Does anyone know what a Mendacity Office is

[RowenaRavenclawTheSecond]

Does anyone know what a Mendacity Office is?

It's something that paupers would go to, presumably for poor relief. Around in the 1830s. It had a 'keeper'.

Google isn't really helping!

Could it be a misprint if something like "mendicant office"? Mendicant in the sense of pauper or beggar.

Doesn't mendacity mean lying?

Mendacity is untruthfullness. It has no connection with alms dispensed to the poor.

@Xiaoxiong

Thanks for your reply! It does mean lying, according to the dictionary. I can find 'mendacity office' in a collection of sources pertaining to what I'm researching - the death of a pauper - and also in a book which mentions a mendacity office in Oxford, and mentions Irish people. So I'm unsure that it's a misspelling, but it is so unusual that I can't find much on it at all.

The 'medicant' definition fits much better but it seems odd for the same specific misspelling to have occurred twice, if you see what I mean?

@Thisismytimetoshine

The attached picture is in a source collection about an elderly female pauper who died after being refused access to the workhouse.

I can only find a handful of references to a mendacity office, so I'm confused as to what the source is referring to.

Maybe it was designed to sort out the entitled from the unentitled?!

That quote sounds like someone had been denied access to services they weren't eligible for, but claimed they were?

A bit like the benefits office of today...

@Thisismytimetoshine

The woman in question did claim poor relief from poor law officials and charities.

I'm thinking it may refer to an area where lots of paupers begged, and the name of the area was given by people of higher classes who saw them as bothersome/untruthful? And the 'keeper' is someone who oversaw them to alleviate trouble.

tweet Hallie Rubenfold who wrote The Five about the victims of Jack the Ripper - I remember in the first chapter there was something about rules around destitution and marriage, accessing different aspects of the workhouse (including 'the spike') I've looked in the index and no mention but maybe worth a cheeky tweet!?

@myrtleWilson thanks I'll keep that in mind!

www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp342-350

“W. A. Spooner, later warden of New College, elected to the board in 1870, wrote that in his early years as a guardian the 'harsh and austere' but not 'ignoble or thoughtless' philosophy of the 1834 Act was still dominant: public relief should be as restricted as possible, and should never place its recipients in a better position than the independent poor. Early in the 1870s, through Spooner and Col. Sackville West, bursar of Keble College and an orginal member of the London Charity Organization Society, the ideas of the society began to influence the Board of Guardians. (fn. 140) In 1873 the Oxford Anti-Mendicity Society and Charity Organization Association (fn. 141) started to concern itself seriously with the local poor, aiming to reduce pauperization and to help those who needed relief to retain or recover their independence by granting pensions, finding employment, or arranging medical relief. Cooperation between the board and the society was particularly successful between 1876 and 1885. (fn. 142)”

So, someone from the Oxford Anti-Mendacity Society and Charity Organisation Association?

Are you reading this?

books.google.co.uk/books?id=3HYeBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT68&lpg=PT68&dq=oxford+anti+%22mendacity%22+office+poor+laws&source=bl&ots=55MbPTwH2s&sig=ACfU3U0D9rf8iBMfrK0jZHSFjubneNFrnA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZutjD1P_qAhUlpHEKHdKTApwQ6AEwDnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=oxford%20anti%20%22mendacity%22%20office%20poor%20laws&f=false

Hi @AuntyPasta I'm actually investigating a woman called Elizabeth Graham in Newcastle! But the only other place I've come across this term is in that book which I found in a google search. Your post is extremely helpful in trying to piece together what it might mean - thank you!

Mendacity is obviously a common typo for mendicity.

It just seems odd that it's published in multiple books @TheCountessofFitzdotterel

Possibly an old spelling.

Thanks all for your help!

It doesnt appear in the OED, or, as you say, Google Scholar, so seems like a typo. Is this likely? Mendicity Society: www.victorianlondon.org/publications/seven13.

And in the OED

1819 1st Rep. Soc. Suppression of Mendicity 27 The Mendicity Societies at Bath, Edinburgh, Oxford, and Dublin.
1824 T. Hook Sayings & Doings 1st Ser. III. 329 Mr. Harding was a subscriber to the Mendicity Society, an institution which proposes to check beggary by the novel method of giving nothing to the poor.

And possibly more relevant from OED too:

General attributive. Chiefly with reference to organizations established in the 19th cent. for the alleviation or suppression of begging.

1803 M. Martin Let. Mendicity in Metropolis Table (heading) Summary of 2000 cases of paupers, examined at the Mendicity Enquiry Office.

That OED 1824 one sounds like a joke. Not a very funny one, but a joke nonetheless.

It’s mendicity -a charity. Irish.

Mendicity.org or mendicity institute. Will get you there.

Something to do with lying!

@RowenaRavenclawTheSecond

It just seems odd that it's published in multiple books *@TheCountessofFitzdotterel*

Possibly an old spelling.

Thanks all for your help!

I think because more people will have known the word mendacity than mendicity (which tbh I had never heard before) more than one person might have assumed it was that!

Hence mendicant I’m guessing. Gonna have to look the root up.

I have just found a reference to 'Mendicity Office' in one of my own books that I had forgotten I had, so it looks like a spelling issue!

Thanks for much for all of your help and advice. It helps to talk things through sometimes.