MECCA OF BEGGARS.

Thames Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 17804, 1 February 1930, Page 6

MECCA OF BEGGARS.

HEADQUARTERS IN LONDON.

VERY FEW GENUINE CASES

“WOMEN TOO SOFT.-HEARTED.’’

i Kind-hearted women shoppers are j maing Oxford Street, London, ‘the I.Mecca of England’s beggars. More | and more of the fraternity are deserting the suburbs for the per.nv-a-minute glories of this great shopping centre. Fr6m Marble Arch to Holburiythe whole street is lined at discreet intervals with singers, paralytics, matdh-sellers, “blind” bootlace sellers, hymn-singers, harmonium players and-tin-whistlers. • The only absentees from this “G.H.Q.” of mendacity are the pavpment artists. .The footways are too crowded. ■'“Women are too soft-hearted,” said an Oxford Street shopkeep'er recently. “There they are, thousands and thousands of them, all up for the day,'from the country or the suburbs. “So we have upwards of 50 ofthese pests in front of our windows every day of the week. Their takings, all drawn from middle-class housewives, amount to dozens of pounds every day. I see woman after' .woman turn , back self-con-sciously to tfre sturdy fellow selling bootlaces just here, and tender a silver coin.: j: As often as not she will accept no change, and probably she wall not take the bootlaces either.” •One of the best pitches is. that of a hymn-singer by Oxford Circus, where the buses stop. Coppers rattle into his tin mug at the rate of : tJhree or four a minute, and every few minutes he has surreptitiously to empty it into his pocket. The m;o§t “fetching” type -of all to heavily-ladpn women shoppers the poor‘\ but neatly-dressed i motber-and-father-and-baby group. The father, sings in a cracked voice; the mother holds out a cap in a shaking hand; the baby (probalbly borrowed) sleeps. They do very well on Wednesdays, which’ is thej “cheap ticket day” for many, suburbs. . .. ~.. "• , ■ ' . ■ A few> very few, are deserving' eases. Most of them simply prey on the softness of the' feminine ■heart..' ' . "