THE ARTFUL BEGGAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 318, 3 June 1911, Page 10

THE ARTFUL BEGGAR.

Well over £ 100,000 is given away liaphazard to beggars in the streets of London every year, and the average beggar makes more than the average workingman! This startling piece of information was given at the offices of the London Mendicant Society, an institution founded nearly a century ago by the Duke of Wellington to minimise the evils of indiscriminate alms-giving. On the hooks of the society are the records of 240,251 begging letter-writers and 83,467 street mendicants. And the stories of craft and cunning which were told! It was only a few days previously that the judge at the Old Bailey, in sentencing a begging-letter impostor named Frank Whittingham to eighteen months' hard labor, had paid him the dubious compliment of saying that "Probably in the whole of England there is not a greater rascal than you." The man used twenty-nine addresses in London, writing from each one in a different name, and he displayed immense skill in finding out the weaknesses of his victims and directing his attack to these weak points. There is no more skilful operator than the begging-letter writer. He works on a system, but occasionally he is caught. Thus one man, who solicited help from a member of the House of Lords ostensibly for an old University man, was trapped by using a wrong word in a Latin quotation; whilst a woman who tried to victimise Lord Strathcona threw up the sponge when it was discovered that she was in affluent circumstances, she and her husband occupying three shops. One cripple, who begged in the Strand, drove homo every night in «. cab. Another, a woman, used to stand at Clapham, pretending she was deaf, and holding matches in her hand. And few of the people who dropped coins into her ever-ready palm knew that the recipient of their charity had an income of £IOO I a year, and lived in a charming flat at Tooting. Even this ruse was not so daring as that adopted by another woman beggar, who carried a corpse. Standing at. a street-corner, and dressed in rag-, she held up a little girl to excite the sympathy of passers-by. Noticing the baby's white face, a policeman one day took the woman, despite her eitorts to get away, into a chemist's shop. And if, Was then discovered that the baby had been Head some days! Babies are largely used in this nefarious trade. At Notting Dale you can hire a baby for sixpence a day." The more emaciated the child the higher the fee charged. When professional mendicants have to put up with a robust-looking baby, they pinch and otherwise ill-treat the child, usually outside a big station, to keep it perpetually in tears. These instances show to what an extent this hypocrisy is carried on. Not more than one begging ease out of a thousand is found to be deserving. It is the gullibility of the public that makes things so easy, and enables professional beggars to earn at the very least five shillings a day. Fifteen hundred men and two hundred women are to-day making good incomes from begging in the West End of London alone. And how fine an art is begging is proved by the fact that there is in existence an Interimtional Society of Professional i Beggars, which forbids its members to work on pain of a penalty; whilst a society which was mentioned at West Ham Police Court a few years ago bore the curious title of The Amalgamated Sons of Rest, the members being penalised if they worked! Pursuing his investigation further, the writer saw a remarkable diary kept by a beggar whose yearly earnings would turn a clever mechanic green with envy. Here is a specimen page: S.3o.—Breakfast: Kipper, penny loaf, screw of tea. and %d of milk. o.o.—Smoke, and read paper. Bind up foot to make look as if lame. Cut boot to take bandaged foot. 10.0.—Begin work in Kensington; 2d to go away. 12.0.—"Worked" two squares, four streets. Call myself a street-sweeper, foot injured by omnibus. Wife and ehildeu at home. Accounts so far: Is silver. lOil copper, half loaf, cold breakfast sausages. 12.30.—Ordered away from carriagedoor by commissionaire. Lady says, "Poor man!" and gives me fid. 2.O.—Dinner. 4.3o.—Raining. Outside shops getting, wet. Laces in my hand. 8(1 in coppers. Business bad. o.O.—Tea. 7.o.—Found crust in gutter as lady and gentleman are getting into carriage; got in the way. Half-a-crown. v S.O.—Home. Total for the day, ss. And this, according to a footnote, was a bad day! Of course the begging-letter writer's methods differ largely from those of the mendicant of the street. Most of the former are clever cultured people, and with some of them a newspaper man succeeded in scraping an acquaintance. One was the wife of a clergyman, who wrote to people telling a restrained and ladylike laic of the distress of an elder sister, a family in reduced circumstances, or alternately stating that she was alone in London. Her usual practice was to ask for enough to start a small business. And in one month she netted Cllfi! Another was a middle-aged man, who made a good income writing to country irentlemci) w },,-, w ,, n , . l(: Cambridge over l"M years ago, stating that he was a doctor, end that in the course of his professional career he had come across an old Cambridge man suffering from poverty and disease, who luul mentioned the name of Hie country gentleman as a fellow stndenl. Help was suggested, and invariably Hie bail- took. another ingenious impostor, a ladv. confer,.,) Hint for fifteen years she had been advertising, under various names, asking for the loan of sixty pounds. And she did very well out of it. for the charitably disposed often sent her sums, and regretted that thev could not supply the whole of the sixty pounds. Xottinnr Hale tennis with professional begging.leltcr writers. They charge their clients a small fee, and'often arrange to receive a percentage of the plunder. They have lists of officers in old regimenls. or undergraduates in any nartieular term, and they compose pathetic appeals for an old friend in distress.