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England’s Edward Dando, The Original Dine And Dash Expert
During the early 19th century, a young London man who was a lover of oysters, kept getting arrested for not paying for his meals, making him a minor celebrity
A prevalent, but lesser profile crime is that of “dining and dashing.” That is, the act of going to a dining establishment, eating a meal and then leaving without paying the check. While that may seem like a more modern type of transgression, it has been around for a while. Perhaps the most famous person who specialized in this crime was Edward Dando, who lived in England 200 years ago and was caught eating for free over and and over and over again, especially his absolute favorite — oysters.
In the 1820s, Dando became one of the most notorious people in all of London. Believed to have been born around 1803, few details are available about his early life. However, he was at one time apprenticed to a hatter but soon found being a thief to be a more profitable way to make a living.
Around 1826, Dando appears to have begun a practice of eating at dining establishments without having means to pay for them. He was poor and had aspirations of better living. Declining offers for destitution relief, he indicated he passed on such charity because he “had a soul above it.” Instead, he resorted to taking what he wanted to eat, envisioning it as a much smaller crime than how most others treated it:
“I only run into debt to satisfy the craving of hunger, and yet I am despised and beaten.”
In particular, Dando loved oysters. He downed them in incredible quantities, including once claiming to have eaten 25 dozen at one sitting along with a loaf and a half of bread and butter.
So renowned was he for his love of oysters that on one occasion after being released from custody, he was the subject of a headline in The Morning Chronicle that screamed:
“CAUTION TO SHELL FISH DEALERS, PUBLICANS, &c. — DANDO THE OYSTER-EATER, ABROAD.”
As the hungry man continued not paying for the meals to satiate his appetite, his recidivism increased. Frequently, he would be released from a short jail stay for pilfering a dinner…
