London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

The rest of the words were undistinguishable. When the little ones had finished, the man, who evidently prided himself upon his powers of eloquence, began, in a loud, authoritative, oratorical tone:—

“My dear friends,—It is with great pain, and affliction, and trouble, that I present myself and my poo—oor family before you, in this wretched situation, at the present moment; but what can I do? Work I cannot obtain, and my little family ask me for bread! Yes, my dear friends—my little family ask me for bread! Oh, my dear friends, conceive what your feelin’s would be, if, like me, at the present moment your poo—oor dear children asked for bread, and you had it not to give them! What then could you do? God send, my dear friends, that no individual, no father of a family, nor mother, nor other individual, with children, will ever, or ever may be drove to do what—or, I should say, that which I am now a-doing of, at the present moment. If any one in this street, or in the next, or in any of the streets in this affluent neighbourhood, had found theirselves in the situation, in which I was placed this morning, it would be hard to say what they could, or would have done; and I assure you, my dear friends,—yes, I assure you, from my heart, that it is very possible that many might have been drove to have done, or do worse, than what I am a doing of, for the sake of my poo—oor family, at the present moment, if they had been drove, by suffering, as I and my poo—oor wife have been the morning of this very day. My wife, my kind friends, is now unfortunately ill through unmerited starvation, and is ill a-bed, from which, at the present moment, she cannot rise. Want we have known together, my dear friends, and so has our poo—oor family, and baby, only eight months old. God send, my dear friends, that none of you, and none of your dear babes, and families, that no individual, which now is listening to my deep distress, at the present moment, may ever know the sufferin’s to which we have been reduced, is my fervent prayer! All I want to obtain is a meal’s victuals for my poo—oor family!”

(Here the man caught my eye, and immediately shifted his ground.)

“You will ask me, my dear friends,” he continued, in an argumentative manner, “you will ask me how and why it is, and what is the reason, which I cannot obtain work? Alas! my dear friends, it is unfortunately so at the present moment. I am a silk-weaver in Bethnal Green, by trade, and the noo International Treaty with France, which Mr. Cobden—” (here he kept his eye on me, as if the political reason were intended for my especial behoof)—“which Mr. Cobden, my dear friends, was depooted to go to the French emperor, Louis Napoleon, to agree upon, betwixt this country and France, which the French manufacturers sends goods into this country, without paying no dooty, and undersells the native manufacturers, though, my dear friends, our workmanship is as good, and English silk as genuine as French, I do assure you. Leastways, there is no difference, except in pattern, and, through the neglect of them as ought to look after it better, that is, to see we had the best designs; for design is the only thing—I mean design and pattern—in which they can outdo us; and also, my dear friends, ladies as go to shops will ask for foreign goods—it is more to their taste than English, at the present moment; and so it is, that many poo—oor families at Bethnal Green and Spitalfields—and Coventry likewise, is redooced to the situation which I myself—that is, to ask your charity—am a doing of—at the present moment.”

I gave a little girl a penny, and the man, still fixing me with his eye, continued—

“You will ask me, my dear friends, praps, how it is that I do not apply to the parish? why not to get relief for myself, my de—ar wife, and little family? My kind friends, you do not know the state in which things is with the poor weavers of Bethnal Green, and, at the present moment, Spitalfields likewise. It comes of the want of knowledge of the real state of this rich and ’appy country, its material prosperity and resources, which you, at this end of the town, can form no idea of. There is now sixteen or seventeen thousand people out of work. Yes, my dear friends, in about two parishes, there is sixteen or seventeen thousand individuals—I mean, of course, counting their poo—oor families and all, which at the present moment, cannot obtain bread. Oh, my dear friends, how grateful ought you be to God that you and your dear families, are not out of work, and can obtain a meal’s victuals, and are not like the sufferin’ weavers of Bethnal Green—and Spitalfields, and Coventry likewise, through the loss of trade; for, my dear friends, if you were like me, forced to what I am doing now at the present moment, &c., &c., &c.”

NAVAL AND MILITARY BEGGARS

are most frequently met with in towns situated at some distance from a seaport or a garrison. As they are distinct specimens of the same tribe, they must be separately classified. The more familiar nuisance is the

Turnpike Sailor.

