Our rival, the rascal : a faithful portrayal of the conflict between the criminals of this age and the defenders of society, the police / by Benj. P. Eldridge and William B. Watts.
- Eldridge, Benjamin P., 1838-
- Date:
- 1897, ©1896
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Our rival, the rascal : a faithful portrayal of the conflict between the criminals of this age and the defenders of society, the police / by Benj. P. Eldridge and William B. Watts. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![THE S]VIM)LING BEGGAR. (^ floor as the easiest method of rousing and notifying them to get up and go. The continuance of Hfe after years in these vile slums can only be accounted for by the extraordinary ruggedness of bodies inured to every form of hardship and refreshed by the pure outdoor air in which the days of, the tramp are spent. The coarse food eaten is also generally wholesome, and proba- bly less enervating than the luxuries on the table of Dives. Certainly it is rare that the police see a sickly professional tramp or find a dead one unless he has been killed by accident. The country is the tramp's paradise in summer. He some- times travels in gangs but generally in parties of two or three. Idling about from one farm or village to another, sleeping under a hay stack, in a barn or in the lockup, is his usual life. He seldom works but begs persistently for money and for food when he can get nothing else. Petty thieving is his recreation. He keeps a sharp eye on the clothes lines and steals the farmer's poultry, eggs, fruit and vegetables. If he wants to cross a comparatively barren pasture he secretes him- self in an empt}^ freight car or makes as comfortable berth as possibly on the trucks under the car. Freight trains are frequently stopped by conductors to drive out the tramps and it is not uncommon to dislodge a dozen or more at one time. There is only a gauzy veil of division between the patent professional beggar and the thinly covered kind that goes from door to door and especially seeks an entrance to business offices with a tale of misfortune and a handful of cheap pencils, or penholders or useless knick-knacks. Some of them simply present a few printed stanzas of doggerel, reciting their claim to compassion and closing with the plea to. buy the poor hand- bill. A few of these petty pedlars may be really deserving of pity or actually trying to keep themselves above the level of beggars, but the vast majority are particularly crafty and annoying impostors who resort to this device to evade the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21050739_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
