Next to her sate a young woman who was wont to take her stand in the evening, after dusk, close by the entrance to Somerset House. In the summer she would hold a few flowers in her hand: in the winter, laces and bobbins; and her invariable cry was "Oh! pray, dear sir"——or "dear lady," as the case might be——"pray do assist me: I have only this moment come out of the hospital, and have nowhere to sleep." By these means she realized her five shillings in three or four hours, and hastened back to Castle Street to spend them with a worthless fellow—her paramour.
Another individual whom we must mention, was an elderly man, who in his youth had been apprenticed to a chemist. He obtained his living by displaying a fearfully ulcerated arm, having himself originally produced the sores by means of corrosive acids and by the juices of various plants—such as the ranunculus acris and sceleratus, the sponge-laurel, euphorbium, arum maculatum, &c. He regularly revived and aggravated the ulcers every time they began to heal, and his arm was really shocking to contemplate. He would take his stand before a window, and, raising his shirt-sleeve, display the ulcers, so that the ladies or gentlemen at the casement sent him out a sixpence or a shilling as much for the purpose of getting rid of so loathsome a spectacle as through motives of charity. It was this man's boast that three hours in a fashionable street or square would produce him seven or eight shillings.
Another impostor present on this occasion was a man of about forty, who was a perfect adept in disguising his person, and who feigned a different malady for every change in his attire and outward appearance. At one time he was suffering from ophthalmia, produced by the application of irritants—such as snuff, pepper, tobacco, blue vitriol, salt, alum, &c. At another he would actually produce blindness for a time by the application of belladonna, henbane, or sponge-laurel; and then he was led about by a little boy. Again, he would appear as a miserable creature afflicted with a horrible jaundice—the yellow colour being produced by a dye. He was also perfect in the counterfeit of spasmodic complaints, paralysis, and convulsions. His earnings were usually considerable: but on one occasion, "when things were very bad," he obtained admission into a hospital as an epileptic patient; and so well did he assume the dreadful attacks at particular intervals, that he remained in the institution for several weeks.