ABSTRACT
William Cameron, nicknamed ‘Hawkie’, a vagrant, beggar and sometime pedlar was born in Stirlingshire and became crippled at the age of six. His parents apprenticed him to a tailor but he found work uncongenial and ran away from home on several occasions, eventually joining a troupe of travel- lingplayers. He eventually ended up begging and sellingpopular songsheets, and became known in Glasgow for his sales patter and ready banter. He was ‘by his own admission and the testimony of everyone who knew him’ routinely drunk. Cameron wrote his autobiography for David Robertson, a bookseller in the Trongate area of Glasgow, around 1840, presumably in the hope of making some money from the enterprise. The term ‘gangrel’ in the autobiography’s title is the old Scots word for vagabond, and much of the work details his travelling years and the various beggars’ tricks used to secure funds and lodging.