This sort of vagabond has two lays, the “merchant” lay, and the “R’yal Navy” lay. He adopts either one or the other according to the exigencies of his wardrobe, his locality, or the person he is addressing. He is generally the offspring of some inhabitant of the most notorious haunts of a seaport town, and has seldom been at sea, or when he has, has run away after the first voyage. His slang of seamanship has been picked up at the lowest public-houses in the filthiest slums that offer diversion to the genuine sailor.

When on the “merchant lay” his attire consists of a pair of tattered trousers, an old guernsey-shirt, and a torn straw-hat. One of his principal points of “costume” is his bare feet. His black silk handkerchief is knotted jauntily round his throat after the most approved models at the heads of penny ballads, and the outsides of songs. He wears small gold earrings, and has short curly hair in the highest and most offensive state of glossy greasiness. His hands and arms are carefully tattooed—a foul anchor, or a long-haired mermaid sitting on her tail and making her toilette, being the favourite cartoons. In his gait he endeavours to counterfeit the roll of a true seaman, but his hard feet, knock-knees, and imperceptibly acquired turnpike-trot betray him. His face bears the stamp of diabolically low cunning, and it is impossible to look at him without an association with a police-court. His complexion is coarse and tallowy, and has none of the manly bronze that exposure to the weather, and watching the horizon give to the real tar.

I was once walking with a gentleman who had spent the earlier portion of his life at sea, when a turnpike sailor shuffled on before us. We had just been conversing on nautical affairs, and I said to him—

“Now, there is a brother sailor in distress; of course you will give him something?”

“He a sailor!” said my friend, with great disgust. “Did you see him spit?”

The fellow had that moment expectorated.

I answered that I had.

“He spit to wind’ard!” said my friend.

“What of that?” said I.

“A regular landsman’s trick,” observed my friend. “A real sailor never spits to wind’ard. Why, he could’nt.”

We soon passed the fellow, who pulled at a curl upon his forehead, and began in a gruff voice, intended to convey the idea of hardships, storms, shipwrecks, battles, and privations. “God—bless—your—’onors—give—a—copper—to—a—poor—sailor—as—hasn’t—spliced—the—main—jaw—since—the—day—’fore—yesterday—at—eight—bells—God—love—yer—’onors—do!—I—avent—tasted—sin’—the—day—’fore—yesterday—so—drop—a—cop—poor—seaman—do.”

My friend turned round and looked the beggar full in the face.

“What ship?” he asked, quickly.

The fellow answered glibly.

“What captain?” pursued my friend.

The fellow again replied boldly, though his eyes wandered uneasily.

“What cargo?” asked my inexorable companion.

The beggar was not at fault, but answered correctly.

The name of the port, the reason of his discharge, and other questions were asked and answered; but the man was evidently beginning to be embarrassed. My friend pulled out his purse as if to give him something.

“What are you doing here?” continued the indefatigable inquirer. “Did you leave the coast for the purpose of trying to find a ship here?” (We were in Leicester.)

The man stammered and pulled at his useful forelock to get time to collect his thoughts and invent a good lie.

“He had a friend in them parts as he thought could help him.”

“How long since you were up the Baltic?”

“Year—and—a—arf,—yer—’onor.”

“Do you know Kiel?”

“Yes,—yer—’onor.”

“D’ye know the ‘British Flag’ on the quay there?”

“Yes,—yer—’onor.”

“Been there often?”

“Yes,—yer—’onor.”

“Does Nick Johnson still keep it?”

“Yes,—yer—’onor.”

“Then,” said my friend, after giving vent to a strong opinion as to the beggar’s veracity, “I’d advise you to be off quickly, for there’s a policeman, and if I get within hail of him I shall tell him you’re an impostor. There’s no such house on the quay. Get out, you scoundrel!”

The fellow shuffled off, looking curses, but not daring to express them.

