicted of begging, drunkenness, breach of the peace and being drunk and disorderly. She was in every respect the typical street beggar of the time.

  Another famous Manchester policeman, James Bent, renowned for charitable work with the city’s poor over many years, tells of a professional beggar operating in Davyhulme, where he was pretending to be a mute miner. The magistrate sentenced him to three months’ imprisonment. Another professional beggar posed as an invalid – he wore shoes on his hands and dragged himself along on all fours. He received six weeks.

  Many beggars combined importuning with hawking or street entertainment. Very often there was only the finest of lines between these activities. Selling matches or pins was often a pretext for accosting someone in the street and compelling him to listen to a well-rehearsed hard luck story. It also provided a reason for hanging about while looking for the opportunity to steal from a passing cart or a shop’s footpath display. A great deal of this sort of petty crime was the work of beggars. In fact, the Manchester police estimated that two-thirds of all crime was down to vagrants.