WATERS, Billy (c. 1778 – 1823). PORTRAITS AND PUBLICATIONS REGARDING THE “KING OF THE BEGGARS.” Small collection of items regarding the itinerant peg-legged fiddler of London, including an Engraved Portrait of Waters by T.S. Busby, ca. 1819, extracted from his Costumes of the Lower Orders. - - Kelly, Thomas. The Notorious Black Billy “At Home” to a London Street Party. 1822. Hand-colored engraving. - - Montgomery, W.H. Negro-Melody Quardilles. Sheet music bearing a large hand-colored portrait of Waters on the front wrapper (several closed tears to leaves). - - Wood-Engraved Portrait of Waters. - - news clippings related to his life. - - Billy Waters, the London Fiddler: A Laughable Farce. London, ca. 1870. Chapbook issued by Clarke in conjunction with its toy theaters and featuring Waters as a character. - - Reeves’s Serio-Comic Trifles June 1823. Chapbook in original printed red wraps featuring a full-length engraved frontispiece portrait of Waters playing his fiddle, and with a long rhyming poem about Waters. Together, six items, three mounted to an album page, in generally good condition. Said to have lost his leg after falling from the rigging of a ship (or perhaps due to fighting in the American war of independence), Waters eventually became a busker and beggar in London, playing his fiddle on the street in front of the Adelphi Theatre. Perpetually poor, he was still regarded by many as a well-known figure in the British capitol, so much so that he was portrayed in Tom and Jerry or Life in London at Astley’s Theatre in 1821. Waters died as he lived – a pauper – as the last stanza of Reeves’s poem makes clear: In vain he fiddl’d, danc’d and sung, Until he was out of breath; Starving he was, his bow unstrung, Till he danc’d The Dance of Death.