On the “R’yal Navy” lay, the turnpike sailor assumes different habiliments, and altogether a smarter trim. He wears coarse blue trousers symmetrically cut about the hips, and baggy over the foot. A “jumper,” or loose shirt of the same material, a tarpaulin hat, with the name of a vessel in letters of faded gold, is struck on the back of his neck, and he has a piece of whipcord, or “lanyard” round his waist, to which is suspended a jack-knife, which if of but little service in fighting the battles of his country has stood him in good stead in silencing the cackling of any stray poultry that crossed his road, or in frightening into liberality the female tenant of a solitary cottage. This “patter,” or “blob,” is of Plymouth, Portsmouth, Cawsen’ Bay, Hamoaze—ships paid off, prize-money, the bo’sen and the first le’tenant. He is always an able-bodied, never an ordinary seaman, and cannot get a ship “becos” orders is at the Hadmiralty as no more isn’t to be put into commission. Like the fictitious merchant-sailor he calls every landsman “your honour,” in accordance with the conventional rule observed by the jack tars in nautical dramas. He exhibits a stale plug of tobacco, and replaces it in his jaw with ostentatious gusto. His chief victims are imaginative boys fresh from “Robinson Crusoe,” and “Tales of the Ocean,” and old ladies who have relatives at sea. For many months after a naval battle he is in full force, and in inland towns tells highly-spiced narratives of the adventures of his own ship and its gallant crew in action. He is profuse in references to “the cap’en,” and interlards his account with, “and the cap’en turns round, and he says to me, he says—” He feels the pulse of his listener’s credulity through their eyes, and throws the hatchet with the enthusiasm of an artist. “When we boarded ’em,” I heard one of these vagabonds say—“oh, when we boarded ’em!” but it is beyond the power of my feeble pen to relate the deeds of the turnpike true blue, and his ship and its gallant, gallant crew, when they boarded ’em, I let him run out his yarn, and then said, “I saw the account of the action in the papers, but they said nothing of boarding. As I read it, the enemy were in too shallow water to render that manœuvre possible; but that till they struck their flag, and the boats went out to take possession, the vessels were more than half a mile apart.”

This would have posed an ordinary humbug, but the able-bodied liar immediately, and with great apparent disgust, said, “The papers! the noo—o—o—s-papers! d——n the noo—o—o—s—papers. You don’t believe what they says, surely. Look how they sarved out old Charley Napier. Why, sir, I was there, and I ought to know.”

At times the turnpike sailor roars out a song in praise of British valour by sea; but of late this “lay” has been unfrequent. At others he borrows an interesting-looking little girl, and tying his arm up in a sling, adds his wounds and a motherless infant to his other claims upon the public sympathy. After a heavy gale and the loss of several vessels, he appears with a fresh tale and a new suit of carefully chosen rags. When all these resources fail him he is compelled to turn merchant, or “duffer,” and invests a small capital in a few hundred of the worst, and a dozen or two of the very best, cigars. If he be possessed of no capital he steals them. He allows his whiskers to grow round his face, and lubricates them in the same liberal manner as his shining hair. He buys a pea-coat, smart waistcoat, and voluminous trousers, discards his black neckerchief for a scarlet one, the ends of which run through a massive ring. He wears a large pair of braces over his waistcoat, and assumes a half-foreign air, as of a mariner just returned from distant climes. He accosts you in the streets mysteriously, and asks you if you want “a few good cigars?” He tells you they are smuggled, that he “run” them himself, and that the “Custom-’us horficers” are after him. I need hardly inform my reader that the cigar he offers as a sample is excellent, and that, should he be weak enough to purchase a few boxes he will not find them “according to sample.” Not unfrequently, the cigar-“duffer” lures his victim to some low tavern to receive his goods, where in lieu of tobacco, shawls, and laces, he finds a number of cut-throat-looking confederates, who plunder and illtreat him.

It must not be forgotten that at times a begging sailor may be met, who has really been a seaman, and who is a proper object of benevolence. When it is so, he is invariably a man past middle age, and offers for sale or exhibition a model of a man-of-war or a few toy yachts. He has but little to say for himself, and is too glad for the gift of a pair of landsmen’s trousers to trouble himself about their anti-nautical cut. In fact, the real seaman does not care for costume, and is as frequently seen in an old shooting-coat as a torn jacket; but despite his habiliments, the true salt oozes out in the broad hands that dangle heavily from the wrists, as if wanting to grip a rope or a handspike; in the tender feet accustomed to the smooth planks of the deck, and in the settled, far-off look of the weather-beaten head, with its fixed expression of the aristocracy of subordination.

In conclusion, a real sailor is seldom or never seen inland, where he can have no chance of employment, and is removed from the sight of the sea, docks, shipmates, and all things dear and familiar to him. He carries his papers about him in a small tin box, addresses those who speak to him as “sir” and “marm,” and never as “your honour” or “my lady;” is rather taciturn than talkative, and rarely brags of what he has seen, or done, or seen done. In these and all other respects he is the exact opposite of the turnpike sailor.

Street Campaigners.

Soldier beggars may be divided into three classes: those who really have been soldiers and are reduced to mendicancy, those who have been ejected from the army for misconduct, and those with whom the military dress and bearing are pure assumptions.

