“Queen” Of Beggars.

Thames Star, Volume LXV, Issue 19373, 2 April 1935, Page 4

“Queen” Of Beggars.

AMAZING DEMANDS. t LETTERS TO BISHOP. “Begging-letter” writers usually have plenty of nerve. But the “queen” of them —she lives in a nicely-furnished flat near Regent’s Park —has just shown to what amazing lengths she can go, says the London “Evening News.” It was the Bishop of Kensington (Dr. Simpson) who was her intended victim. He is used to beggingletters, but the series he had from this woman were, as he said, “the most glorious he has ever had.” “She wrote me first,” he said, “some few months ago. She was, so she wrote, ‘a woman who had come down in the world.’ She was of gentle birth, and things were not going at all well with her. “She required a pair of boots and a pair of gloves, and perhaps 1 would not mind if I defrayed the cost of various articles of clothing for herself and her husband. ' “The woman hastened to point out that it was useless for a woman in her station of life to buy cheap articles,. and 30/- was the price she specified for a pair of shoes which she urgently needed.

“Frankly, I took no notice of that letter, but the requests there were modest, compared with those which were made in a subsequent letter.

“The woman, who seemed welleducated, wrote again, and, after pointing out how difficult life was in these days to 'a lady in very reduced circumstances,’ she asked mo in the most audacious manner to let her have £IOO a year for life and to secure her for a sum of £3OOO after my death. “The woman had no claim whatever upon me, for I had never even heard of her before I received the first letter. I thought that she must be demented, but I handed the letters over to the Charity Organisation Society, and promptly received a reply. “It told me that the woman had been well-known to that' organisation for many years, and was, in fact, ‘the queen of begging-letter writers.’

“I have never in the whole of my experience as a clergyman, received such an amazing letter from a professional begging-letter writer. “Apparently the woman does no work whatever, but spends her time writing these letters to different people. “From what I can gather she and her husband have made a very substantial living as a result, and possibly are still doing so.”