Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. begging.

1846		‘Repeal of the Corn Laws’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 95: Such mumping of bread was never seen!
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1868		‘Six Years in the Prisons of England’ Temple Bar Mag. Nov. 536: There’s old Dick over in that bed there; he used to go ‘mumping’.
1881		Dundee Courier (Scot.) 1 Feb. 7/4: When I can’t get a living by good ‘mumping’ I’ll go to work.
1893		P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo 80: I took to selling cigars and doing a bit of mumping.
1903		Stamford Mercury 9 Jan. 5/4: Defendant represented herself as a widow and went ‘a mumping’ [...] through Flixboro’.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1637		N. Whiting Albino and Bellama 129: Next came the mumping hostesse, and set down A lustie dish of milke.
1663		W. Davenant Play-House to be Let Act V: caesar: ’Mass! now I think on’t, ’tis Pompey’s rich widow. anth.: Of mumping minx would we were fairly rid, ho!
1677		Behn Rover IV i: Hell. This must be Angelica, I know it by her mumping Matron here—Ay, ay,’tis she.
1707		N. Ward London Terraefilius V 10: One Tom-doodle of a Son who is forc’d to lead her about Town, as a Blind-Mans Dog does his Mumping-Master.
1801		G. Hangar Life, Adventures and Opinions II 43: Two beggar women [...] being old acquaintances, and proficients in the mumping trade.
1821		W. Scott Kenilworth I 54: They are Popish trash [...] private studies of the mumping old Abbot of Abingdon.
1823		C. Lamb Elia Ser. 1 (1835) 55: To say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you that he expects nothing better.
1826		T. Hood ‘Last Man’ Works (1862) I 245: The beggar man made a mumping face, / And knock’d at every gate.
1844		Bradford Obs. 11 Jan. 7/5: I’ll take the poker to you, if ye don’t stop that imp’s yell. Lodnum it: I’m not going to have its mumping cry.
1851		G. Borrow Lavengro III 218: Why, as I am alive, this is the horse of that mumping villain Slingsby.
1867		Western Dly Press 6 Dec. 3/3: The Secrets of the Mumping Profession. Several beggars were brought up at Bristol Police Court [etc.].
1912		Eve. Teleg. 21 Oct. 6/2: For many years after Trafalgar [...] every mumping sham salt who accosted people along the highway with a whine for alms had [...] ‘hoisted Nelson’s signal’.