The difference between these varieties is so distinct as to be easily detected. The first, or soldier proper, has all the evidence of drill and barrack life about him; the eye that always “fronts” the person he addresses; the spare habit, high cheekbones, regulation whisker, stiff chin, and deeply-marked line beneath from ear to ear. He carries his papers about him, and when he has been wounded or seen service, is modest and retiring as to his share of glory. He can give little information as to the incidents of an engagement, except as regards the deeds of his own company, and in conversation speaks more of the personal qualities of his officers and comrades than of their feats of valour. Try him which way you will he never will confess that he has killed a man. He compensates himself for his silence on the subject of fighting by excessive grumbling as to the provisions, quarters, &c., to which he has been forced to submit in the course of his career. He generally has a wife marching by his side—a tall strapping woman, who looks as if a long course of washing at the barracks had made her half a soldier. Ragged though he be, there is a certain smartness about the soldier proper, observable in the polish of his boots, the cock of his cap, and the disposition of the leather strap under his lower lip. He invariably carries a stick, and when a soldier passes him, casts on him an odd sort of look, half envying, half pitying, as if he said, “Though you are better fed than I, you are not so free!”

The soldier proper has various occupations. He does not pass all his time in begging: he will hold a horse, clean knives and boots, sit as a model to an artist, and occasionally take a turn at the wash-tub. Begging he abhors, and is only driven to it as a last resource.

If my readers would inquire why a man so ready to work should not be able to obtain employment, he will receive the answer that universally applies to all questions of hardship among the humbler classes—the vice of the discharged soldier is intemperance.

The second sort of soldier-beggar is one of the most dangerous and violent of mendicants. Untamable even by regimental discipline, insubordinate by nature, he has been thrust out from the army to prey upon society. He begs but seldom, and is dangerous to meet with after dark upon a lonely road, or in a sequestered lane. Indeed, though he has every right to be classed among those who will not work, he is not thoroughly a beggar, but will be met with again, and receive fuller justice at our hands, in the, to him, more congenial catalogue of thieves.

The third sort of street campaigner is a perfect impostor, who being endowed, either by accident or art, with a broken limb or damaged feature, puts on an old military coat, as he would assume the dress of a frozen-out gardener, distressed dock-yard labourer, burnt-out tradesman, or scalded mechanic. He is imitative, and in his time plays many parts. He “gets up” his costume with the same attention to detail as the turnpike sailor. In crowded busy streets he “stands pad,” that is, with a written statement of his hard case slung round his neck, like a label round a decanter. His bearing is most military; he keeps his neck straight, his chin in, and his thumbs to the outside seams of his trousers; he is stiff as an embalmed preparation, for which, but for the motion of his eyes, you might mistake him. In quiet streets and in the country he discards his “pad” and begs “on the blob,” that is, he “patters” to the passers-by, and invites their sympathy by word of mouth. He is an ingenious and fertile liar, and seizes occasions such as the late war in the Crimea and the mutiny in India as good distant grounds on which to build his fictions.

I was walking in a high-road, when I was accosted by a fellow dressed in an old military tunic, a forage-cap like a charity boy’s, and tattered trousers, who limped along barefoot by the aid of a stick. His right sleeve was empty, and tied up to a button-hole at his breast, à la Nelson.

“Please your honour,” he began, in a doleful exhausted voice, “bestow your charity on a poor soldier which lost his right arm at the glorious battle of Inkermann.”

I looked at him, and having considerable experience in this kind of imposition, could at once detect that he was “acting.”

“To what regiment did you belong?” I asked.

“The Thirty —, sir.”

I looked at his button and read Thirty —

“I haven’t tasted bit o’ food, sir, since yesterday at half-past four, and then a lady give me a cruster bread,” he continued.

“The Thirty —!” I repeated. “I knew the Thirty —. Let me see—who was the colonel?”

The man gave me a name, with which I suppose he was provided.

“How long were you in the Thirty —?” I inquired.

“Five year, sir.”

“I had a schoolfellow in that regiment, Captain Thorpe, a tall man with red whiskers—did you know him?”

“There was a captain, sir, with large red whiskers, and I think his name was Thorpe; but he warn’t captain of my company, so I didn’t know for certain,” replied the man, after an affected hesitation.

“The Thirty — was one of the first of our regiments that landed, I think?” I remarked.

“Yes, your honour, it were.”

