BEGGARS OLD AND NEW

Shannon News, 29 June 1926, Page 2

BEGGARS OLD AND NEW

TWO WARS COMPARED

The London Mendicity Society was founded in 1818 by the great Duke or Wellington at a time when the country swarmed with disbanded soldiers after the Napoleonic War. Roughly, it played a part in the London or that time that is played after the Great War by our ex-service organisations. The society still exists, and now, as then, it acts as a sort of clear-ing-house for information about London’s street beggars and beggingvlet,er writers.

It was evidence of the steady conTnuity of things in England to find ,he present Duke of Wellington taking the chair in Apsley House at the society’s meeting. It is, as the duke pointed out, due to the work of the societies that help ex-servicemen that he streets arc not swarming with oeggars as they were a century ago, There haq,. been no great increase of begging sicc the war, but the rear was expressed that as disabled men got older —and perhaps, though this was not said, as people forget men who fought in the Great War —some may come- down to begging. About a thousand beggars ataken up by the police every year in the London streets. About a third of the number are professionals and the remainder are casuals or recruits .Tne society has its own constable, who specialises in beggars and probably kntfws more than anyone in London about them. A great part of the work is sifting out worthy and unworthy beggar-letter writers. Inquiry is made more difficult by the habit of practised begging-letter writers of using accommodation addresses for the receipt of replies. Many deliver their letters and wait for an answer. Attention is also given to the small moneylender who preys upon th'c poor and the hope was expressed the Bill now in the House of Lords would cafch in its net the small fry as well as the big sharks. Examples were given at the meeting of moneylenders who hav 0 been known to charge 4s weekly interest on a loan ef £2, which conies to round about 1.000 per cent.

Apslev House is one of tlio best known of London’s famous houses, apart from the Piccadilly, frontage, which, the great duke faced with Bath stone, thus masking an Adam house or red brick. Everyone has heard how the duke’s windows were broken dj the mob during the Reform agitation, which caused him to put up bulletproof iron blinds. In the big roomoverlooking Hyde Park the Waterloo banquet was held every year during the duke’s life.

Inside the house is hardly altered from the days of the duke’s occupaforbidding splendors. There are colossal portraits, Wilkie’s George the Fourth, and there are portraits of kings and emperors of the French war period. ''There is a pale company of marble busts of Napoleon and of the great duke. Napoleon appears, too, in a big picture of the Battle of Waterloo, of which the duke is reported to have said: “Good, very good; not too much smoke.”

The house contains, too, fine services of porcelain, an tilings in silver presented to the duke by allied sovereigns and the Ci y of London, and altogether Apsley House is a wonderful memorial of the heroic days.— ‘Manchester Guardian.’