3 - Begging and Alms-Giving: Perceptions and Motivations

Summary

Introduction

The English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray was among the numerous visitors to Ireland who commented on the prevalence of beggary and their own personal encounters with Irish mendicants. Thackeray's description of beggars in Ballinasloe is illustrative in this regard:

I think the beggars were more plenteous and more loathsome here than almost anywhere. To one hideous wretch I was obliged to give money to go away, which he did for a moment, only to obtrude his horrible face directly afterwards half eaten away with disease … and as for the rest of the beggars, what pen or pencil could describe their hideous leering flattery, their cringing, swindling humour!

This short piece from Thackerary usefully highlights many of the perceptions of beggary which ran through public discourse on the question of the poor: the author mentioned the extent and unpleasantness of the town's beggars; he felt compelled to give alms merely to be rid of this nuisance; one mendicant is presented as being disease-ridden and ‘as for the rest of the beggars’, who utilised skills of the trade (‘hideous leering flattery, their cringing swindling humour’) to procure alms, they were simply beyond description. As a counterpoint, more benign portrayals of Irish beggars and the practice of mendicancy were provided by the Presbyterian army surgeon John Gamble, who travelled around Ireland throughout the 1810s. Many of Gamble’s references to soliciting mendicants note the ‘poetical and animated’ address of Irish beggars, in contrast to their English counterparts, while the number of beggars in Dublin proved not the extent of poverty in the city but the abundance of benevolence and charity among its inhabitants. Thackeray’s beggars were disease-ridden nuisances while Gamble's were characters who evoked curiosity and compassion.

Gauging perceptions of mendicancy in early nineteenth-century Irish society is far from a simple task. Attitudes towards beggars and beggary varied greatly, yet most accounts portrayed mendicancy and its practitioners in a negative light. Beggars propagated disease, sedition and all manner of moral evils in a community. However, mendicants could also be viewed with sympathy and as ‘deserving’ persons; their fellow men pitied the plight of the poor and looked upon their woes as an opportunity to follow Christ’s example in relieving the sick and the distressed.