" In Mill-yard, Church-lane, about ten female beggars.
" In White Horse-court and Blue Anchor-yard, about fourteen beggars.
" In Detridge-street, New-street, and St Cathe rine's-lane, about thirty female beggars.
" In Angel-Gardens and Blue Gate Fields, about twelve beggars, four of them blacks.
" In Chapel-street, Commercial-road, six beg gars.
" In Goodman's-yard, Minories, six beggars af fecting blindness.
" In the neighbourhood of Shoreditch and Beth nal Green, about thirty-five families may be comput ed at one hundred and fifty members, who subsist by begging and plunder. There are about thirty Greenwich Pensioners, who hire instruments of mu sic and go out in parties.
" If each beggar does not procure at least 6s. per day, they are considered very bad at their busi ness.
" In visiting George-yard, leading from High street, Whitechapel, into Wentworth-street, we found there were from thirty to forty houses apparently full of people; and being desirous of knowing the situation they were in, we gained access to several of them where we had formerly visited distressing cases ; and from the information we collected, we conceive that in these houses there are no less than two thousand people ; the whole place, indeed, presents such a scene of human misery and dissipation as can. hardly be conceived. We learned from those we had access to, that one half of these inhabitants subsist almost entirely by prostitution and beggary ; the other half are chiefly Irish labouring people.
" In Wentworth-atreet (adjoining the above yard) cl) there are a great many houses occupied by inhabi tants similar to those in George-yard. One of these (a private house, No. 52) we visited, and were not a little surprised to find that it contained one hundred beds, which are let by the night or otherwise, to beggars, and loose characters of all descriptions. In some of the lanes leading from this street, there are , other houses of the same kind." Mr Sampson Stevenson, who had been Overseer of the parish of St Giles's the preceding year, and by that circumstance forced into an acquaintance with the practices of its begging inhabitants, said,—" There is a man whose real name I do not know, but he goes by the name of Gmane Manoo. He is a man who, I believe, is scarcely out of jail three months in the year ; for he is so abusive and vile a character, he is very frequently in jail for his abuse and mendicity. He is young enough to have gone to sea, but I be " lieve he has been ruptured, consequently they will net take him. I have seen him scratch his legs about , She ancles, to make them bleed ; and he never goes out with shoes. That is the man that collects the greatest quantity of shoes and other habiliments; for' he goes literally so naked, that it is almost disgusting fOr any person to see him in that situation. man I have known upon the town these fifteen or twenty years ; he is a young man as nimble as any man can be. I have seen him fencing with the other people, and jumping about as you would see a man that was practised in the pugilistic art. He goes ge nerally without a hat, with a waistcoat with his arms thrust through, and his arms bare, with a canvass bag at his back ; he begins generally by singing some sort of a song, for he has the voice of a decent bal lad-singer. He takes primroses or something in his hand, and generally goes limping or crawling in such. a way, that any person would suppose he could not step one foot before another. I have also seen him, if a Bow-street officer or beadle came in sight, walk of the ground as 'quickly as most people. There is • a man who has had a very genteel education, and has been in the medical line, an Irishman ; that man writes a most beautiful hand, and he principally gets his livelihood by writing petitions for those kind of people, of various descriptions ; whether truth or falsehood I know not, but I have seen him writing ' them. for which he gets from sixpence to a shilling.
" Do you know whether they change their beats ?— I have seen them come out from twenty to thirty out of the bottom of a street, formerly called Dyot Street, now called George Street. They branch off, five or six together, one one way, another another.
Invariably, before they get to any great distance, they go into a liquor-shop, and if one amongst them has saved (and it is rare but one of them saves some of the wreck of his fortune over night), he sets them off with a pint of gin, or half a pint of gin amongst them, before they set out. Then they trust to the day for raising the contributions necessary for their subsistence in the evening. They have all their di visions. The town is quartered into sections and di. visions, and they go one part one way, another part another. In regard to the mendicit7 of people beg ging with children, I can give a little information upon that. There is one person, of an acute nature, who is practised in the art of begging, will collect three, four, or five children from different parents of the lower Class of people, and will give those parents 6d. or even more per day, for those children to go begging with.' They go in those kind of gangs, and make a very great noise, setting the children some times crying in order to extort charity from the peo ple. 1 had an opportunity of seeing a number of those cases, being a parish officer. They will some times have the audacity te, come to the Board for relief, which we have four days a-week : there is a great deal of money given in St Giles's: T will, if necessary, ry, swear they are all their own dren, and being, in general, of Irish parents (where• ever the tree falls it must lie), consequently they get some relief till we can make proper inquiry ; but, in a very short time, they are found out, for we gene rally send to the place they come from ; but the land lords and landladies are so cunning, they would swear , that the whole of those children belonged to them. But we have people of their own class, to whom we are obliged to give something to detect the imposi tions we are liable to, for we are often imposed upon. A great many of those cases were before me last year as a parish officer ; where a woman had been in -the habit of receiving 5s. a-week, and at last a wo man of her own country came forward, and taxed, her that three of the children' were not her own. We never saw them again, but they went into other parishes, such as Mary-le-bone, St Andrew's, and other parishes, and sought relief , f there; they we cannot remove them. We have had other per sons whose families are their own, and when they have a habit of begging, and get a good deal of mo ney by that trade, they will not go to work. But we have complaints from a variety of persons round Bedford and Bloomsbury Square, of those persons being nuisances. And when the parties have come to the Board, we have offered them the house to come in with wife and children No; I expect my hus band home very soon, and I will not come into the house." In those cases we get rid of them, but we invariably offer them the house. When they will not take it, then we stop the relief, for I think the house is the best thing for a family of children, and a dis tressed family of that description." Mr William Dorrel, inspector of the pavement of St Giles's and St George, Bloomsbury, said,—" One evening I was coming down Tottenham-court Road ; a man and a woman, both beggars, were quarrelling. The man swore at the woman very much, and told her to go down to such a place, and he would follow her. I said to myself, I will see this out. She ap peared to be pregnant, and very near her time. I went do*n to Sheen's, I think he sent her there. There was a quarrel, and he said, " I will do for you presently ;" and he up with his foot and kicked her, and _down came a pillow stuffed with straw, or some thing of that kind ; she was very soon delivered. I have been of a circumstance respecting a man of the name of Butler, that went about ; he had lost one of his eyes. Ijim told he had been to sea. He had a dog, and walked with a stick ; the dog went before him ; he hit the curb-stone. People supposed be was blind of both eyes ; he turned his eye up in such a way that he appeared blind. When he returned to his hotel, he could see as well as I could, and he wrote letters for his brother-beggars. This man has been dead two or three months.