Thomas Harman
Thomas Harman was a 16th-century English writer and justice of the peace, known for his work that scrutinizes the lives of beggars and vagrants in Tudor England. Although little is documented about his early life, he was connected to a lineage of landowners in Kent and described himself as a "poor gentleman" due to health issues. Harman's primary contribution to literature is his 1566 publication, *Caveat for Common Cursitors*, which explores the various types of professional beggars, offering detailed categorization and moral condemnation of their behaviors. His book gained significant popularity and influence, prompting legal action against publishers of unauthorized editions. Notably, it included a glossary of thieves' slang that laid the groundwork for future dictionaries. Harman's observations and classifications provided valuable insights into the social issues of his time, paralleling later sociological studies. His work also inspired a subgenre of literature focused on the vagrant underworld, influencing notable writers like Robert Greene and John Gay. Harman's personal life included a marriage to Millicent Leigh, with whom he had children, although details of his death remain unknown.
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Subject Terms
Thomas Harman
Writer
- Born: fl. 1566
- Birthplace: Kent?, England
Biography
No record of Thomas Harman’s birth can now be found, but he was the grandson of Henry Harman, a clerk of the crown under Henry VII, who obtained the estates of Ellam and Maysteet in Kent for his service. Harman’s father, William Harman, added the neighbouring estate of Mayton. Thomas Harman was living in that neighborhood in 1547, and he later described himself as “a poor gentleman” detained in the country by poor health. He appears to have relieved the tedium by interrogating the various mendicants who called at his house. He did not treat them generously, and he allegedly used his position as a justice of the peace to confiscate their money for distribution to the poor of his own parish. Still, he was sufficiently fascinated by them to continue his research in London.
The ultimate result of this peculiar hobby was Caveat for Common Cursitors, first published in 1566. The book, dedicated to his neighbor Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, must have been very popular; Harman was soon moved to take legal action against two publishers who issued pirated editions. The text was certainly influential; it was plundered by several playwrights, including Robert Greene and Thomas Dekker, who made abundant use of it in the 1608 Belman of London. The work sets out to expose the “abominable, wicked and detestable behaviour of these rowsey, ragged rabblement of rakehells.” Its moral condemnation is uninteresting, but its careful categorization of various types of professional beggar is fascinating. These include the ruffler (a returned soldier who turns violent), the upright-man (a former servant), the hooker, or angler (who carries a rod for fishing through windows), the prigger (a horse-thief), the Abram-man (a pretended madman, the counterfeit crank (who pretends to be a victim of falling sickness—i.e., epilepsy) the dummerer (who pretends to be deaf and/or dumb), the bawdy-basket (a basket seller who talks her way into houses), the autem-mort (the wife of an upright-man), the doxy (a fallen woman), the dell (similar but not yet spoiled), and the kinchin mort (a child beggar). Even more interesting—and even more influential—was an extensive section entitled “Teach Yourself Rogoues’ Cant,” a glossary of thieves’ slang, on which all subsequent dictionaries of slang are based.
The results of Harman’s enquiries are as interesting to modern sociologists as Henry Mayhew’s interviews with the nineteenth century London poor. Harman also gave inspiration to a whole subgenre of “canting literature” featuring the vagrant underworld, which extends from works by Greene and Dekker through John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera to nineteenth century crime fiction by the likes of G. W. M. Reynolds and W. Harrison Ainsworth. Little more is known about Harman’s life except that he married Millicent, the daughter of Nicholas Leigh of Addington in Surrey, and that she bore three daughters and perhaps a son. The record of his death, like that of his birth, is lost.