Regency Crime and Punishment: Hangers On At Inns

The London Guide and Stranger’s Safeguard Against the Cheats, Swindlers, and Pickpockets (1818) describes any manner of criminals and criminal activity a visitor to Town might expect. I shared the general premise of this book in a previous post.

One scene of nefarious activity the author describes is the coaching inn, where “hangers-on” lay in wait for unsuspecting provincials.  There are a couple of gambits described, including passing bad money as change (called smashing), stealing baggage from an unloading coach as if carrying it into the inn, or finding misplaced items left in coaches and tucking it up into their cap or coat.

Here is a general description of the criminal element described as a hanger on:

There are called hanger ons, or jobbers, duffors or buffors, because they generally would hang about inn yards trying to be (or appear to be) useful by doing any number of odd jobs.