THE BEGGARS OF PARIS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 46, 23 February 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE BEGGARS OF PARIS.

A DETECTIVE'S LIFE STUDY

For thirty years Louis Pauflian, un educated, accomplished man. has prowled about the dirtiest, greasiest quarters of Paris, and in miserable garments and with unkempt hair and beard has begged sous from the well dressed people passing in the street. Louis Paulian has been a bog-gor. but not for the sake of the money he could wheedle sympathetic •passers-by into giving him. Paulian took this means of studying the manners and habits of the Parisian beggar, one of the most accomplished and adroit mendicants in the world. Paulian is recognised as one of the greatest of French detectives, and he has given a lifetime to his one task of studying the beggars of Paris. Paulian knows thousands of them by name, he knows how they operate, whether they rely on alms alone for support, or whether they are willing to turn to crime. If professional thieves or crooks seeking to escape the police turn beggars and invade the ranks of the mendicants. Paulian knows their every movemet from the moment they appear on the boulevard and hold out their hats to solicit alms. He knows how and where the beggars ply.their profession and just how much Ihey make out of It. Paulian estimates that during the last ten years private charities alone given oVer £400,000 to undeserving- persons. And taking all sources of the swindlers' incomes he estimates fully £1,000,000 A YEAR IS WASTED on them in the belief that they are deserving poor. One of the characters whose acquaintance Paulian made was Father Antoine, a pious hunchback who begged in front of the churches. The hump on Father Antoine's back was his strong-box, where he carried the money he had secured from begging, and which at the time of his death was found to amount to £4000. This beggar created for himself a monopoly of church door begging, and any other beggar who wanted to ask alms outside the church doors had to pay a regular rental to Father Antoine. One of the most important discoveries that Paulian made during his years of research among the beggars was of the existence of a beggars' directory of likely victims, and also of the man who got It up and maintained it. Every professional beggar in Paris knows of and consults this directory. It is in manuscript and can be bought in a large or a small edition at six francs and three francs. The small edition is called the "Petit Jeu" and the large edition the "Grand Jeu." These two phrases mean the Small Game and the Big Game. The Big Game book is marvellously complete and is the beggar's "Who's Who?" All the points about every one in public life and a large number In private life who are In the habit of giving alms to beggars is set down in this book. The two books are kept revised up to date, and the compiler gives 50 centimes to the beggar who brings him authentic and important information as to new names and addresses. The BEGGARS' SUPPLY STORE

was found by Paulian. Here are sold crutches, false humps, and all the paraphernalia needed by impostors to deceive the public, and even babies are loaned out to those who find their crying is a profitable source of Income. Paulian has among his most cherished possessions a model of the lantern carried by the rag pickers of Paris. It was given, to him by the guild because several years ago he made a public announcement that the ragpicker was the only honest person, or at least the only person who la so honest that he cannot be found in gaol. The ragpicker's implements are a sack that he carries on his back, n crooked stick with a bent nail on the end with which to pick up the various sorts of stuff that he. gathers, and a lantern by which he sees his way down dark cellars and alleys.

As a Hlight token of their appreciation, and as the ragpickers manifestly could not give Paulian a sack or a stick they presented him with a model of their lanterns. Paulian in his prowllngs about Paris made many discoveries among the ragpickers'. He found that everything was grist that came to their mill. A little known industry of the nether world is told by Paulian. He says that the city* officials whose duty it is to taste all the butter that comes into the Paris markets use a small stick which they gouge into the tubs of butter. The butter taster nibbles a bit of the butter that he draws out of the tubs on his stick and then wipes the stick off with his fingers, throwing the rest of the butter on to the straw on the ground around the tubs. These particles of butter are carefully collected by the ragpickers, who carry them home and put the mass they have collected into a kettle of boiling water. The fat particles rise to the surface of the water and are skimmed off and allowed to solidify again Into butter and sold to the poor. MENDICITY, CONTRACTORS form another small but curious class of rogues which M. Faulian unearthed during his investigations. These gay deceivers are more or less extensive employers of false or true cripples, in much the same way as a large shopkeeper or manufacturer has men and women workIng underneath him. The mendicity contractor supplies begging outfits in all their details, crutches, .chairs on Wheels, eye shades, barrel organs, fiddles, alphabets for the deaf and dumb, fortunetelling apparatus, poodle dogs for the blind, and pictorial placards for the maimed' of all classes. The last-men-tioned are as endles? in their variety as they are crude *in their execution. They mostly represent fearful explosions or street accidents, in the centre of which we see the victim vainly attempting to shield off the disaster or piously praying for succour to the "Virgin. An inscription, "Kind friends, please help," etc., accompanies the daub, and the whole is attached to the breast of its wearer by means of a strap. But the mendicity contractor goes further still. He possesses, by right of priority upheld by violence, the monopoly of practically every open-air "lay" in the city, and farms these out in much the same manner as "Father Antoine" did with his church doors. He knows, "by years of experience, where are the m6st advantageous places and the spots by which most people pass during the course of the day. He is one of a 'ring" of men who hold all the bridges, porches, public building vestibules, arch- j ways, and approaches to restaurants,

clubs, and railway stations. He can tell

moreover, exactly

THE KIND Ol^ BEGGAR TO SUIT

EACH "LAY,

and distributes his employees accordingly. Children take their stand opposite the doors of a confectioners' and toy shops; a blind man, the "victim of a boiler explosion," is planted down at; the entrance to an ironworks manufactory: little girls are instructed to sell flowers at the outdoor tables of cafes; organ-grinders visit In rotation a list of various brasseries; miserable-looking match-sellers (who never really want to sell any matches) occupy positions on bridges or near the doors of hotels and clubs; men got up to represent brokendown swells—a role M. Paulian has himself frequently played with success—slink slowly to and fro along fashionable boulevards.

M. Paulian has himself begged on the streets as a paralytic, a blind man, a cripple, an organ-grinder, and in a hundred other different characters. He found that to make an income thus was simpler than to earn it honestly. The essence of his great scheme is to make it more difficult. The beggar -will work only as soon as working pays better and takes less trouble than begging.

Having- finished his observations Paulian is now devising ways and means, chiefly through legislation, by wliic-h it will be made harder for the beggars to get a living. He thinks that when they discover they can earn an honest living easier than by begging they will at once

go to work.