BUDAPEST’S EAST END

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1929, Page 5

BUDAPEST’S EAST END

PROFESSIONAL BEGGARS.

Details, not without 'humour, of the money-making tricks of the inhabitants of Budapest’s East End are given by the newspaper, “Pesti Hirlap.” The quarter inappropriately named Angyalfold (“Angel Field’’), harbours 4000 destitute persons, who receive a Government grant of 70,000 pengo a month. Fifty per cent of the number are illiterate, but education will shortly be made compulsory among them, and schools organised for the purpose. Although the greater part of the population of Angyalfold are professional beggars, members of better classes are to be found among them, such as lawyers ejected from the occupied territories, bankrupt merchants, and even a count Free dinners, consisting of soup, vegetables, and bread, are provided for those without means, but others who are able to pay may receive dinner ever day for a week for the sum of one pengo. A man who came to the free kitchen declaring that he had not eaten for days was discovered to be owing 140 pengo to the grocer, who said that he was a good customer and paid promptly. The source of his income was a set of caves which he had dug in the earth with his son, and which, he let out as lodgings. Others owning small shanties bruit against a wall, with a piece of sacking over the opening, hire them to seven or eight persons for the sum of two pengo a week. Another man who took his free dinner away from the kitchen each day was discovered to be rearing pigs on the food.

The professional beggars, who apportion the various “beats” in the city among themselves, often clear’ a considerable sum by selling the “goodwill” of a. beat in a profitable district. A favourite industry, by which many parents subsist, is that of sending a small child into the city to pick up the flowers discarded by the flower-sellers in the evening and offer them to passers-by. The few coins which nobody refuses a crying child mount up so rapidly that a few days ago a. policeman found a five-year-old beggar at 2 a.m. with 21 pengo in his ragged pocket. Another favourite occupation is shoepolishing, which is pursued with such zest that pedestrians in the streets near the quarter’ who pause for a moment get their shoes rubbed for them, willy-ni'lly by a whining wretch with a bundle of rags, who usually succeeds in soiling light summer footgear.