He was the picture of upper-class privilege. He had found an orange in the gutter. The orange had been stepped on several times, had been exposed to the sun, and was covered with grime. Whereupon the banker, still sitting on the curb, hung his head and blubbered like a child. Hunger is terrible.
Hunger bends people.
Hunger finds people behaving in ways they otherwise never would. Hunger forces people to be what they never thought they'd become. The British banker would have given everything he owned, even his civil service pension, for one slice of bread. But there was no bread. Bread was the all-important commodity in the ancient east.