Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a complaisant clergyman who specializes in solemnizing marriages among the inmates of London’s Fleet Prison; also in Ireland (see cit. 1842).

c.1717		‘A Petition to the Ladies’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng. in 18C Ireland (1998) 102: Your Daughters are free from sham Wedlock there; / For the black Couple-Beggars here seldom repair.
1729		Hell upon Earth 14: Indeed, at St Pancras and the Fleet, where marriages are retailed at reasonable rates, there shall be such coupling of beggars [...] they they stand behind each other, as it were in a Country Dance.
1737		Swift ‘A Proposal for Giving badges etc.’ in Works (1752) VI 144: Nay, their happiness is often deferred until they find credit to borrow, or cunning to steal, a shilling to pay their popish priest, or infamous couple-beggar .
1743		Caledonian Mercury 27 Sept. 4/1: No Couple Beggar in the Land / E’er joined such Numbers hand in hand.
1780		Hiberian Jrnl 10 Mar. 4/3: A Couple-Beggar by the name of G—le, who was convicted of pretending to falsify to be in Holy Orders and condemned to Imprisonment in Newgate.
1788		Northampton Mercury 13 Sept. 2/2: He then commenced Couple Beggar and, as once a priest, so for ever.
1797		M. Leeson Memoirs (1995) III 168: A couple-beggar being sent for [...] we were tacked together that very night.
1824		Morn. Post (London) 28 Dec. 4/1: The young people [...] felt a reluctance to be married by a Protestant clergyman, and they were about to have recourse to a couple-beggar.
1829		Belfast News-Letter 31 July 4/4: Death of the Rev. Joseph Wood [...] the celebrated ‘couple-beggar’.
1831		Dublin Eve. Mail 7 Sept. 4/2: Most of the ‘couple-beggars’ that has fallen under his observation were degraded Roman Catholics.
1842		S. Lover Handy Andy 245: This was a degraded clergyman, known in Ireland under the title of ‘couple-beggar,’ who is ready to perform irregular marriages on urgent occasions [...] He witnessed the marriage ceremony performed by the ‘couple beggar’.
1850		E.V. Kenealy Goethe: a New Pantomime in Poetical Works 2 (1878) 336: Costard, Couple-beggar, Duffer, / You look handsome in your dumps.
1862		London Dly News 23 July 6/3: They clergyman in question was what is called ‘a couple beggar’ [...] his marriages were valid.
1877		Southern Reporter (Selkirk.) 20 Sept. 4/6: As to the marriage, it was the couple beggar who [etc.].
1886		M.E. Braddon Mohawks III 39: What, by the Reverend Couple-Beggars, by that scurvy dealer in marriage lines, Parson Keith?
1889–90		Barrère & Leland Dict. of Sl., Jargon and Cant.
1911		(ref. to mid-late 19C) Sheffield Dly Teleg. 20 Dec. 8/4: In Queen Victoria’s reign [...] marriages by a person known in Dublin —as a ‘Couple beggar’ or as ‘Father Tackem,’ with only one witness or no witnesses, were held to be valid.