"VOIDING KNIFE," "VOIDER," AND "ALMS-BASKET."
(Vol. vi., pp. 150. 280.; Vol. viii., p. 232.)
In later times (the sixteenth century) the good old custom of placing an _alms-dish_ on the table was discontinued, and with less charitable intentions came the less refined custom of removing the broken victuals after a meal by means of a _voiding-knife_ and _voider_: the latter was a basket into which were swept by a large wand, usually of wood, or _voiding-knife_, as it was termed, all the bones and scraps left upon the trenchers or scattered about the table. Thus, in the old plays, _Lingua_, Act V. Sc. 13.: "Enter Gustus with a _voiding-knife_;" and in _A Woman killed with Kindness_, "Enter three or four serving men, one with a _voider_ and _wooden knife_ to take away."
The voider was still sometimes called the _alms-basket_, and had its charitable uses in great and rich men's houses: one of which was to supply those confined in gaols for debt, and such prisoners as had no means to purchase any food.
In Green's _Tu Quoque_, a spendthrift is cast into prison; the jailer says to him:
"If you have no money, you had best remove into some cheaper ward; to the twopenny ward, it is likeliest to hold out with your means; or, if you will, you may go into the _hole_, and there you may feed for nothing."
"Ay, out of the _alms-basket_, where charity appears in likeness of a piece of stinking fish."
Even this poor allowance to the distressed prisoners passed through several ordeals before it came to them; and the best and most wholesome portions were filched from the _alms-basket_, and sold by the jailers at a low price to people out of the prison. In the same play it is related of a miser, that--
"He never saw a joint of mutton in his own house these four-and-twenty years, but always cozened the poor prisoners, for he brought his victuals out of the _alms-basket_."
In the ordinances of Charles II. (_Ord. and Reg. Soc. Ant._ 367.), it is commanded--
"That no gentleman whatsoever shall send away my meat or wine from the table, or out of the chamber, upon any pretence whatsoever; and that the gentlemen-ushers take particular care herein, that all the meate that is taken off the table upon trencher-plates be put into a basket for the poore, and not undecently eaten by any servant in the roome; and if any person shall presume to do otherwise, he shall be prohibited { 298} immediately to remaine in the chamber, or to come there again, until further order."