“You impudent impostor!” I said; “the Thirty — did not go out till the spring of ’55. How dare you tell me you belonged to it?”

The fellow blenched for a moment, but rallied and said, “I didn’t like to contradict your honour for fear you should be angry and wouldn’t give me nothing.”

“That’s very polite of you,” I said, “but still I have a great mind to give you into custody. Stay; tell me who and what you are, and I will give you a shilling and let you go.”

He looked up and down the road, measured me with his eye, abandoned the idea of resistance, and replied:

“Well, your honour, if you won’t be too hard on a poor man which finds it hard to get a crust anyhow or way, I don’t mind telling you I never was a soldier.” I give his narrative as he related it to me.

“I don’t know who my parents ever was. The fust thing as I remember was the river side (the Thames), and running in low tide to find things. I used to beg, hold hosses, and sleep under dry arches. I don’t remember how I got any clothes. I never had a pair of shoes or stockings till I was almost a man. I fancy I am now nearly forty years of age.

“An old woman as kep a rag and iron shop by the water-side give me a lodging once for two years. We used to call her ‘Nanny;’ but she turned me out when she caught me taking some old nails and a brass cock out of her shop; I was hungry when I done it, for the old gal gi’ me no grub, nothing but the bare floor for a bed.

“I have been a beggar all my life, and begged in all sorts o’ ways and all sorts o’ lays. I don’t mean to say that if I see anything laying about handy that I don’t mouch it (i. e. steal it). Once a gentleman took me into his house as his servant. He was a very kind man; I had a good place, swell clothes, and beef and beer as much as I liked; but I couldn’t stand the life, and I run away.

“The loss o’ my arm, sir, was the best thing as ever happen’d to me: it’s been a living to me; I turn out with it on all sorts o’ lays, and it’s as good as a pension. I lost it poaching; my mate’s gun went off by accident, and the shot went into my arm, I neglected it, and at last was obliged to go to a orspital and have it off. The surgeon as ampitated it said that a little longer and it would ha’ mortified.

“The Crimea’s been a good dodge to a many, but it’s getting stale; all dodges are getting stale; square coves (i. e., honest folks) are so wide awake.”

“Don’t you think you would have found it more profitable, had you taken to labour or some honester calling than your present one?” I asked.

“Well, sir, p’raps I might,” he replied; “but going on the square is so dreadfully confining.”

FOREIGN BEGGARS.

These beggars appeal to the sympathies as “strangers”—in a foreign land, away from friends and kindred, unable to make their wants known, or to seek work, from ignorance of the language.

In exposing the shams and swindles that are set to catch the unwary, I have no wish to check the current of real benevolence. Cases of distress exist, which it is a pleasure and a duty to relieve. I only expose the “dodges” of the beggar by profession—the beggar by trade—the beggar who lives by begging, and nothing else, except, as in most cases, where he makes the two ends of idleness and self-indulgence meet,—by thieving.

Foreign beggars are generally so mixed up with political events, that in treating of them, it is more than usually difficult to detect imposition from misfortune. Many high-hearted patriots have been driven to this country by tyrants and their tools, but it will not do to mistake every vagabond refugee for a noble exile, or to accept as a fact that a man who cannot live in his own country, is necessarily persecuted and unfortunate, and has a claim to be helped to live in this.

The neighbourhood of Leicester Square is, to the foreign political exile, the foreign political spy, the foreign fraudulent tradesman, the foreign escaped thief, and the foreign convict who has served his time, what, in the middle-ages, sanctuary was to the murderer. In this modern Alsatia—happily for us, guarded by native policemen and detectives of every nation in the world—plots are hatched, fulminating powder prepared, detonating-balls manufactured, and infernal machines invented, which, wielded by the hands of men whose opinions are so far beyond the age in which they live, that their native land has cast them out for ever; are destined to overthrow despotic governments, restore the liberty of the subject, and, in a wholesale sort of way, regenerate the rights of man.

Political spies are the monied class among these philanthropic desperadoes. The political regenerators, unless furnished with means from some special fund, are the most miserable and abject. Mr. Thackeray has observed that whenever an Irishman is in difficulties he always finds another Irishman worse off than himself, who talks over creditors, borrows money, runs errands, and makes himself generally useful to his incarcerated fellow-countryman. This observation will apply equally to foreigners.

