BEGGING IN LONDON.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4614, 15 October 1923, Page 1

BEGGING IN LONDON.

WHOLESALE AND RETAIL. (By a Looker On in the Overseas Daily Mail). There are two kinds of begging in London; wholesale and retail. If a man begs for a penny, he is liable to imprisonment; but if he stands on a box and begs a pound, he not only escapes gaol bub actually obtains the protection of the police I Quite half of the orators we all know in London belong to no society, but merely collect for themselves. One regularly visits the vicinity of a certain station, and generally sue- 1 ceeds in borrowing a box sufficiently high to raise his status in the world. He has a small moustache, a few jokes,, and a dirty face —and, between the three, safely manage® to get a few shillings collection after a revolutionary meeting at which he has been chairman, speaker, and CollectorThen there is a gentleman with a pronounced foreign accent who appears on a Communist platform at Hyde Park and elsewhere, whom I saw selling Malthusian leaflets in the gutter 1 Another amusing character, who used to provoke much mirth, held independent meetings to discuss what he called the *'demobolisation, demoralisation; ostracisation, hypnotisation, paralyation, and asphyxia, tion ” of the ex-Service men. . One of the omnipresent orators is a .woman, who claims to be an exnurse, and emphasises the alleged fact about twice a minute while speaking. She tells a similar and sceptical audience how many times her brain has been tested, how she has been victimised, and how she rs going to take up libeli action against most of the judges, magistrates, and policemen in this country, and similar actions against a few dozen officials in Canada. As London is to-day, anyone may buy or borrow a box, mount it, tell a tale of woe, dismount, pass the hat round, re-mount, thank the audience \“one and all”—and depart. This he calls a “political meeting”—and if a policeman should be bold enough to ask the subject of his discourse, he will be told it is “ Socialism."