LOAN “VAMPIRES ”

Hawera Star, Volume L, 10 January 1931, Page 16

LOAN “VAMPIRES ”

Working Women Fleeced

T3ECENT comments by London magis- 400 clients, mostly poor women and trates on the activities of women girls owing her small sums of money moneylenders who demand, extortion- and paying high rates of interest, was ate interest have focused attention on financed by a man moneylender, a serious problem. Investigations by At the time of the exposure of this a “Sunday Chronicle” special repre- particular moneylender’s extortionate sentative show that this evil is nation- methods it was proved that she sold wide. up during the previous month four

It is revealed that there arc women moneylenders who, because, they work with more sublcty and guile than the men, are a far bigger menace, although their number is comparatively small. A well-known police court missionary stated that after a long experience of moneylenders dealings with the working class he had come to the conclusion that women are very often harder and more cruel in their extortions than the worst type of men, and demand their “pound of flesh” with the most demoralising threats. ■

small families, or had been the means of their parting with nearly all their worldly possessions to repay her the agreed interest and principal.

The methods employed by “women ■Shylocks” are generally as follow: They hang about on pay day outside the mills and factories to collect their “blood money,” and on other days they haunt the mill gates and spot with almost unerring and uncanny intuition the girls and women who are down on their luck, and who for that season will bo the most likelv victims.

It is hardly too much to say . that nearly every large factory of industrial England where women and girls ane employed has attached to it either r. professional woman moneylender or some agent acting for one. It was recently proved that a woman in Bradford, who had no fewer than

These women harpies seldom make bad debts, for they often pursue their victims with a pertinacity and callousness which are almost inconceivable, leaving a trail of misery wherecvcr they go.