BEGGAR WITH A VILLA.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 114, 12 May 1909, Page 7

BEGGAR WITH A VILLA.

EARNS 35s DAILY

There stepped out of Brixton prison the other morning a black-haired young man of pleasing expression, who., having just completed three months' hard labour, gazed round at the foggy atmosphere, and then set off down the muddy road towards the tramway cars at Brixton Hill with the slow and fastidious tread of a man who is used to wearing well-polished boots. The young man, who has been in prison moi-e than once, is among the most interesting personalities of those with whom the police In London have dealings. Many regard him as the original of ' 'The Man with the Twisted Lip," the bogus City paralytic in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Sherlock Holmes' stories. There are, however, several essential differences between the real and the imagined man. "Frederick Archdale De Smith," to give him one of his numerous assumed names, has played many parts, and played them with amazing success. For months he enjoyed a good, income and a comfortable villa at Norwood by assuming the character of a paralytic beggar in the City. Bogus undergraduate at Cambridge, church chorister, street singer, organ-grinder, and operatic performer, he has changed his character with an adaptability and an assurance that have always resulted in cash and always in. popularity. SON OF A CLERGYMAN. "De Smith" was born in Montreal, his father being a clergyman and his mother a Frenchwoman. After a mischievous boyhood he was sent across to

England, where he had a relation who was a clergyman. Possessing a good voice, he became a chorister in an English cathedral, and through this received a good education. He was engaged in the choir till he had passed twenty-one, and then, in what he has described as an impulsive fit, he enlisted and was in the army three years. In the early part of 1904 he hit on the idea of his great City venture. He started one day in Cheapside. He went into a tobacconist's and bought six boxes of matches for sd, and stood on the kerb displaying them on the lid of a cigar box. He held the lid in one hand,pretending that the whole of his other side, including hand and leg, was paralysed. He fixed his "paralysed" hand in a constrained position across his chest, and limped along painfully on his "paralysed" leg. Later it came out that 'Archdale De Smith" on an average 35s a day. He did the work on a business-like system. "I had a house at Norwood," he said in describing the affair, "and in rent and rates it cost mo over £50 a year. IMy wife and little girl were at home." "ArchdaleDe Smith" had one great trial during this period. Many kind people pitied him. One gentleman took such an interest in his case that he secured for him an order for a hospital. "I could not evade it," said "Archdale De Smith" afterwards; "he was so kind and insistent that I was positively obliged to go to the hospital. They gave me various treatment. Electric batteries were brought into requisition. Nothing could help my case. Nothing they could do would improve me. I bore everything they did, and never once did I give the game away. But it was a great effort."

SINGING IN THE STREETS. He came out of the hospital after three weeks' treatment. A month or two after this came the end. A City detective saw him mounting the steps at Crystal Palace station two at a time, and the "paralytic" beggar had to go to prison. He has had adventures since then. His voice came into play, and he earned £3 a week by singing in the streets. In 1906 he became a member of an operatic company touring in the provinces. At Cambridge the tour came to an end for him, because he saw an easier way of making money. He posed as a student, but his reputation got abroad, and he was prosecuted and served a term in Cambridge Prison. In 1907 he became an organ-grinder in London, making a profit of about 10s a day. Presently, having saved a little money, he invested £10 in a concert agency which was to give him work. His disgust was extreme when he found the affair was a swindle. Finally he fixed his situation as a professor of j music in the neighbourhood of Clapham Common. Last October he went to prison in default of/the payment of £83 to his wife as alimony.—Daily Mail.