LONDON’S MENDICANTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3800, 26 August 1936, Page 7

LONDON’S MENDICANTS

Londoners seem to be easy-going, free-handed people, and hundreds of beggars make a handsome livelihood out of the fact (says a London correspondent). At London Sessions recently there appeared a one-legged man who in the last five years had collected £5OOO from the public “to provide him with an artificial leg.” He still lacks the artificial leg, but he ‘has certainly acquired a prop for his old age. Philosophers have advised us to capitalise our misfortunes, but this mendicant was taking them, perhaps, a little too literally to deserve commendation. There is supposed to be a regular “beggar’s racket” in London; and few Londoners can go long without being buttonholed by some specious individual whose story may not sound convincing, but who usually extracts a price for his departure from the easy-going. Even children are in it. The little girl who waits on the pavement until some kind-'hearted adult pilots her across the road, during which time the tiny tot ingeniously mentions that it is her birthday. She gets a. present, and waits until someone takes hex* back across the road, when she repeats the process and gets another!