There is a timid sort of refugee, who lacking the courage to arrive at political eminence or cash, by means of steel, or poison, is a hanger-on of his bolder and less scrupulous compatriot. This man, when deserted by his patron, is forced to beg. The statement that he makes as to his reasons for leaving the dear native land that the majority of foreigners are so ready to sing songs in praise of, and to quit, must be, of course, received with caution.

The French Beggar.

My reader has most likely, in a quiet street, met a shabby little man, who stares about him in a confused manner, as if he had lost his way. As soon as he sees a decently-dressed person he shuffles up to him, and taking off a “casquette” with considerably more brim than body, makes a slight bow, and says in a plaintive voice. “Parlez Français, m’sieu?”

If you stop and, in an unguarded moment, answer “Oui,” the beggar takes from his breast-pocket a greasy leather book, from which he extracts a piece of carefully folded paper, which he hands you with a pathetic shrug.

The paper, when opened, contains a small slip, on which is written in a light, foreign hand—

“You are requested to direct the bearer to the place to which he desires to go, as he cannot speak English!”

The beggar then, with a profusion of bows, points to the larger paper.

“Mais, m’sieu, ayez la bonté de lire. C’est Anglais.”

The larger paper contains a statement in French and English, that the bearer Jean Baptiste Dupont is a native of Troyes, Champagne, and a fan-maker by trade; that paralysis in the hand has deprived him of the power of working; that he came to England to find a daughter, who had married an Englishman and was dwelling in Westminster, but that when he arrived he found they had parted for Australia; that he is fifty-two years of age, and is a deserving object of compassion, having no means of returning to Troyes, being an entire stranger to England, and having no acquaintances or friends to assist him.

This statement is without any signature, but no sooner have you read it than the beggar, who would seem to have a blind credence in the efficacy of documents, draws from his pocket-book a certificate of birth, a register of marriage, a passport, and a permission to embark, which, being all in a state of crumpled greasiness, and printed and written in French, so startles and confounds the reader, that he drops something into the man’s hand and passes on.

I have been often stopped by this sort of beggar. In the last case I met with I held a long talk with the man—of course, in his own language, for he will seldom or never be betrayed into admitting that he has any knowledge of English.

“Parlez Français, m’sieu?”

“Yes, I do,” I answered. “What do you want?”

“Deign, monsieur, to have the bounty to read this paper which I have the honour to present to monsieur.”

“Oh, never mind the papers!” I said, shortly. “Can’t you speak English?”

“Alas, monsieur, no!”

“Speak French, then!”

My quick speaking rather confused the fellow, who said that he was without bread, and without asylum; that he was a tourneur and ebeniste (turner, worker in ebony and ivory, and cabinet-maker in general) by trade, that he was a stranger, and wished to raise sufficient money to enable him to return to France.

“Why did you come over to England?” I asked.

“I came to work in London,” he said, after pretending not to understand my question the first time.

“Where?” I inquired.

At first I understood him to answer Sheffield, but I at last made out that he meant Smithfield.

“What was your master’s name?”

“I do not comprehend, monsieur—if monsieur will deign to read—”

“You comprehend me perfectly well; don’t pretend that you don’t—that is only shuffling (tracasserie).

“The name of my master was Johnson.”

“Why did you leave him?” I inquired.

“He is dead, monsieur.”

“Why did you not return to France at his death?” was my next question.

“Monsieur, I tried to obtain work in England,” said the beggar.

“How long did you work for Mr. Johnson?”

“There was a long time, monsieur, that—”

“How long?” I repeated. “How many years?”

“Since two years.”

“And did you live in London two years, and all that time learn to speak no English?”

“Ah, monsieur, you embarrass me. If monsieur will not deign to aid me, it must be that I seek elsewhere—”

“But tell me how it was you learnt no English,” I persisted.

“Ah, monsieur, my comrades in the shop were all French.”

“And you want to get back to France?”

“Ah, monsieur, it is the hope of my life.”

“Come to me to-morrow morning at eleven o’clock—there is my address.” I gave him the envelope of a letter. “I am well acquainted with the French Consul at London Bridge, and at my intercession I am sure that he will get you a free passage to Calais; if not, and I find he considers your story true, I will send you at my own expense. Good night!”

Of course the man did not call in the morning, and I saw no more of him.

Destitute Poles.

