KING OF BEGGARS.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 301, 19 December 1931, Page 23 (Supplement)

KING OF BEGGARS.”

So called was Bamfylde Moore Carew, an eccentric Devonian. lie was an extraordinary character, son of a clergyman at Bicklev, in Devonshire, and educated at Tiverton School with a view to the Church. Falling into the company of some gypsies near that town, young Carew grew so fond of his associates that he resolved to embrace their vagrant manner of life, and accordingly at fifteen years abandoned the school and his friends. After a short time spent with these people he returned home, to the great joy of his parents. The love of the mendicant life, however, remained, i'nd grew to such a degree that he once more forsook his paternal habitation. His exploits were wonderful. He imposed upon the same company three or four times a day under different disguises; and with new tales of distress. Sometimes he was a distressed clergyman, ruined because be could not take the oath—others a Quaker, now a shipwrecked mariner, and the same day a blacksmith whose home had been burned down. Carew had a method of enticing away people's dogs, for which he was twice transported from Exeter to North America, but was back again before the ships that carried him out. He was a man of strong memory and happy address, and the manners of a gentleman. The fraternity to which he belonged elected him their king. He is supposed to have died about 1770, aged seventy-seven.