ABSTRACT
It is perhaps difficult for us to visualise what an integral if unwelcome part of the colour of street life the beggar was at the period of the 1824 Vagrancy Act. Pierce Egan's celebrated rakish literary romp, Life in London, published in 1821, includes a conducted visit into the 'Holy Land', where this rum romanticism is embodied in a description of the 'Noah's Ark', a beggars' dive. A proportion of street beggars were deserving cases, as the aforementioned police inspector's report acknowledged in 1869. Women beggars were usually low-class prostitutes, and unemployed servants with no references who had drifted into the vagrant life. Negro beggars deserve a special mention. The Howard Association in 1882 noted, for example, how they made a particular set at women, who, 'tender-hearted and simple-minded' creatures, 'cannot resist the whine and humbug of the tramp'. The Charity Organization Society, a charity-liaison operation, performed a similar service after its formation in 1869.
