THOUSAND BEGGARS TAKEN BY POLICE IN LONDON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17863, 3 June 1926, Page 5

THOUSAND BEGGARS TAKEN BY POLICE IN LONDON.

CONSTABLE SPECIALISES IN INQUIRY WORK

The London Mendicity Society was founded in 18IS by great Duke of Wellington at a time when the country swarmed with disbanded soldiers after the Napoleonic War. Roughly, it played the part in the London of that time that is played after the Great War by our ex-service organisations. The society still exists, and now, as then, it acts as a sort of clearing house for information about London’s street beggars and begging letter writers. It was evidence of the steady continuity of things in England to find the. present Duke of Wellington taking the chair in Apslev House at the. society's •meeting. It is, as the duke pointed out, due to the work of the societies that, help cx-servicemen that the streets are not swarming with beggars as they were a century ago. There has been no great increase of begging since the war. but the fear was expressed 4 that as disabled men got older—and perhaps, though this was not said, as people forgot men who fought in the Great War-—some may come down to begAbout a thousand beggars are taken up by the police every year in the London streets. About a third of this number are professionals, and the remainder are casuals or recruits. The society has its own constable, who specialises in beggars and probably knows more than anyone in London about them. A great part of the work is sifting out worthy and unworthy begging letter writers. Inquiry is made difficult by the habit of practised begging letter writters of using accommodation addresses for the receipt of replies. Many deliver their own letters and wait for an answer. Attention is also given to the small monevlender who preys upon the poor, and the hope was expressed that the Bill now in the House of Lords would catch in its net the small fry as veil as the big sharks. Examples were given at the meeting of moneylenders who have been known to charge 4s weekly interest on a loan of £‘2, wnich comes to round about 1000 per cent. Apsley House is one of the best known oi London’s famous houses, apart from the Piccadilly frontage, which the great duke faced with Bath stone, thus masking an Adam house of red brick. Everyone has heard how the duke’s windows were broken by the mob during the Reform agitation, which caused him to put up bulletoof iron blinds. In the big room overlooking Hyde Park the Waterloo bavquet was held every year during .Welling* oll s e *