Town Mouse
When I’m strolling down the Strand or standing outside the Coach and Horses in Soho with a pint, the pure joy of being in the city can easily be disturbed by the troops of beggars. (And surely the word ‘beggar’ is both more dignified and more accurate than ‘homeless person’.)
Along the Strand, men with skeletal faces and sleeping bags draped over their shoulders shout to their fellows, apparently oblivious to those hurrying past them.
In Soho, if you stand outside a pub, you’ll be constantly hassled for spare change by charming, worryingly skinny beggars. One friend says she thinks twice about going into town because she spends so much money. She can afford the drinks – it’s the money for beggars that costs her.
What is a Town Mouse to do, particularly at Christmas? Give or not give? I tend to give a quid here and there. It feels natural. But both the charities and the conservative press tell us not to give to beggars. The big charities reckon they are the professional bodies and we should give to them, not directly to the individuals concerned. Certainly organisations like the Salvation Army do wonderful work by providing shelters for homeless people and should be supported.
Authorities such as John Bird, founder of the Big Issue and a former beggar himself, argues against handing out the pennies.
‘People who give are murdering whatever chance those people have of getting off the streets,’ he says. ‘By giving them money, you’re effectively cementing them onto the streets – you are not giving them an alternative to street existence.’
This is the sensible, pragmatic and utilitarian view. John Bird knows whereof he speaks. But the argument is flawed. It’s dangerously Scrooge-like and it misses the holy nature of begging.
I don’t mean that crack addicts and alcoholics are like St Francis of Assisi, the original holy beggar. But, at least in the
Middle Ages, the status of beggars was raised by the fact that wandering around with a begging bowl brought you closer to God. Mendicant friars were an accepted part of the social fabric. In India, there still is the tradition of the holy beggar, who does not work and instead begs alms.
In the medieval period, these beggars fulfilled a social function: they gave you the opportunity to practise charity, and being charitable got you into heaven.
The word ‘beggar’ itself is derived from the cult of Beguines and Beghards, Dutch lay monks and nuns who went round asking for money. They also built their own versions of monasteries called beguinages, and looked after the poor and sick. They were the charity workers of their day.
I worry about charitable campaigns. I feel I’m feeding the ego of the fund-raiser, whether it’s George Osborne of the Evening Standard or Bob Geldof. They manipulate the poor into giving them money, which they then pass on to a charity with a great show of generosity and a blast of publicity, as if it’s their own money they’re giving. Christ said that when you give alms, you should do it on the quiet, not sound your trumpet about it.
This was the attitude taken by Oliver Goldsmith’s character ‘the man in black’:
‘ “In every parish-house,” says he, “the poor are supplied with food, clothes, fire, and a bed to lie on; they want no more. I desire no more myself; yet still they seem discontented. I am surprised at the inactivity of our magistrates in not taking up such vagrants, who are only a weight upon the industrious; I am surprised that the people are found to relieve them, when they must be at the same time sensible that it in some measure encourages idleness, extravagance, and imposture.” ’
Still, the man in black, when strolling through Soho, is moved to pity by a beggar’s sob story about his five children.
Our narrator says, ‘I pretended to look another way, and [the man in black] seized this opportunity of giving the poor petitioner a piece of silver, bidding him at the same time, in order that I should hear, go work for his bread, and not tease passengers with such impertinent falsehoods for the future. As he had fancied himself quite unperceived, he continued, as we proceeded, to rail against beggars with as much animosity as before.’
The story shows we are born with an innate sense of charity, which refuses to go away, however much we try to suppress it by appealing to rational arguments.
Orwell saw beggars simply as minor entrepreneurs.
‘It is a trade like any other,’ he wrote. ‘Quite useless, of course — but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless.’ He argues that beggars are relatively morally upright. ‘He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout — in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite.’
And like other entrepreneurs, beggars must keep up with the latest developments. I was pleased the other day to see a beggar with a card terminal. I’d been worrying about the effect of the cashless society on their business. It’s good to see that begging has gone electric.
Either approach is morally good. To give or not to give – you can do either one with a clear conscience. If you don’t give, you have the satisfaction of avoiding complicity in the beggar’s condition. If you do give, you are following a centuries-old Christian tradition and may find yourself going to heaven. Happy Christmas and goodwill to all men, beggars included.