This chapter is based on the thinking which informed a proposal to study the public's experience of and public attitudes to begging. Since a stand-alone survey would have been very expensive, it seemed more appropriate to seek funding which would make it possible to include a set of questions on begging as part of an ongoing survey and, because of its primary focus on public attitudes, the most obvious candidate was the annual British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey. This survey comprises a common core, which is repeated every year, and a set of modules dealing with specific topics, either on a one-off or an intermittent basis (for a full account see Bryson et al, 1998). For a much smaller cost than a stand-alone survey, funding a module containing questions about begging would enable the data that are generated to be analysed in terms of the attitudinal, demographic and socioeconomic data that are collected for other purposes. An application to the Economic and Social Research Council was successful and, as a result, a set of questions on begging will be included in the 1999 British Social Attitudes Survey. However, since, at the time of writing, the survey has not yet been administered and the questions on begging have not even been formulated, this chapter is necessarily speculative. As such, it can identify some possible topics for investigation but cannot report on any findings.

Previous research on beggars and begging

Despite its prevalence, and its increasing salience as a public issue, there has, until very recently, been little systematic research on begging (defined as the soliciting of a unilateral gift, normally of money, in a public place) in the UK. Although there have been a number of academic studies which have examined begging historically and comparatively (see, for instance, Beier, 1985; Huggins, 1985; Ratnapala, 1985; Ribton-Turner, 1987), published studies of begging in post-war Britain (for example, O’Connor, 1963; Sandford, 1971) are largely journalistic or anecdotal. Modern sociologists do not seem to share the fascination of the ‘Chicago School’ with ‘hobos’ (Anderson, 1923) or other ‘down and outs’ (Wallace, 1965) or of symbolic interactionists with different forms of deviance (see Becker, 1963; Cohen, 1974; but see Chapter Eight in this volume). Consequently, the frequently-expressed concerns of politicians and journalists have contributed to a sense of ‘moral panic’ and have not been informed by an understanding of the phenomenon derived from empirical research on begging itself or on public attitudes to it.