DOWN AND OUT

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11786, 24 March 1924, Page 9

DOWN AND OUT

SOLDIERS AS SANDWICH MEN, SAD FEATURE IN GAY STREETS. A dilapidated figure stood huddled up in the gutter at the corner of a London street (writes the “Sun” special correspondent). It was clad in a costume of towels, apparently disposed with the idea of suggesting that the wearer had just left a bath. On its head a Turkish fez reposed drunkenly over one lack-lustre eye. About its thin ankles hung a pair of faded red socks. Its feet were thrust into old tennis shoes. Over the facetiouslooking: headdress, supported by irons from the shoulders, balanced a notice board, ‘bearing a pointed finger and, in capital letters, the legend; “To the Hummums Turkish Baths.” The attitude of the figure was one of dejection, depression, misery. The suggestion that he had just emerged from the invigorating process followed at the Hummums could hardly be construed as an advertisement for the establishment. Such is the London sandwichman at hie worst. By police regulations compelled to avoid the footpath and make the best of his way in the roadway without interfering with wheeled traffic, he is condemned to pass his days in the gutter, either singly or in companies, advertising on the boards that rise above his head, or are disposed fore and aft of his ill-conditioned body—hence the term “sandwich-man”—various commodities, theatrical ventures, films, concerts, picture exhibitions, and simitar events. Many such entertainments rely largely upon the sandwichman for publicity. They will on occasion send out as many as twenty men in a long string, bearing the titie of a play spelt out letter by letter, portraits of popular artists, or even reproductions of scenes or characters from a play or film. THE PROFESSIONAL CRAWL. The sandwichman has cultivated a crawl of his own, and at adds to his patlietio appearance as he shuffles along with his threadbare, faded, and often tattered olothes, his misshapen, leaky boots, none the drier for the mud of the streets, his whole appearance listless and weary. But perhaps the perambulating sandwichmam is better of than the individual whose business it is to stand a .whole day in one spot directing attention to a barber’s shop up a side street off the Strand, or some tea rooms which cannot make a sufficient display to attract attention, or some sale proceeding in a quarter that the passerby in a hurry would not otherwise have thrust upon his attention. Standing still ill-clad, upon cold, wet pavements, in some of the bitter winds that sweep the thorough fares at this season of the year must he very near martyrdom.

Yet one may see the same man doing suoh a job for months and even years—glad, most likely, to have even suoh a parody of work to keep the wolf from the door. A SMARTER TYPE. Sinoe the war a new type of sandwichman has appeared. This is the obvious ex-semcemain, who is both younger and somewhat smarter in dress, and with the stamp of the Army upon him in a certain alertness of movement. Not so long ago a sensation in the West End was caused by a play with a distinctive military touch engaging a party of young ex-sbldiers, who shattered all the ideals of the sandwichman by moving smartly on word of command-given by a former non-commissioned officer and marching with the correct military cadence and step about the streets. Among this body several ex-offioers who were out of employment were easily conspicuous. Another type of sandwichman, and a somewhat rare one, is the individual dressed in costume. Films with some

appeal to the picturesque use thh means of publicity. For instance, a party of Red Indians will sometimes appear in the streets distributing' handbills concerning some production in which the redskin figures. Or one may see some half-dozen men in the weird overalls of the Ku Klnr Klan, with the pointed headdress and the slits for the eyes, carrying posters relating to a film dealing with the Spanish Inquisition. Recently in London a very tall man in the sombrero and leather daps and red shirt of the cowboy of fiction was seen cycling slowly down tho Strand. On the back of a leather waistcoat he wore was a legend urging one to go for one’s passport photograph to a certain firm. This particular sandwichman was said to be the tallest man engaged in this hnmble section of the advertising world. At Christmas time the sandwichman is converted ints an example of Father Christmas, and in scarlet gown and snow-white heard stands as an advertisement of the “children’s bazaar,’* which all well-conducted stores, small as well as large, introduce to attract business. Father Christmas’s deputy may even have a hag- fall of cheap toys, into which one may dip for a penny or twopence. Rot it is one of the ironies of life that the representative of the joys of Ohristmastide the patron saint ,of a festival which is dependent upon the possession of money for its full enjoyment—should he a poor devil shivering in hfe m. der a gay gaberdine, and hardly able to keep body and soul together. Among the aad features of the London streets the sandwichmen arc perhaps the saddest, for these pitiful creatures, themselves the picture of misery, are always used to appeal to ths crowds to spend their money upon enjoyment or amusements or luxuries.