Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also mumping piece) a prostitute.

1632		R. Brome Covent-Garden Weeded I i: nic.: Young Pig was speaking of such a one to me, and that she was a Mumper. clot.: What’s that a Sister of the Scabbard, brother of the Blade?
a.1640		R. Brome New Academy II i: Doest see yond pretty mumping peece i’th’ shop there?
1700		N. Ward A Frolic to Horn-Fair 11: With as much indignation and Revenge, as a She-Mumper, when Bilk’d of her crib.
1723		‘Whipping-Tom’ Democritus III 9: Every Distiller’s Shop is visited by old basket-Women, Mumpers, Foot-Soldiers and their Trulls.
c.1750		‘The Jolly Beggar’ Tom-Tit Pt 2 2: A Craver my Father, a Mumper my Mother [...] I was begot between Tinker and Trull.

2. (UK Und.) a genteel beggar, a scrounger, ‘a Gentiler sort of Beggars, for they scorn to beg for food, but money and cloaths’ (Head, The Canting Academy, 1673).

1648		Dekker ‘Canters Dict.’ Eng. Villainies (9th edn).
1655		Mercurius Fumigosus 38 14–28 Feb. 301: The Weepers and the Mumpers met together this Week at Beggers Bush, about choosing a King of the Beggers.
1674		Head Canting Academy (2nd edn) 55: Mumpers are both Male and Female, a Gentiler sort of Beggars, for they scorn to beg for food, but money or cloaths, the money they lay out to pamper the gut, and the cloaths they sell to reiumburse the pocket.
1690		J. Crowne English Friar II i: My lady is [...] rather a mumper; she has begg’d the backhouse, the gardens, to lay herself and her goods in.
1698		N. Ward London Spy I 6: We were attended by the whole Family [...] with as many Welcomes at our Arses as a Man has Thank-ye’s and Lord Bless-ye’s, from a Gang of Mumpers, for a penniworth of Charity.
1707		J. Shirley Triumph of Wit 184: The Mumper is the general Beggar, Male and Female, which lie in Cross-ways, or Travel to and fro, carrying for the most part Children with them; which generally are By-blows, and delivered to them, with a Sum of Money, almost as soon as born.
1713		W. King York Spy 21: There was a whole Brigade of Mumpers.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: mumpers the Forty-seventh Order of Canters. Gentile Beggars, who will not accept of Victuals, but Money or Cloaths. The Male-Mumper often appears with an Apron before him, and a Cap on his Head, pretending to be a decay’d Tradesman, who having been a long Time sick, hath spent all his remaining Stock, and is so weak, he cannot work. At other times he appears like a decay’d Gentleman, who, especially since the fatal South Sea Scheme, has been undone, and reduce to the Necesity of imploring good People’s Charity. The Female-Mumper will confidently knock at the Door of a House, and desire to speak with the Mistress, and, after apologizing for her Boldness, she aquaints her, how urgent her Necessity is: That she has a Husband and two small Children lying at the Point of Death: That she was a Gentlewoman born, but marrying against her Friends Consent, was by them disown’d, and so, by her Husband’s Sickness, is reduced to this miserable Condition.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. 1725].
1748		Dyche & Pardon New General Eng. Dict. (5th edn).
1750		Norfolk Garland 1: Upon which the Farmer dress’d himself like a Mumper, in a Thread-bare Coat.
1785		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘The Lousiad’ Works of Peter Pindar (1794) I 242: If he catches a neighbour’s dog or bitch in, Lets fly to strike the four-legg’d mumper dead.
1796		Sporting Mag. Jan. VII 222/1: All day for a wandering mumper I pass.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1819		‘One of the Fancy’ Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress xviii: Ulysses is here obliged to require an oath from the standers-by, that they will not deal him a sly knock, while he is cleaning out the mumper.
1827		Bristol Mercury 22 Jan. 4/4: A good look-out has been kept upon all strangers lurking about under the denomination of mumpers or vagrants.
1834		(con. 1737–9) W.H. Ainsworth Rookwood (1857) 183: Ain’t we merry mumpers, eh?
1849		Royal Cornweall gaz. 28 Sept. n.p.: He cheats at the races with thimbles and peas / [...] / He revels at night in a Mumpers Hotel.
1857		Stamford Mercury 5 June 6/5: A ‘mumper’ was charged with being drunk and disorderly.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1868		‘Six Years in the Prisons of England’ Temple Bar Mag. Nov. 536: Why ‘mumpers’ are cadgers; beggars in fact.
1871		G. Meredith Harry Richmond III 70: The assurance of an untroubled reception upon their customary camping-grounds, is a peculiarity of the gipsies, distinguishing them [...] from mumpers and the common wanderers.
1881		Dundee Courier (Scot.) 18 Feb. 7/5: My appearance evidently being that of an ancient mumper.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 6: Mumper - Beggar.
1889		Clarkson & Richardson Police! 237: They [...] remain from morning to night at the same spot; and they are, in consequence, named ‘sitting mumpers’.
1895		Belfast Wkly News 21 Dec. 3/1: I never dreamt that I, a barrister, would ever become [...] a common tramp, known [...] as ‘Carrotty Joe’ and credited with being an ‘A1 mumper’.
1911		(ref. to 17C) Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 29 Aug. 6/1: Literature of the seventeenth century makes occasional reference to [...] Lincoln’s Inn Fields being infested with ‘mumpers’.
1933		M. Marshall Tramp-Royal on the Toby 131: I want to deal with the peglegging practice of honest, above-board, bona fide mumpers, scroungers, and panhandlers.
1958		D. Reeve Smoke in the Lanes 130: The ‘mumpers’ — who quite often have no horse at all, and merely push their belongings about in old perambulators or carts.
1977		D. Powis Signs of Crime 194: Mumper A beggar or a scrounger.
1991		D. Widgery Some Lives! 173: By the mid-eighteenth century, there were also clearly defined East End Irish communities [...] In their cottages in the Cable Street area, nicknamed ‘knockvargis’, they were assumed to be ‘mumpers’ (scroungers).

3. a half-breed gypsy, a ‘second-rate’ gypsy, i.e. one who has no van.

1851		G. Borrow Lavengro III 279: I was told it was the Mumpers’ or Gypsies’ Dingle.
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 64: I called to a boy just passing to remove it, when a big mumper – that is a half-bred gypsy – standing by exclaimed with an oath, ‘Here, I’ll have no boys moving my things’.

4. a tramp.

1933

M. Marshall Tramp-Royal on the Toby 3: The same odd half-a-man whom I had last clapped eyes on years ago in a mumper’s howff on the Scottish coast.