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 Klein, Lawrence E., “Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century,” Historical Journal 45, no. 4 (2002): 869–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Langford, Paul, “The Uses of Eighteenth-Century Politeness,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 12 (2002): 311–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Jones, Erasmus, The Man of Manners; or, Plebeian Polish’d (London, 1737), 2Google Scholar.

³ Begging as a form of behavior has been very little studied by historians. There are, however, several excellent recent articles on the administration and impact of social policy in relation to begging. In particular, see Roberts, M. J. D., “Reshaping the Gift Relationship: The London Mendicity Society and the Suppression of Begging in England, 1818–69,” International Review of Social History 36 (1991): 201–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Public and Private in Early Nineteenth-Century London: The Vagrant Act of 1822 and Its Enforcement,” Social History (London) 13 (1988): 273–94Google Scholar; Rogers, Nicholas, “Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century London: The Vagrancy Laws and Their Administration,” Histoire sociale/Social History 24 (1991): 127–47Google Scholar. For a recent attempt to view begging from a practitioner's perspective, see Schindler, Norbert, Rebellion, Community and Custom in Early Modern Germany, trans. Selwyn, Pamela E. (Cambridge, 2002), chap. 6Google Scholar.

⁴ See Beier, A. L., Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560–1640 (London, 1985)Google Scholar; Slack, Paul, “Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1598–1664,” in Migration and Society in Early Modern England, ed. Clark, Peter and Souden, David (London, 1987), 49–76Google Scholar.

⁵ See Rogers, “Policing the Poor,” 128–31.

⁶ For the now classic statement of the evolution of prisons, see Ignatief, Michael, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (London, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; Amherst, NY, 2000), 202Google Scholar; citations from 2000 edition.

⁸ For an excellent recent article on the objects and cruelty of eighteenth-century humor, see Dickie, Simon, “Hilarity and Pitilessness in the Mid-Eighteenth Century: English Jestbook Humor,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 1 (2003): 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Place, Francis, The Autobiography of Francis Place (London, 1771–1854), ed. Thale, Mary (Cambridge, 1972), 216Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See Andrew, Donna T., Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1989), chaps. 2, 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slack, Paul, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), chap. 7Google Scholar. For a brilliant treatment of the evolution of attitudes toward charity in this period, see Valenze, Deborah, “Charity, Custom and Humanity: Changing Attitudes towards the Poor in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Revival and Religion since 1700, Essays for John Walsh, ed. Garnett, John and Matthews, Colin (London, 1993), 59–78Google Scholar.

¹¹ T——B——'s Last Letter to His Witty Friends & Companions (London, 1718), 69Google Scholar.

¹² Fielding, Henry, An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers (London, 1751), 45Google Scholar.

¹³ Martin, Matthew, Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Pelham on the State of Mendicity in the Metropolis (London, 1803)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Rogers, “Policing the Poor,” 136–38.

¹⁵ “Court of Governors, Bridewell and Bethlem: Minutes, 12 January 1737/8 to 4 April 1751,” Guildhall Library, MS 33011/21, 180–213. For the cases of Andrew Pearson, Barnaby Lyon, and William Burke, see 186 and 234. There were periods, during the mayoralty of Sir John Barnard in 1738–39, e.g., when beggars formed a substantially higher proportion of those committed to Bridewell, but this was an exception to the general rule. For an account of the workings of the court and its active role in policing the docks, see D'Sena, Peter, “Perquisites and Pilfering in the London Docks, 1700–1795” (MPhil thesis, Open University, 1986), chap. 2Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Moorfields was frequently cited as home to a large “concourse of disorderly persons and idle vagrants” and was subject to regular and apparently ineffectual presentments from the Grand Jury. See, e.g., Corporation of London Records Office (henceforth CLRO), “The Grand Jury's Presentment, 7 Jan 1739,” Misc. MS 18/40. The position of Moorfields on the boundary between London and Middlesex must in part account for its popularity.

¹⁷ “Report of the House of Commons Committee on the State of Mendicity in the Metropolis, 1815,” 64; quoted in Sidney and Webb, Beatrice, English Poor Law History, Part I: The Old Poor Law, English Local Government (London, 1927), 371Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Thompson, E. P., Customs in Common (London, 1991), 266Google Scholar.

¹⁹ For a more anthropological approach to the social relations embedded in charity, see Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT, 1985)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Gay, John, “Trivia; or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London” (London, 1716), in John Gay: Poetry and Prose, ed. Dearing, Vinton A., vol. 2 (Oxford, 1974), lines 437–38, 449–50Google Scholar.

