THE UNPITIED DREGS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5008, 2 August 1926, Page 3

THE UNPITIED DREGS.

IN LONDON’S SHADOWS.

EXPERIENCES OF UNDERWORLD.

Since the day nearly flSty years age when James Greenwood wrote his famous article “The Amateur Casual,,’ there has been ho description of the down-and-out of London so vivid a,s the experience of the Rev. Frank L. Jennings, B.Litt,, who pigged it for six weeks in the underworld of London and describes his experiences in a book called “In London’s Shadows,” which has just been published. The first thing he did was to get together a suitable wardrobe, every article of which, like the picture of the man with lumbago, told a storyThe trousers were bespattered with paint, rnd showed their patriotic alleigancc to the land dS the Emerald Isie by turning green at the bottom. The coat and waistcoat cried hard for decent burial, for they were old, frayed, and crumpled up. The khaki shirt had seen its first blood in the battle of Loes df March, 1915, and had sniffed poison gas in the second battle of Ypres- a few months later. The cap—don’t mention it; it was, quite an apology for something worn oh the head that speedily conveyed the knowledge that the wearer looked sweetly rakish. Pulled low down over the forehead with a Beatty slant, it serve'd to remind onlcbkers of Harry Tate at his best —or worst. THE FIRST NIGHT, ' Thus arrayed on .autumn morning he set out from Wandsworth to the nether world. Th© experience df night, which' he spent in a room 20ft by 12ft, where nineteen men slept, was enough" to frighten off most people from any such adventure, although he was not cross-examined, for “every man in that strange community understands and: respects your domain eif. privacy.” He was tremendously struck by the enormous amount of clothes which had to be unrobed, “for the dossers carry their whole worldly belongings with them. Thus, to we,ar two shirts, two pa.irsi ot trousers, and three or four waistcoats, is nothing out of the ordinary.” . , “Among the impedimenta you will invariably find an enamel mug, a billy-can, an old knife and fork, bits of string, the more the. merrier (for it does everything from keeping up trousers to' being used as fag ends), small parcels df food; a dirty old newspaper, sundry bits of cheap jewellery, comb, studs* bags, of layem der (the latter forming part of the trading stock), a pack of playing cards, and several mysterious bundles. - EMBANKMENT SLEEPERS'. Most of the sleepers stripped s.tark in this place of Dreadful- Night, where the odours as the hours, wore on became simply incredible, and almost unmentionable. Yet that shelter was run by a nearby mission. Some, of the down-and-outs are far too l poor or too hopeless to get into a shelter, and take to the Embankment, which is still Bull,, of would-be sleeper;: .though this is frequently denied.*” It was here that he met a curious old Scotsman called Hugh McChree, who had been years at it, but for whom the horror became so much that two; months after the parsohi met him hi& body was found floating near one of the wha ; rves off Upper Thames Street, with a dirty note in his, pocket: “Don’t blame me; I shan’t be mis-’.ed; I couldn’t stand it any longer.” The brill blast of a police whistle meant that some poor devil had jumped;, from Blackfriars. Bridge. When the policemen rousted th° sleepers, they slunk off in the rain, some ofi them taking shelter in the crypt of St. Paul’s, where they were not allowed to take off their boots, and 'which they haff to leave at 6. STREET SINGER’S PLIGHT. . In those six weeks the parson put his hands to all sorts of jobs. The hardest of all was that of street singing, at which he never made SO' much as would buy a shirt, although he has known men on the streets 'who have earned as much as 10s or 12s a day by it.

One of the ‘most trying features of the street singer is’ the opposition he •meets wih from milkmen, coalmen, dustmen, 'a,nd all sprte of trying enthusiasts.

Thus It was irresistibly comic to be singing, say, the first verse of “Because,” when a man wheeling a handbarrow would come alongside, shouting for all he was, worth “Old Iron,” or, again, when one ’started “Love ■Stands a Little Gift of Roses,” and comes to the lines, “Take thou my gift, my offering o 4 to hear a ra.ucous voice of a pedlar swamping the word “roses” with “Carbolic, and carbolic ?” “BULLET STIFFY.” Among the street pedlars there \Vas no one so remarkable as, the veteran known as “Bullet Stiffy,” a curious mixture olf seasoned wisdom and degeneracy. “He reeds, really good books, and had Byron, George Eliot, and Dickens in his locker. He could like a first-class, debater, yet he would stoop to do things that would shame the biggest rogue. He could have prayed as fervently as a saint, yet he would blaze like a tar barrel if you had put a match to his breath. In quiet moments he could become as tender as d, woman. In his mad ones he could roar like a tornado. He believed in the, literal 'command of the spng, ‘Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes’— he loved wine and women. He could drink like an elephant. One day he would be ‘blind,’ and a small! boy would lead him; another day he would produce a club foot and beg; >a,nd now and again he took to a crutch and posed as a war casualty.” The parson tried his hand at peddling, but found it a poor task, although then ewsvendOr makes, quite a good thing of it. Indeed, he says that if ever he resigns from the ministry he will consider the claim of newspaper selling as an alternative.