The “dodges” to which an individual resolved on a vagrant life will resort are almost past reckoning; and, as a natural consequence, the quality of the imposture in modern practice is superior to that which served to delude our grandfathers.
It can be no other. As civilisation advances, and our machinery for the suppression and detection of fraud improves, so, if he would live at all, must the professional impostor exert all the skill and cunning he is endowed with to adjust the balance at his end of the beam. It is with vagrancy as with thieving. If our present system of police had no more formidable adversaries to deal with than lived and robbed in the days of those famous fellows, Richard Turpin and Master Blueskin, Newgate might, in the course of a few years, be converted into a temperance hotel, and our various convict establishments into vast industrial homes for the helplessly indigent. So, if the well-trained staff under the captaincy of that shrewd scenter of make-believe and humbug—Mr. Horsford—was called on to rout an old-fashioned army of sham blindness, and cripples whose stumps were fictitious; and of clumsy whining cadgers, who made filthy rags do duty for poverty, who painted horrid sores on their arms and legs, and employed a mild sort of whitewash to represent on their impudent faces the bloodless pallor of consumption,—we might reasonably hope to be rid of the whole community in a month.
It is scarcely too much to say, that the active and intelligent opposition brought to bear of late years against beggars has caused the trade to be taken up by a class of persons of quite superior accomplishments. I well recollect, on the memorable occasion of my passing a night in the society of tramps and beggars, hearing the matter discussed seriously and at length, and that by persons who, from their position in life, undoubtedly were those to whose opinion considerable weight attached. The conversation began by one young fellow, as he reclined on his hay-bed and puffed complacently at his short pipe, relating how he had “kidded” the workhouse authorities into the belief that he had not applied for relief at that casual-ward for at least a month previously, whereas he had been there for three successive nights. Of course this was a joke mightily enjoyed by his audience; and a friend, wagging his head in high admiration, expressed his wonder as to how the feat could be successfully accomplished. “How!” replied the audacious one; “why, with cheek, to be sure. Anything can be done if you’ve only got cheek enough. It’s no use puttin’ on a spurt of it, and knocking under soon as you’re tackled. Go in for it up to the heads of your soul bolts. Put it on your face so gallus thick that the devil himself won’t see through it. Put it into your eyes and set the tears a-rollin’. Swear God’s truth; stop at nothing. They’re bound to believe you. There ain’t nothing else left for ‘em. They think that there’s an end somewhere to lyin’ and cheekin’, and they’re fools enough to think that they can tell when that end shows itself. Don’t let your cheek have any end to it. That’s where you’re right, my lads.”
I have, at the risk of shocking the reader of delicate sensibilities, quoted at full the terms in which my ruffianly “casual” chamber-fellow delivered himself of his opinion as to the power of “cheek” illimitable, because from the same experienced source presently proceeded as handsome a tribute to the efficiency of the officers of the Mendicity Society as they could desire.
“What shall you do with yerself to-morrow?” one asked of another, who, weary of song and anecdote and blasphemy, preparatory to curling down for the night was yawning curses on the parochial authorities for supplying him with no warmer rug. “It ain’t much you can do anyhows atween the time when you finish at the crank and go out, till when you wants to come in agin. It feels like frost; if it is, I shall do a bit of chanting, I think.” (“Chanting” is vagrant phraseology for street singing.)