²¹ See Poor Robin's Hue and Cry after Good House-Keeping. Or, a Dialogue Betwixt Good House-Keeping, Christmas and Pride (London, 1687)Google Scholar.

²² The Oxford English Dictionary describes a Christmas box as “a box having a cleft on the lid, or in the side, for money to enter it; used … by butlers and prentices.” For a brief account of the role of the Christmas box as seen from the perspective of financially secure men, see Finn, Margot, “Men's Things: Masculine Possession in the Consumer Revolution,” Social History (London) 25, no. 2 (May 2000): 149–50Google Scholar.

²³ Old Bailey Proceedings (henceforth OBP), 25 February 1736, Elizabeth Davis, t17360225-3, http://www.OldBaileyOnline.org.

²⁴ There is an excellent and growing literature on the history of eighteenth-century domestic service. See, e.g., Hill, Bridget, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kent, David A., “Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid Eighteenth-Century London,” History Workshop Journal 28 (1989): 111–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meldrum, Tim, Domestic Service and Gender, 1660–1750: Life and Work in the London Household (Harlow, Essex, 2000)Google Scholar.

²⁵ OBP, 25 October 1752, William Montegomery, t17521026-45.

²⁶ Henry Carey, “The Ballad of Sally in our Alley” (London, 1715?), reproduced in Eighteenth-Century Verse, ed. Lonsdale, Roger (Oxford, 1984), 138–39Google Scholar.

²⁷ See, e.g., Harrington, Joel F., “‘Singing for His Supper’: The Reinvention of Juvenile Street Singing in Early Modern Nuremberg,” Social History 22, no. 1 (1997): 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ “Christ's Hospital Almoner's and Rentors’ Minutes,” Guildhall Library, MS 12811/9, 20 December 1727. I would like to thank Dianne Payne for very kindly providing this reference.

²⁹ CLRO, “Vagrant Books, together with 5 loose pages and a bill of mortality, 1738–1742,” Misc. MS 322.5.

³⁰ [D'Urfey, T.], Collin's Walk Through London and Westminster. A Poem in Burlesque (London, 1690), 27Google Scholar.

³¹ Smith, John Thomas, Vagabondiana; or, Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers Through the Streets of London with Portraits of the Most Remarkable Drawn from Life (London, 1817), 41Google Scholar.

³² Southey, Robert, Letters from England, ed. Simmons, Jack (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1951), 80Google Scholar.

³³ Phythian-Adams, Charles, “Milk and Soot: The Changing Vocabulary of a Popular Ritual in Stuart and Hanoverian London,” in The Pursuit of Urban History, ed. Fraser, D. and Sutcliffe, Anthony (London, 1983), 100Google Scholar.

³⁴ CLRO, “City's Cash Accounts, 1699–1701,” MS 1/23, fol. 200.

³⁵ For a recent collection of essays devoted to the idea of an “economy of makeshift,” see King, Steven and Tomkins, Alannah, eds., The Poor in England, 1700–1850: An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ On the roles of “rough music” in popular culture, see Thompson, Customs in Common, 467–531. For its role in marriage ceremonies, see in particular 470 n. 3.

³⁷ One early broadside claimed that butchers’ apprentices monopolized this form of rough music; see His Majesty's Royal Peel of Marrowbones and Cleavers, Guildhall Library, Noble Collection C22/85, but most accounts suggest that a more diverse group of individuals was involved. Misson, Henri, M. Misson's Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England, trans. Ozell, John (London, 1719), 352Google Scholar; see also Gillis, John R., For Better, for Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (Oxford, 1985), 68, 138Google Scholar.

³⁸ John Cannon, “Memoirs of the Birth, Education, Life and Death of Mr John Cannon: Sometime Officer of the Excise & Writing Master at Mere Glastenbury & West Lydford in the County of Somerset” (1743), Somerset Record Office, MS DD/SAS C/1193/4, 115–19.

³⁹ Low-Life: Or One Half of the World Knows Not how the Other Half Live (London, 1749), 54Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ See, e.g., Lancashire and Cheshire Wills and Inventories, 1572 to 1696, Now Preserved at Chester, 2nd ser. (Manchester: Printed for the Chetham Society, 1893), 28:35Google Scholar.

⁴¹ For an example of an attempt to apply anthropological insights into the nature of gift giving to the behavior of nineteenth-century beggars and paupers, see Roberts, “Reshaping the Gift Relationship.”

⁴² Gay, “Trivia,” vol. 2, lines 141–44, 213–16.

