A great wrong to the poorer classes in the facility to lapse into idle, useless, and mendicant life.—Author, chap. i.
Towards the close of the nineteenth century, this particular form of the evils of society had at last culminated into the intolerable. The different authorities concerned, or which ought to have been concerned, seemed to have been scared by the irrepressible magnitude, the infectious increase, and all the ingenious devices of the ubiquitous begging element. In and about London, for instance, the streets and suburban roads were thronged with beggars, vigorously plying their one common vocation under all varieties of pretence. One vast section of this begging element formed, at every few steps, a pervading public nuisance—somewhat special to the metropolis—by its importunate solicitation under pretence of crossing-sweeping. And yet, the object being simply begging, the streets still remained unswept in presence of this countless legion, and had to be attended to in this way when required, just as though the said legion had no existence. The whole country teemed with idle and begging and thieving tramps, who were too often able-bodied persons, refusing work, and ready for outrage, if needful, to back their demands. There was, besides, a wretched gipsying life, which demoralized and discomforted every locality it successively visited. The professional begging-letter impostor, and sundry other forms of begging imposition, filled up the unsavoury and unwholesome picture.
