Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"Booth-Tucker, Frederick St. George De Lautour
History
Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"
Booth-Tucker, Frederick St. George De Lautour
India -- Social conditions; Poor -- India
(1.) The first step that we would take in reforming the-beggars would be
to _regiment them._ The task would be undertaken by our Labor Bureau. In
this I do not think there would be serious difficulty encountered, if
the scheme commended itself to the native public. They would only have
to stop their supplies and send the beggars to us.
(2.) Our next step would be to _sort out_ the beggars. They would be
divided into three classes:--
(a) _The physically unfit_, who could be furnished with light work
at our labor yards, or otherwise cared for. At present there are
hundreds of beggars who are physically unfit for the exertion that
begging involves, and who are driven to it by the desperate pangs
of hunger.
(b) _Those who like_ it, and are physically well fitted for it,
besides being accustomed to the life, and not being fitted much for
anything else.
(c) Those who dislike the life, and would prefer, or are suited for
other occupations. Some of these we would draft off to other
departments of our labour yards, while some would for the present
be kept on as beggars, with the hope of early promotion to other
employment.
(3.) We should _brigade the beggars_ under the name of the Household
Salvage Brigade, or some similar title, dividing them into small
companies and appointing over them Sergeants from among themselves, and
providing each with a badge or number.
(4.) We should with the advice and consent of the leading members of the
native community, _map out the city into wards_, and assign each company
their respective streets, allotting as far as possible the Mahommedan
beggars to the Mahommedan quarters, and the Hindoos to the Hindoo. In
this we should also take the advice of experienced beggars, from whom we
should expect to learn many useful hints.
(5,) Each house that was willing to receive them would _be supplied with
three receptacles_, one for waste cooked food, another for gifts of
uncooked food, and a third for old clothes, waste paper, shoes, tins,
bottles, and other similar articles.
(6.) At an appointed hour the Brigade would proceed to their posts,
would patrol their wards, and bring or send the various articles
collected to the labor yards, where all would be sorted and dealt with
as necessary the cooked food being distributed among those who were
willing to eat it, or sent to the surburban farm for our buffaloes. The
raw grain would be handed over to our food depôts, and credited by them
to the Beggars Fund for the special benefit of the destitute.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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