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Show MANY WOMEN SLEEP IN LONDON DOORWAYS Pen of a New Dickens Is Needed to Portray Lives of Homeless Creatures. By EAKL C. BEEVES, Universal Service Staff Correspondent. LONDON, Augr. 24. A new Dickens is needed to write the story of the c!d women wo-men who sleep in the doorways of London. Lon-don. Though there are literally hundreds of them, these old women are hard to find. Their doors are scattered broadcast, but hidden in the innumerable blind alleys and short, crooked streets of which Ixion-don Ixion-don is made. A given door is a home, nigrht after niirht, for the same old woman, wo-man, or perhaps for more than one, two or three sleeping together for the sake of warmth. During the clay these women go a.hout wth JL'bair, collecting stray papers. When the bag is filled it serves as a cushion for the night's rest. They sleep silting upright, arms upon knees and hear! resting rest-ing lot ward, or curl themselves up, with 1 an upright stone doorpost for a pillow. The morning sees them awaken and take their bundles to a junk dealer for sale. ISach bundle brings about twel ve cents, on which each old woman subsists in some fashion until another day and another an-other night shaJl bring her to the door of the dealer again with another bundle of paper. The workhouses are open for these unfortunate un-fortunate women, many of whom are crippled or twisted by lives of hard work. But they wrill have none of the workhouse. work-house. It is run on a very hard-work line, they say, the object being to make the- tasks so difficult that the workhouse shall not. become too popular and over-populated. over-populated. They prefer their life of freedom, free-dom, and f hnir doorways, and the wandering wan-dering over ljondons twisting byways. Ixtndon "bobbies" know them well, know their "homes" and their routes. Tt is not unusual for tho police, making their morning rounds, to find that one of the patter pickers hss dropped off during dur-ing the night to a land where there will be no more toiling for the daily sixpence. |