Come Here To Me!

In eighteenth century Dublin, much like more recent times, ‘street characters’  of sorts emerged among the populace. Sometimes these people were well-known for their political escapades, and sometimes their talents.

One of the more curious eighteenth century characters was a man colourfully known as ‘Prince Hackball’, real name Patrick Corrigan. A beggar in a city with little tolerance for them, Hackball became known as ‘the king of the beggars’, arriving in spectacular style and often followed by crowds. As Karen Sonnelitter notes in her history of charity in eighteenth century Dublin, “despite being paralysed, he managed for decades to elude the authorities, who were seeking to place him in either the Workhouse of the House of Industry.” He was a recognisable enough figure in Dublin to warrant inclusion in the celebrated portrait-painter Hugh Douglas Hamilton’s work The Cries of Dublin, published in the 1760s and showing familiar Dublin scenes and faces.

Corrigan traveled through the city in a cart, which some sources suggest was occasionally drawn by dogs. With the opening of Dublin’s House of Industry, figures like Hackball were driven from the streets and into the institution, with one contemporary source noting that the House of Industry had its own patrol who sought out beggars on the streets:

The cart is sent into the city, and the guards which accompany it are armed with firelocks and bayonets; the poor people who are begging in the streets, flee, the guards pursuing ; the active get off, the blind and infirm are taken and put into the cart.

Hackball successfully evaded the authorities, and Sonnelitter notes that “in 1744 one beadle actually managed to capture Hackball and attempted to take him to the House of Industry, but was attacked by a riotous mob…” An account of the incident appeared in the contemporary press, and it was noted that “the sum of five pounds be paid to any person who shall discover and prosecute the conviction of any person concerned of the rescue of the said Hackball.”

The wonderful Drawing Dublin exhibition in the National Gallery at the moment includes a work showing Sackville Street and Gardiner’s Mall, Dublin (c.1750), attributed to Joseph Tudor (1695-1759). Intrugienly, the display panel for the piece wonders if the figure shown in the bottom of the work being wheeled along is none other than Hackball himself:

As Niall Ó Ciosáin has noted, “Hackball was also used for satirical purposes in contemporary political pamphlet literature, being imagined as welcoming new economic policies on the grounds that they would increase his following, that is the number of beggars.”

The idea of Hackball (pulled along by mules, dogs or boys depending on the source one chooses to believe) evading the authorities for decades in eighteenth century Dublin is a somewhat amusing one, but there is little humour in the attitude towards beggars like him. When the Mendicity Institute opened its doors in 1818, it was praised by one religious leader in the city on the basis that “it has purified the highways of our Metropolis from a noisome crowd of importunate and vicious supplicants, and we can now pursue our accustomed occupations without disturbing assaults on our feelings or our purses.”