Begging on the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London

Abstract

A nyone pretending to gentility in eighteenth-century London knew that giving to a beggar on the street was a delicate and complex maneuver.1 Erasmus Jones in his cutting 1737 guide to urban etiquette, The Man of Manners; or, Plebeian Polished, observed that he had "seen some people . . .dispensed their charities with so unhandsome a grace, that methought they did ill in doing good, and refus'd an alms while they gave one."Jones complained that unpracticed almsgivers "seemed to insult over a poor creature's misery and seldom open'd their purse till they had vented their gall," and he advised that "a kind compassionate look, oftentimes refreshes more than a crown.. . .The very manner of giving adds to the gift." 2 For the bewigged and tutored, leisured, and fashion-conscious denizens of eighteenth-century London, the calls of pity had to be answered with just the right combination of sympathy and disdain, just the right flourish of lace and charity.If the part played by the almsgivers was complex and difficult, if their lines needed rehearsing and their gestures practice, how much more difficult was it to play the central character in this most common scene?For the beggar, how you asked, and who, where you asked, and what you asked for all needed to be finely judged.How you held your body and pitched your voice, whether you stood or sat, exposed cankers and sores or modestly hid them beneath rags all needed to be considered.Whether you sought alms from the estates of the dead or at kitchen doors, whether you chose to beg at Christmas or May Day, whether you asked Tim Hitchcock is professor of eighteenth-century history at the University of Hertfordshire.He has published widely on the histories of eighteenth-century British poverty and sexuality, and he is the codirector of the Old Bailey Online (www.OldBaileyOnline.org).1 There is an extensive and growing literature on politeness in the eighteenth century.It does not, however, explicitly treat the issue of begging.For a guide to the development of "politeness," see Lawrence E. Klein, "Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century," Historical

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 45 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.