The Italian Boy by Sarah Wise Page B

report gives the following picture of the 671 people detained by Dicity constables: 21 claimed to be impoverished because of old age, 6 cited business failure, 4 claimed to be foreigners who could not afford their fare home, 64 (mainly women) were destitute through loss—by death, desertion, or imprisonment—of a husband or close relative, 1 had lost everything in a fire, 1 had been shipwrecked, 61 had met with an accident or had suffered a serious illness, 4 had had their pay or pension suspended, 2 were ex-convicts who could not find anyone to vouch for their good name when seeking employment, 7 had no clothes in which they could decently seek work, another 7 had no tools with which to carry out their trade, 493 described themselves simply as “in want of employment.” Of the 671, only 156 described themselves as native Londoners; some 285 had come up to London from the English countryside in search of work; 127 were from Ireland; 28 were described as coming “from Europe,” regions unspecified; 28 were Scottish; 10 were Welsh; 7 were American; 5 were West Indian; 2 were from the East Indies; 2 were African; and a disproportionate 21 were Italian. The London parish most likely to be named as place of abode was St. Giles, the rotting slum—in the process of becoming a national embarrassment—just north of Covent Garden. Twice as many impoverished Londoners came from St. Giles as from the next two parishes on the list—St. Mary’s, Whitechapel, and St. Andrew’s, Holborn.
    Since this data appeared in what was essentially a booklet appealing for funds, the attempt at categorization and quantification was no doubt supposed to impress potential sponsors. After the report’s figures come some brief notes on certain of the Dicity Objects of 1830:
“JT,” wife, four children, no job, good character, had sold all belongings and was begging;
“WR,” 38, a failed Oxford Street linen-draper with debts, friends helped but they were in trouble too, on the streets;
“MD”’s husband a long-term hospital patient, he had been a manservant, Irish, good character;
“WS,” 39, discharged lieutenant and now a failed artist, a wife, four children, starving in an empty garret with not even a bed;
“JG,” 39, a Manchester manufactory lad, induced to seek fortune in London, abandoned by his pals, he was returned to his grateful parents in Salford;
a failed umbrella maker, 31, of Liverpool, came to London but he and his wife and two children were begging in Covent Garden, could only get casual shifts at the dock;
“JH,” 27, of Birmingham, was found with a placard “Obligation! Myself, my wife and two children are nearly starving in a land of plenty! My wife wants bread, my children pine and cry, Kind reader, pray a mite impart as you pass by.” 23
    The Dicity was a tantalizing mixture of narrow-minded judgmentalism punctuated by outbursts of compassion and even sentimentality; in its publications, skeptical comments about beggars’ claims of unemployment do battle with exclamations on how dreadful the state of the labor market had been of late. In 1830, one-third of vagrancy cases brought before London magistrates were the result of arrests made by Dicity workers. 24
    The London Society for the Suppression of Mendicity had come into being not to help the poor but to ensure that as many vagrants were apprehended and prosecuted as the law allowed. The term used in its literature for the activities of its constables is “clearing the streets”—that is, seeing to it that public places were free from the sights, sounds, and smells of extreme poverty.
    Many vagrants did nevertheless go to Red Lion Square of their own accord, to seek shelter, food, or safety. One such was a twelve-year-old native of Parma, in northern Italy, who had been seen around the streets of central London carrying a wax doll in a wooden box. He was in dreadful physical condition; his skin was covered in scabs, his eyes were infected—probably a