BUDAPEST MENDICANTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 88, 15 April 1933, Page 7 (Supplement)

BUDAPEST MENDICANTS.

BEGGING ALLOWED BY LICENSE.

A CHARITY TICKET SCHEME

Hungary, one of the many Central European countries which allows begging by license, has just adopted a new scheme to circumvent unlicensed mendicants. Budapest municipality has issued "beggars' donation books" containing tickets worth i cent, 1 cent, 2 and 3 cents each. The tickets can be given to anv beggar on the streets or'who rings the doorbell, but only licensed beggars ■will be able to casli them. The former manager of a large cognac distillery, Aladar Friedmann, was sent to prison bv a Budapest Court for begging without a license. A Central European Edgar Wallace might write a book p.oout the licensed beggars of Vienna, Budapest and other Central European cities, their trades unions, clubs and funds, could lie penetrate their closely-guarded secrets. The toleration of beggars in liard-up Austria has reached a point where an ingenious device is being shown at the Vienna Fair callcd a "beggar's almsgiving automatic machine." The beggars of Vienna are often insolent and threatening at the doors, many of which are furnished with peep-holes to enable the maid or housewife to see who is ringing. The new invention is a box which is filled with small coins and screwed to the outside of the door. When the beggar rings the Vienna housewife can take a peep at him and then press a button which releases a coin. As the recognised dole is 2 groschen — say, one farthing—the ?'ivention is not really such an extrava•"""l'ce as it sounds.