I have heard that an old woman frequented Doctors' Commons about seven years ago. She appeared to listen to the arguments, but was reserved and mopish, if spoken to. She often threw herself in the way of one of the leading advocates, and always addressed him in the same words: "Dr. ----, I am _virgo intacta_."
The sailor-looking man described by Charles Lamb lasted a long time. I remember him in Fleet Street and the Strand when I was boy, and also an account which appeared in the newspapers of his vigorous resistance when apprehended as a vagrant; but I cannot fix the dates. I think, however, it was about 1822. His portrait is in Kirby's _Wonderful and Eccentric Museum_, vol. i. p. 331. Below it is, "Samuel Horsey, aged fifty-five, a singular beggar in the streets of London." The date of the engraving is August 30, 1803. As the accompanying letter-press is not long, I copy it:
"This person, who has so long past, that is to say, during nineteen years, attracted the notice of the public, by the severity of his misfortunes, in the loss of both his legs, and the singular means by which he removes himself from place to place, by the help of a wooden seat constructed in the manner of a rocking-horse, and assisted by a pair of crutches, first met with his calamity by the falling of a piece of timber from a house at the lower end of Bow Lane, Cheapside. He is now fifty-five years of age, and commonly called the King of the Beggars: and as he is very corpulent, the facility he moves with is very singular. From his general appearance and complexion, he seems to enjoy a state of health remarkably good. The frequent obtrusion of a man naturally stout and well made, but now so miserably mutilated as he is, having excited the curiosity of great numbers of people daily passing through the most crowded thoroughfares of the metropolis, has been the leading motive of this account, and the striking representation of his person here given."
The likeness is very good. Among the stories told of him, one was that his ample earnings enabled him to keep two wives, and, what is more, to keep them from quarrelling. He presided in the evenings at a "cadgers' club," planted at the head of the table, with a wife on each side. Not having been present at these meetings I do not ask anybody to believe this report.