Huntsville gazette., 1886-03-06
STREET BEGGARY.

The Frauds Practiced by Experienced City
Mendicants.
The charitable workers in New York
City have nearly succeeded in driving
professional beggars from the streets.
The system of street begging in cities
is an intolerable nuisance. Those who
practice it, as rule, are not really in
want, but have adopted the practice for
the profit it yields and because it is
easier than manual labor. A large pro
portion of the beggars are boys, hardly
beyond the period of infancy, but they
have the persistency of sneak thieves
and the cheek of a hardened bunko-
steerer or confidence man. 1t is most
frequently the case, also, that the beg
gar is a criminal, and that if he can not
wheedle the passer-by out of his money,
will pick his pocket if possible or
knock him down and rob him if the
time, place and surroundings are favor
able to the commission of sucn crime.
1t is not uncommon, when pedestrian
answers the demand of penury by pull
ing out handful of coin from which
to select a reasonable donation, for the
beggar to snatch the money exposed to
his view and escape by running down
an alley. Yet, because in refusing a
whining appeal for charity an oppor-
tunity to perform a real act of mercy
may be lost. many people give some
thing indiscriminately to everybody
that asks for it.
A New York journal, in describing
the frauds and impositions practiced by
professional beggars in that city, cites
several cases, among which are the fol-
lowing:
I'm one instance, Frenchman was
accumulating a fortune OF twenty
thousand dollars, on which he meant
to retire to France and live upon his
income, and at the time of his detection
he had nearly made up the amount.
An Italian beggar was found with the
same ambition and a like success. A
woman was followed to her home IN
New Jersey, where she laid aside her
garments of penury and entertained
company with her daughters in house
of her own. The wife of farmer in
excellent circumstances was in the
habit of coming annually to New York
to attend religious convention, and
while in the city she went to begging IN
offices to replenish her purse.
An agent of the New York Charity
Organization Society examined into
the circumstances of one thousand
seven hundred and eighteen cases of
street beggary. He declared, as the re-
suit of his Investigations that the great
mass Of beggars were simply unmiti-
gated frauds. The proportion who
were able-bodied and should have been
earning an honest living, was sixty
four per cent. of the whole. The great
bulk of the money donated by charita-
BILE people, on the streets, to beggars,
aside from that going to misers, who
boarded it up and had acquired wealth
by the practice, was spent in dissipa-
ton. In nine cases out of ten, the man
who begged dime ''to pay for nights
lodging" or ''to buy something to eat,"
spent it for a drink of bad whisky.
The same is the case in Chicago, and
all other cities. Such is the nuisance
and fraud of street beggary.
Reasonable provision is made by cities
and by private institutions for the re.
lief of all cases of genuine destitution.
Any policeman will direct a real suf-
ferer to the place where food and lodg-
ing may be procured by those really in
want. 1t is, then, safe and best to re-
fuse all street appeals for money, and
when all such appeals are refused the
nuisance of street-beggary will disap-
pear for the want of support Chicago
journal.