THE-WAR BEGGAR

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2431, 9 April 1915, Page 5

THE-WAR BEGGAR

MISERABLE STREET IMPOSTERS. "If you please, sir, could you spare me a trifle. My husband's at the front, and been wounded, and I've five children." This kind of appeal, delivered in the whining lachrymose tones of tho professional beggar, confronts the visitor to London in war time at every turn. A host of professional beggars are living on the war by posing as martyrs to it. Bogus "war widows" are numerous; so are bogus war_ heroes. Both are exploiting the patriotic and charitable instincts of the public. Soidisant winners of the Victoria Cross and wounded warriors have in many places victimised the credulous, and although a number of these scoundrels have been detected and punished, others are practising their craft. A particularly objectionable' form of war imposition is one practised by females garbed as nurses, who thrust collecting boxes under the noses of everybody in London streets, and beg pitifully for a copper for "the poro wounded soldiers." Police Court proceedings have revealed tho fact that these women are paid a commission on their takings by the "charity" organiser, some obscure individual who cau rarely be found by the police, and who doubtless puts the whole of the money thus extracted from a generous publio into his own pocket. The London polico seem powerless to check this obnoxious form of swindling, which does much harm to the legitimate charities which send out street collectors.

The worst class of all are tho vultures who prey upon the dead. The casualty lists are carefully watched, and a-letter is addressed to the dead officer, recalling how he helped the writer a year ago, and expressing a hope that in this time of war he will again extend a charitable hand. In some cases the professional beggar even asks for the repayment of an alleged debt. These letters are opened by relatives, who in the hour of their grief are impelled to send assistance to ono whom their lost son or brother was wont to help.- If tho appeal were sent to the charity organisation it would probably join tbo already considerable dossier of some habitual beggar. The last cautionary • list issued by tho_Charity Organisation Society, which is always ready to inquire into these cases, gaves the names of 169 people who habitually appeal to strangers by means of begging letters. Of these 9 are known to liavo been in tho trade for twenty years, 19 for fifteen years, and 49 for ten years. On& woman offender of ten yearsj standing is known to have received £50 a week. She was recently adjudicated a bankrupt, with liabilities running into thousands, and assets nil.