A Gross Imposition
What seemed completely normal could really pull the wool over ones eyes. Unless your name was Edward Pring.
I'm a big fan of family history research. I've been digging into my family tree for about 10 years and have uncovered many a mystery! A found memoir, incredible stories, photographs I never knew existed, and newspaper clippings that read like diary entries. As I uncover the incredible and very ordinary details of my ancestors, I will be able to share with you some of those findings.
In my pursuit for the stories of old and a glimpse into the lives of the past, my desire to share them has only amplified. So here, I write of them.
As stories go, I'm especially intrigued with fairy tales, mysteries, and the oddities of real life. On a recent family history dig, I ended up reading through an old Victorian British newspaper, circa 1841. (I’ve included a footnote with the link to the original article.) It absolutely intrigued me, as it happened in the same neighborhood that one of my husband’s ancestors came from. It also shocked me. If it happened in my own town centre today, I would not have a clue what was going on. Then again, there aren’t too many beggars in the streets in my neck of the woods.
Here begins the tale of a strange friendship indeed. A tale of three women, four children and a loads of deception.
A beggar paid to look after a baby. 1877.
Photo: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/street-life-victorian-london/
They’d been around the area for years, having been caught in their cunning on many occasions. Even so, these three women were not put off and decided to continue their way of life. All unmarried, they feigned even their motherhood to create a income, receiving alms, food, and lodging, with children in tow that were not their own.
It was a Saturday, the 28th of February, 1841, when they had been caught again, charged with being imposters. Officer Edward Pring had been the one to notice them and knew of their goings-on. He was an intelligent man who belonged to the Mendicity Society. In the 1841 England Census, it's recorded that his occupation was that of a Mendicity Officer.1 It's mission was to help curb homelessness in the streets of England and Ireland. Peter Cunningham, who wrote the “Hand-Book of London”, 1850, had this to say about the Society:
“MENDICITY SOCIETY, Office, 13, RED LION SQUARE. The society gives meals and money, supplies mill and other work to applicants, investigates begging-letter cases, and apprehends vagrants and impostors. Each meal consists of ten ounces of bread, and one pint of good soup, or a quarter of a pound of cheese. The affairs of the Society are administered by a Board of forty-eight managers. The Mendicity Society's tickets, given to a street beggar, will procure for him, if really necessitous, food and work. They are a touch-stone to impostures: the beggar by profession throws them aside. This meritorious Society deserves every encouragement. Tickets are furnished to subscribers.”2
Being a part of the Mendicity Society, Officer Pring would most certainly have been familiar with these women and their ventures.
That Saturday in February, the police officer brought the lot of them in to the Magistrates Court in Hatton Garden, which may have been just under a 10 minute ride in a horse drawn wagon. Though, perhaps they were brought in on foot, which was still very common at the time for the police, so the walk would have been around 25 minutes, depending on how fast one could walk. Officer Pring had a conversation with the Magistrate, Mr. Greenwood. It went a bit like this:
Pring: Mr. Greenwood, I fell in with these women at Russell Square. As I belong to the Mendicity Society, I know them to be gross imposters. One woman has an infant and child, the other two women have one child each with them.
Greenwood: Do the children belong to the women?
Pring: I highly doubt it. I’ve known these women about town for many years, resorting to all sorts of strategies to gain contributions for themselves.
Women: But they are our own children!
Greenwood: The women are to be committed to jail for a month. The infant can remain with its mother. The others, Pring, I would like taken to the St. Pancras Workhouse.
Pring left the office of Mr. Greenwood with the children, but soon returned. He informed Mr. Greenwood that, on his way to the workhouse with the children, the oldest child—who was just 8—begged him to take her and her younger sister home. Officer Pring had been correct about the children, and asked the 8 year old where her home was. She told him it was in Edgware Road and their last name was Coleman.
I’ve checked old and new maps to see where the home was located and it was much further west in Paddington! That would have meant the the children had been taken by the conwomen and walked a great distance to beg for provisions in Russell Square. Though nearly in a straight path, the way from Edgware Road to Russell Square might have taken them 45 minutes to walk. And with an infant, to boot! Officer Pring took the two girls back to their home and Mrs. Coleman was beyond grateful! She had said to the Officer that she had let her children out, though the article never mentioned how long they’d been away from their home.
I would hope that the other children were also delivered up to their parents, though the article doesn’t mention it. The infant, however, is mercifully taken away from the women and brought back to the care of its own mother. Mr. Greenwood said that “this was the way that the benevolent were imposed upon.”3 At least the women were sent to jail for a month, though I’m sure they’d continue their excursions afterwards, as they’d always done before.
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McCabe, Ciarán, 'The Mendicity Society Movement and the Suppression of Begging', Begging, Charity and Religion in Pre-Famine Ireland, Reappraisals in Irish History LUP (Liverpool, 2018; online edn, Liverpool Scholarship Online, 19 Sept. 2019), https://doi.org/10.3828/liverpool/9781786941572.003.0006
The Morning Chronicle, 01 March 1841, Page 4 (https://www.newspapers.com/clip/116871456/a-gross-imposition/)