LIFE IN LONDON'S COLONY OF BEGGARS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10573, 30 September 1910, Page 6

LIFE IN LONDON'S COLONY OF BEGGARS.

BABIES OX HIRE. . London has many little-known districts, but none more Strange than the Notting Dale colony of professional beggars. , . ~.,,.. The "Beggars' Colony' is hidden m a maze of mean streets in the .royal borough of Kensington,, midway between the mansions of Holland- Park and the bustling Edgivare road. The district is the most lawless in all London: Three thousand Police Court convictions last year was the Notting Dale record, and more than nineteen hundred residents have already appeared at the local Police Courts on one charge or another since January 1 of this venr. But the "Beggars' Colony" flourishes, in spite of all the police can do. . . The deserving poor do" not live in this area, or. if they do, have no association with the "tale pitchers," as they call themselves. The colony has its own professional rules and manner of lite, and poverty is certainly not one of the hardships from which its members suffer. ' ~ The Notting Dale "tale pitchers" are divided into the following groups:— (1) Men and women who hire starvedlooking children by the day to enlist the sympathy of the benevolent. " (2) Old '.'soldiers" and "sailors" with bogus boards and records complete. (3) Shabbv-genteel men in. tattered frock coats' and carefully brushed broken, boots who talk of "college days." „., ~ (4) "Musical" beggars. ■ They live bv singing "Home, sweet home"' and "There"is~"a happy land" in quiet West End squares at night. <o) Begging-letter writers. (6) Beggars who solicit alms under the pretext of offering matches, studs, or laces for sale. ••In the "Beggars' Colony" the plausible mendicant in need of professional he]]) can have all his wants supplied hymen who have made, a life-study of the soft-heartedness of the benevolent. A "tale pitcher" who knows tne ropes can hire a sickly infant at the reasonable rate of 6d a day: An unusually . wretched looking baby will be dearer —perhaps Od—but a whole family of neglected mites can be borrowed for 2s —and "no questions asked." One house in a court makes a speciality of supplying beggars with outtits. Here can be purchased cheaply boards with "i)ef and dtim" painted on. or harrowing pictures of battles or disasters, in which the impostor who carries them certainly had no part. '•Records" can be bought cheaply at another house close by. These records are. plausible ."talcs," invented to order, which the beggar learns by heart, and repeats in the "ears of .strangers he buttonholes in the streets. A begging-letter writer can buy hereold lists"of officers in old regiments, or the- undergraduates at Oxford or Cambridge in any particular term, and can then 'at his ease compose pathetic epistles purporting to come from an "old friend in distress." The earnings of professional beggars would astonish many who work hard at more honorable professions for a living. One of them, known as "the king of beggars." who had ;l pitch close to the Stock Mxchange, admitted when arrested that lie had received €SOO a year from the charitable. Ho rented a villa at Sydenham, where he returned each night after changing Iris professional clothes, and recovering from the "total paralysis" which afflicted him when "telling the tale" in thi! City. Many make from 15s to £1 a day with an ingenious tale, and a good workman's wages are taken by men who only "whine" a few hours a week.

"The Notting Dale colony .is the home of impostors," said an inspector of police with many years' knowledge of inn district, to an interviewer. "There are streets I could name in that district where no resident ever thinks of doing an honest day's work. "They do not go short of money, cither. There are twelve public-houses within a few hundred yards of this colony, and. the men and women always seem to have money to spend.

"Some of tiiem do not- think of getting up -until six or seven in the evening. They know people ,-ire not in the humor to give money early in the day. so they pitch their tales at night. "Again, and again charitable persons come down to this district with clothes for children and food for starving families, drawn by some piteous tale told them in the street. "They find more often than not that there are no "starving children.'" and that the money they have already given has gone in drink or dissipation. '■Furnished rooms are let by the day in some streets in this Notting Dale district, and professional beggars find it an attractive address from which to send out their appeals. Hundreds of charitable people have been deceived in this way to my knowledge. "The professional beggars choose this district, too, because it is so handy for the "VYost'End. A lew minutes' walk firings them into the busy streets, where they lie in wait for the benevolent. "Many of these defrauders of the public have been convicted more than once. but they return to their old tricks."