The Reverend William Gurney said, " I am rector of St Clement Danes, and minister of the Free Chapel in West Street, St Giles's. In the course of my mi nistry there, I have had a great deal of occasion to visit persons in very great distress. I have ascer tained, that there are four different ways of begging. Some are by letters which are sent by post; and some are what we call knocker beggars, who go from house to house, knocking at every door.- If they get a know ledge of any respectable person in the street, they pretend they have received money at his house, to make a sum to pay rent, or the postage of a letter from a son who has been six or seven years at sea, and from whom they expect a remittance ; or for other purposes. On these occasions they have gene rally some written statement in their hands. Some beggars are stationary. They come to their stand at a certain hour, where they remain all day, or af ter so many hours repair to another. Of these beg gars, those who are blind, or maimed, or have chil succeed the best. There are others, women and children, who are moveable beggars, following not the street but the people. For instance, at the time of the play, they are always very near the theatres; and if they see a young gentleman and a young lady walking together in deep conversation, theywill pester them, and run before them till they give them some thing to get rid of them. Those people, at other times of the day, if it is a Sunday,for instance, will be found near chapels where there are large congregations ; they know as well where the large congregations are as possible. There are others who are continual ly begging from house to house ; they go through a great nmnbor of streets in the day, occasionally tak mg a ballad, or a bunch of matches, and pretend to be picking up bones in the street, and early in the morning kneeling down to areas, tormenting the BEG cook when she is busy in the kitchen, until they get ' some broken victuals, as they call it, but they ac tually sell this victuals ; that 1 have found out. In St Giles's there are some eating houses for the very poorest mendicants, where they go and sell this victuals they get from different houses." This is a correct description of the most common cases of begging. There is one case, by no means uncommon, which we do not perceive described by . any of the witnesses ; that, when three or four men, _being or appearing to be lame or maimed, and most -commonly in the guise of sailors, go out in a body, -singing with great loudness, and almost barricading with their bodies the streets through which they -move, in such a manner, that nobody can pass with out a vehement onset, while the timid or sensitive hardly dare to resist. Of course, this takes place only in these streets in which there is least danger of their being taken up.
The following is a description given by the Re verend W. Gurney, of some other classes of beg gars. He had mentioned a set of applications fre quently made to him, by persons who pretended that prize-money, or benefits of some other sort were due to them, of which, however, being deprived by Avant of knowing the steps to be taken, they en treated a letter to somebody who would 'instruct -them ; " but their object was to get a letter with my name to it, with which probably in a short time they could get L. 20. If I have written to any body in the office of the Treasurer of the Navy, whom I knew, for instruction or counsel how they ought to act, re commending the bearer to this person for any in formation he could give upoti such points ; -if I only said, I beg leave to recommend the bearer to your notice, they would paste this upon another sheet of paper, cutting off the bottom part (and one person was detected in doing this), and then they would take the name at the bottom, and so paste it together, making a kind of a recommendation of this person : knowing who I was acquainted with, some other clergyman, perhaps setting me down as giving them 10s. ; that clergyman is induced to give them Ms. also, and to send them to some benevolent person in -his congregation : and so they go on till they have got L. 20: and that has frequently been done, I do -not mean always by imposition. But, in many cases, where persons have been in distress, through -providential circumstances, I have written to ano ther clergyman, saying, such a woman was dis tressed,. and had so many children, and that her
husband was out of work, and that this I knew to be the fact, for I had inquired. I have given half a guinea, and have given .the names of others ; and by this means sufficient relief has been pro cured without coming to the parish at all. But the impositions on the subject of recommendations are very great ; I have had letters from all parts of the country, inquiring whether Iagave a general re commendation to such a person ; and they have said, we saw a letter purporting to be in your hand writing ; we were pretty confident it was not writ ten by you, but it was a very good imitation. One .man in Staffordshire, where I had lately been, got a . great deal of money upon such a letter, I conceive the beggars in the Streets are more numerotul at one time of the year than another ; and it would be sup posed the time of the year when they were most numerous, would be in the early part of the winter; but that is not the case, for now they are as thick as at any time the year. I have been endeavour ing for a long time to ascertain the reason of this ; and the first obvious reason for the influx of beg gars into the metropolis, at this season of the year, is, with respect to one class of beggars, those who do it by letters or recommendations, and not going from house to house, that they take advantage while Parliament is still sitting, or particular per sons being in town ; they perhaps are pretty station ary in London all -the year ; but they are more anxious at this time, and therefore more heard of, because people are going out of town, and therefore they are taking time by the forelock, and work double tides ; that is the reason I very frequently have letters sent by friends of mine in affluence, Mr Wilberforce and others, requesting me to inquire into particular cases, and if I found them to be as represented, to give them so and so. I have gene rally been troubled more at this season of the year than at any other. As to those who knock at the door to beg, the reason of their being so numerous at this time of the year, I apprehend, is, that many come out of the country with a view to take the early hay-time about the metropolis, but they bring always a large suit with them. If a man comes to mow in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, they mow their way back again, the harvest beginning sooner near the metropolis ; they bring with them a wife and six or seven children. I have seen hun dreds coming up through Stanmore, when I resided there. They generally come too soon, and the streets are filled with these poor people : One says, if t could but get money to buy a fork I could get work; and another, if I could get money to buy a . rake, I could get employment. I have had half a dozen with me since Saturday, stating that they came up to get a job of work, but the market is overstocked : there are so many Irish here. The consequence. of these people coming is, their chil dren are immediately set to begging in the streets, and with the dust upon them, having travelled a great way, and frequently in real. want, they move the compassion of people very much ; they are fre- • quently sitting with papers stuck in their hats. In the course of six or eight weeks great numbers of those will disappear ; the husbands will get to mow ing, their wives will get a hay-fork, and the children will get to weeding in the gardens : Then they get a dreadful habit, by coming to the metropolis, a ha bit of idleness and drinking ; and those children are annually.instructed in idleness and drinking, and of course lying ; idleness is sure to bring on lying and theft. I dare say there are very few of these men dicant children who are not trained up to pilfer as well as to beg ; they come principally, I believe, from the manufacturing counties, On a journey from Birmingham to London, two years ago, I pass ed not less than two hundred with their wives and children, who were begging as I passed." The following statement is inserted in the Re port of the Committee, under the title of Informa tion communicated by three members of a Society instituted for Benevolent Purposes :" " In Nicholas-court, Rosemary-lane, there are about twenty beggars, male and female, of the very worst description, great impostors, drunkards, blas phemers, &c. : their rendezvous the City of Car lisle, Rosemary lane.