It is now many years since the people of this country evinced a strong sympathy for Polish refugees. Their gallant struggle, compulsory exile, and utter national and domestic ruin raised them warm friends in England; and committees for the relief of destitute Poles, balls for the benefit of destitute Poles, and subscriptions for the relief of the destitute Poles were got up in every market-town. Shelter and sustenance were afforded to many gentlemen of undoubted integrity, who found themselves penniless in a strange land, and the aristocracy fêted and caressed the best-born and most gallant. To be a Pole, and in distress, was almost a sufficient introduction, and there were few English families who did not entertain as friend or visitor one of these unfortunate and suffering patriots.

So excellent an opportunity for that class of foreign swindlers which haunt roulette-tables, and are the pest of second-rate hotels abroad, was of course made use of. Crowds of adventurers, “got up” in furs, and cloaks, and playhouse dresses, with padded breasts and long moustachios, flocked to England, and assuming the title of count, and giving out that their patrimony had been sequestered by the Emperor of Russia, easily obtained a hearing and a footing in many English families, whose heads would not have received one of their own countrymen except with the usual credentials.

John Bull’s partiality for foreigners is one of his well-known weaknesses; and valets, cooks, and couriers in their masters clothes, and sometimes with the titles of that master whom they had seen shot down in battle, found themselves objects of national sympathy and attention. Their success among the fair sex was extraordinary; and many penniless adventurers, with no accomplishments beyond card-sharping, and a foreign hotel waiter’s smattering of continental languages, allied themselves to families of wealth and respectability. All, of course, were not so fortunate; and after some persons had been victimized, a few inquiries made, and the real refugee gentlemen and soldiers had indignantly repudiated any knowledge of the swindlers or their pretensions, the pseudo-Polish exiles were compelled to return to their former occupations. The least able and least fortunate were forced to beg, and adopted exactly the same tactics as the French beggar, except that instead of certificates of birth, and passports, he exhibited false military documents, and told lying tales of regimental services, Russian prisons, and miraculous escapes.

The “destitute Pole” is seldom met with now, and would hardly have demanded a notice if I had not thought it right to show how soon the unsuccessful cheat or swindler drops down into the beggar, and to what a height the “Polish fever” raged some thirty years ago. It would be injustice to a noble nation if I did not inform my reader that but few of the false claimants to British sympathy were Poles at all. They were Russians, Frenchmen, Hungarians, Austrians, Prussians, and Germans of all sorts.

The career of one fellow will serve to show with what little ingenuity the credulous can be imposed on. His real name is lost among his numerous aliases, neither do I know whether he commenced life as a soldier, or as a valet; but I think it probable that he had combined those occupations and been regimental servant to an officer. He came to London in the year 1833 under the name of Count Stanislas Soltiewski, of Ostralenka; possessed of a handsome person and invulnerable audacity, he was soon received into decent society, and in 1837 married a lady of some fortune, squandered her money, and deserted her. He then changed his name to Levieczin, and travelled from town to town, giving political lectures at town-halls, assembly-rooms, and theatres. In 1842 he called himself Doctor Telecki, said he was a native of Smolensk, and set up a practice in Manchester, where he contracted a large amount of debts. From Manchester he eloped with one of his patients, a young lady to whom he was married in 1845, in Dublin, in which place he again endeavoured to practise as a physician. He soon involved himself in difficulties, and quitted Dublin, taking with him funds which had been entrusted to him as treasurer of a charitable institution. He left his second wife, and formed a connexion with another woman, travelled about, giving scientific lectures, and sometimes doing feats of legerdemain. He again married a widow lady who had some four or five hundred pounds, which he spent, after which he deserted her. He then became the scourge and terror of hotel-keepers, and went from tavern to tavern living on every luxury, and, when asked for money, decamping, and leaving behind him nothing but portmanteaus filled with straw and bricks. He returned to England and obtained a situation in a respectable academy as a teacher of French and the guitar. Here he called himself Count Hohenbreitenstein-Boitzenburg.

Under this name he seduced a young lady, whom he persuaded he could not marry on account of her being a Protestant, and of his being a Count of the Holy Roman Empire in the pontifical degree. By threatening exposure he extracted a large sum of money from her friends, with which he returned to London, where he lived for some time by begging letters, and obtaining money on various false pretences. His first wife discovered him, and he was charged with bigamy, but owing to some technical informality was not convicted. He then enlisted in the 87th regiment, from which he shortly after deserted. He became the associate of thieves and the prostitutes who live in the neighbourhood of Waterloo Road. After being several times imprisoned for petty thefts he at length earned a miserable living by conjuring in low public-houses, where he announced himself as the celebrated Polish professor of legerdemain, Count Makvicz.