⁴³ “Court of Governors, Bridewell and Bethlem: Minutes, 26 October 1722 to 15 December 1737,” Guildhall Library, MS 33011/20, 27 March 1724, 26.

⁴⁴ OBP, 28 February 1759, Ruth Child, t17590228-14.

⁴⁵ For an accessible account of the development of the “area,” see Cruickshank, Dan and Burton, Neil, Life in the Georgian City (London, 1990), chap. 1Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Haywood, E. A., A New Present for a Servant-Maid: Containing Rules for her Moral Conduct both with Respect to Herself and her Superiors: The Whole Art of Cookery, Pickling, Preserving (London, 1771), 11Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ OBP, 10 October 1722, Sarah Churchill, t17221010-22.

⁴⁸ Quoted in Dabhoiwala, Faramerz, “The Pattern of Sexual Immorality in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century London,” in Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London, ed. Griffiths, Paul and Jenner, Mark (New York, 2000), 95Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ OBP, 11 January 1717, Mary Long, t17170111-18. For an excellent recent account of prostitution in eighteenth-century London, see Henderson, Tony, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 (London, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ OBP, 15 October 1740, William Duell, t17401015-53.

⁵¹ Potter, Israel R., The Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter, with an introduction by Leonard Kriegel (1824; New York, 1962), 78, 94Google Scholar; citations from 1962 edition.

⁵² Quoted in Boulton, Jeremy, “Going on the Parish: The Parish Pension and Its Meaning in the London Suburbs, 1640–1724,” in Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840, ed. Hitchcock, Tim, King, Peter, and Sharpe, Pamela (London, 1997), 33Google Scholar.

⁵³ 8 & 9 William III, c. 30 (1697). For a recent article tracing the history of badging that presents a notably pessimistic view, see Hindle, Steve, “Dependency, Shame and Belonging: Badging the Deserving Poor, c. 1550–1750,” Cultural and Social History 1 (2004): 6–35Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ See CLRO, “Courts of the President and Governors of the Poor of London, 1702–5,” MS New 377c/1/22, fols. 246–47.

⁵⁵ John Thomas Smith, Vagabondiana; Lamb, Charles, “A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis,” Essays of Elia (London, June 1822)Google Scholar. On the 1822 Vagrancy Act and social policy, see Roberts, “Reshaping the Gift Relationship”; Roberts, M. J. D., “Public and Private in Early Nineteenth Century London: The Vagrant Act of 1822 and its Enforcement,” Social History (London) 13 (1988): 273–94Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ On the selective strategies of nineteenth-century social reformers, see Barringer, Tim J., “Images of Otherness and the Visual Production of Difference: Race and Labour in Illustrated Texts, 1850–1865,” in The Victorians and Race, ed. West, Shearer (Aldershot, 1996), 34–52Google Scholar; Prasch, Thomas, “Photography and the Image of the London Poor,” in Victorian Urban Settings: Essays on the Nineteenth-Century City and Its Contexts, ed. Mancoff, Debra N. and Tela, Dale J. (New York, 1996), 179–94Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ OBP, 12 September 1759, Nicholas Randall, t17590912-22.

⁵⁸ Smith, John Thomas, A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Last Sixty Years (London, 1845), 72–74Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ The Ordinary of Newgate's Account (London), 6 August 1740; OBP, 9 July 1740, Samuel Badham, t174000709-2.

⁶⁰ On the “black poor,” see Braidwood, Stephen J., Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement, 1786–1791 (Liverpool, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶¹ For the Sierra Leone settlement, see Braidwood, Black Poor and White Philanthropists.

⁶² Clare, John, John Clare's Autobiographical Writings, ed. Robinson, E. (Oxford, 1986), 140–41Google Scholar.

⁶³ For a brief discussion of the relationship between the hospital and local poverty, see Hitchcock, Tim and Black, John, eds., Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations, 1733–1766, London Record Society, 33 (1999), xvGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁴ CLRO, London Sessions Papers, December 1782, “31 Examinations of Supposed vagrants”; see the examination of Thomas Dargaval, 16 November 1782.

⁶⁵ For an account of the role of religion in the construction of eighteenth-century masculinity, see Gregory, Jeremy, “Homo religiosus: Masculinity and Religion in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in English Masculinities, 1660–1800, ed. Hitchcock, Tim and Cohen, Michele (London, 1999), 85–110Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ OBP, 16 April 1740, Elizabeth Evans, t17400416-24.

⁶⁷ See, e.g., A Trip From St James's to the Royal-Exchange: With Remarks Serious and Diverting on the Manners, Customs and Amusements of the Inhabitants of London and Westminster (London, 1744), 25–26Google Scholar.