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"Then a bashing, as you call it, would not frighten you from committing a crime?" "If I thought I was going to be caught even, I should not commit a crime. A 'flat' or a 'mumper' may do a job to get into prison, but I never do anything unless I believe I am to escape. It's the getting caught, that's the crime, the punishment you have got to chance.
MAUNDER, to stroll about and beg, has been derived from Mand, the Anglo- Saxon for a basket, but is quite as likely to have come from Maunder, the Gipsy for "to beg." Mumper, a beggar, is also from the same source. MOKE, a donkey, is said to be Gipsy, by Mr Hotten, but Gipsies themselves do not use the word, nor does it belong to their usual language. The proper Rommany word for an ass is myla.
As he knelt his great jack-boots clicked together with apprehension, and he poured forth in a piping voice, like that of a Lincoln's Inn mumper, a string of pleadings, excuses, and entreaties, as though I were Feversham in person, and was about to order him to instant execution. 'I am but a poor scrivener man, your serene Highness, he bawled.
He left the briefest of journals, but afterwards, in "Romano Lavo-Lil," published an account of the "Gypsy toon" of Kirk Yetholm and how he was introduced to the Gypsy Queen. He dropped his umbrella and flung his arms three times up into the air and asked her in Romany what her name was, and if she was a mumper or a true Gypsy.
Sir William then inquired what family he had, and whether he had not a son called Bampfylde, and what was become of him. Your honour, replied he, means the mumper and dog-stealer: I don’t know what has become of him, but it is a wonder he is not hanged by this time. No, I hope not, replied Sir William; I should be very glad, for his family’s sake, to see him at my house.
Rubbish was shot in every part of the area. Horses were exercised there. The beggars were as noisy and importunate as in the worst governed cities of the Continent. A Lincoln's Inn mumper was a proverb.
They have claws so very strong, long, and sharp that nothing can get from 'em that is once fast between their clutches. Sometimes they cover their heads with mortar-like caps, at other times with mortified caparisons. As we entered their den, said a common mumper, to whom we had given half a teston, Worshipful culprits, God send you a good deliverance!
It is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout.
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