He died in August, 1852, and, oddly enough, in a garret in Poland Street, Oxford Street.

Of modern Polish swindlers and beggars, the most renowned is Adolphus Czapolinski. This “shabby genteel man of military appearance”—I quote the daily papers,—“has been several times incarcerated, has again offended, and been again imprisoned. His fraudulent practices were first discovered in 1860.” The following is from the Times, of June the 5th of that year:—

“Bow Street.—A military-looking man, who said his name was Lorenzo Noodt, and that he had served as captain in one of our foreign legions during the Crimean war, was brought before Mr. Henry on a charge of attempting to obtain money by false and fraudulent pretences from the Countess of Waldegrave.”

Mr. George Granville Harcourt (the husband of Lady Waldegrave), deposed:

“I saw the prisoner to-day at my house in Carlton Gardens, where he called by my request in reference to a letter which Lady Waldegrave had received from him. It was a letter soliciting charitable contributions, and enclosing three papers. The first purported to be a note from Lady Stafford, enclosing a post-office order for 3l. I know her ladyship’s handwriting, and this is like it, but I cannot say whether it is genuine. The second is apparently a note from Colonel Macdonald, sending him a post-office order for 4l. on the part of the Duke of Cambridge. The third is a note purporting to be written by the secretary of the Duke d’Aumale. This note states that the duke approves this person’s departure for Italy, and desires his secretary to send him 5l. We were persuaded that it could not be genuine, in the first place, as we have the honour of being intimate with the Duke d’Aumale. We perfectly well knew that he would not say to this individual, or to any one else, that he approved his departure for Italy; in the second place, there are mistakes in the French which render it impossible that the duke’s secretary should have written it; in the third place, the name is not that of the secretary, though resembling it. Under all the circumstances, I took an opportunity of asking both the secretary and the Duke d’Aumale whether they had any knowledge of this communication, and they stated that they knew nothing of it. The duke said that it was very disagreeable to him that he should be supposed to be interfering to forward the departure of persons to Italy, which would produce an impression that he was meddling in the affairs of that country. I wrote to the prisoner to call on me, in order to receive back his papers. At first another man called, but on his addressing me in French I said, ‘You are an Italian, not a German. I want to see the captain himself.’ To-day the prisoner called. I showed the papers, and asked him if they were the letters he had received, and if he had received the money referred to in those letters. To both questions he replied in the affirmative. The officer Horsford, with whom I had communicated in the meanwhile, was in the next room. I called him in, and he went up to Captain Noodt, telling him he was his prisoner. He asked why? Horsford replied, for attempting to obtain money by means of a forged letter. He then begged me not to ruin him, and said that the letter was not written by him.”

The prisoner’s letter to Lady Waldegrave was then read as follows:—

The letter of the pretended secretary was as follows:—

The prisoner, who appeared much agitated, acknowledged the dishonesty of his conduct, but appealed to the pity of Mr. Harcourt, saying that he had suffered great hardships, and had been driven to this act by want. It was sad that an officer bearing the Queen’s commission should be so humiliated. The letter was not written by himself, but by a Frenchman who led him into it.

Mr. Henry said he had brought the humiliation on himself. He must be well aware that the crime of forgery was punished as severely in his own country as here. The prisoner should have the opportunity of producing the writer of the letter, or of designating him to the police. On the recommendation to mercy of Mr. Harcourt, he was only sentenced to one month’s imprisonment.

On July the 9th he was brought up to Marlborough Street by Horsford, the officer of the Mendicity Society, charged with obtaining by false and fraudulent pretences the sum of 3l. from Lady Stafford. Since his imprisonment it had been discovered that his real name was Adolphus Czapolinski, and that he was a Pole. The real Captain Noodt was in a distant part of the kingdom, and Czapolinski had obtained surreptitious possession of his commission, and assumed his name. The indefatigable Mr. Horsford had placed himself in communication with the secretary of the Polish Association, who had known the prisoner (Czapolinski) for twenty-five years. It would seem that in early life he had been engaged under various foreign powers, and in 1835 he came to this country and earned a scanty maintenance as a teacher of languages; that he was addicted to drinking, begging, and thieving, and upon one occasion, when usher in a school, he robbed the pupils of their clothes, and even fleeced them of their trifling pocket-money. While in the House of Detention he had written to Captain Wood, the secretary of the Mendicity Society, offering to turn approver. The letter in question ran thus:—