The record-union., 1897-05-22
A REMARKABLE MENDICANT.
Deception PraCtiCed on Well-KnoVn New
York Ladies.
An Illiterate Woman Who Preys Upon
Their Credulity and Supports Her
Able-Bodied Husband.

| The Organized Charities are perpet-
ually contending with some mendicant
who evinces an ingenuity, energy, and
persistence in begging which, if direct
1 ed to obtaining livelihood by legiti-
| mate means, would undoubtedly be
| more than commonly successful. The
chief of these beggars have been act
| i've, to the knowledge of the charities.
| for fifteen or twenty years, and still
| the records of the organizations grow
with fresh evidences of their pernicious
activity Colonel Silloway, the "old
soldier who saved Lincolns life" and
| was exposed in these columns some
months ago, was for a decade, perhaps,
the most remarkable fraud on the char
| list The Colonel" however has at
last been squelched, or is at least lying
perdu until the notoriety given him
shall have lost some of it's force and
| the present occupant of his former po-
| sition of pre- eminence is a woman, by
name-so far as her true name can be
aScertained-Ann Meyers. She first
/ came to the attention of the relief So
cieties in 1SS2-fifteen years ago-and
| the begging letters from her hand
| which have reached the notice and
most of them the possession, of the So
cieties number over 800 So remarka-
| bly, successful have these epistleS been
| that their proceeds have enabled their
writer to support not only herself, but
also an able bodied husband.
Ann Meyers is an Irish peasant by
birth, about fifty years old, and her
countenance carries so decisively the
signs of degeneration that a novice can
read them. The deforInity consists in
an extraordinary shortness Of the face
| from the brow to the chin, which is
| emphasized by great breadth across
prominent cheek bones from ear to
ear; and the latter which are very
large, are placed abnormally high on
the head. Dust-colored hair, streaked
with gray, mats her head, and below
are two small, paleblue eyes of the
| kind known as washed out" A broad
/, and fiattish nose leads down to a thin
| Tipped, weak mouth, constantly turned
down at the corners with whimper-
ing expression. When she opens her
mouth the lower front teeth are seen
to be lacking. Her complexion is tol-
erably clear In stature she is tan,
large framed, and fat. She is utterly
illiterate; yet it is curious to observe
that her spelling is almost invariably
correct How can such being. either
by person or by letter, have thriven so
long and we'll through mendicity? The
only rational explanation is that the
woman is not without a certain shrewd
ness and cunning, and has discovered
those facts of distress to which human
sympathy makes the most universal
I az and these she
sets forth with a bluntness that be-
speaks sincerity and truthfulness.
| Her victims have been the most
prominent persons in the city; at times
she has written to some charitable
man, but the majority bf her appeals
have been addressed TO the soft heart
of woman. She regularly takes all the
newspapers which print society
news" and scans theose columns with
eagerness second to that of no reader.
| When she discovers a name new to
her, the name of person hitherto un-
exploited-a discovery which now must
be by no means easy-she adds it to
her list and gets the address from eth
er the newspaper or q, directory. Her
letters tell a tale of the sad ill-health
Of husband, child or self. The husband,
poor man, burly blacksmith-some-
times taken with a spasm of honest
activity, when he easily makes SO a
week at his trade Ga spasm, however,
not included in his wife's inventory of
his ailments)-is Gn one of her YER
sions) good, willing man, but dis
abled by ill-health' and affected in the
BRAIN This husband. indeed, is most
useful to her; she makes capital out of
1 nnccihfa nb1sa 0f him KiIIirlo
him with a stroke of the pen, she then
becomes that pathetic being, a destitute
| widow with a cluster of small chill
| dren about her knees. Decreeing him
not dead, but dead TO her. she appears
in the no less moving guise of de
serted wife, Leaving herself in his
clutches, she comes before her horri-
fed correspondent as a wife terribly
| abused and neglected by "cruel,
worthless husband. This last repre-
sentation contains, indeed, several
grains of truth. At each of their sue
cessive lodgings they have left record
of battles royal ending upon numerous
rounds of the beer Ditcher-confiicts in
which Ann bore stout and determin-
ed part, only, however, to go down in
the end before the mans brawny black
ually delirous with drink, he seems to
have imagined that he was plying his
trade again and that Ann was the an
| vii; at any rate, he used a hammer or
some other effective substitute, and
! Ann was wheeled to the hospital, where
the doctors pronounced that her skull
was certainly fractured and that her
career was about to be cut short. But
Ann was not made of the stuff that
dies young, and, exerting her truly fe-
line tenacity of life, she came to, rapid
ly recuperated shortly became a pic
ture of health, and left the doctors
doubling whether they had not seen the
dead rise and walk. She herself, how
ever thought so little of the whole af-
fair that she positively refused to make
any complaint against her husband,
| who had spent the period of her con-
yalescence in the City Prison-although
she might have squared accounts with
him once for all by having him re-
Quilted for the felonious assault with
a ten-year term in Sing Sing. He was
therefore discharged. and both returned
to the good old ways which had doubt
less acquired new charge from the tenn
porary deprivation.
| Her children are manipulated by Ann
with the same dexterity, mendacity and
effectiveness. Concerning these, the
language of the Charity Organization
Society is as follows: 1T is difficult to
state how many children there are; we
have record of five, the Oldest of
whom, Mamie, now about 21 years old,