Show 11 IT lights of new york gwim subway trains and stations are lodging houses for hundreds of new yorks homeless the number is greater in winter of course since during the cold season park benches are ard impossible as beds but all through the year there are many subway sleepers late passengers encounter or see them stretched out on hard benches in draughty stations with trains arriving or departing noisily every few minutes other passengers see them propped up in corners comers of cars getting their rest it if such it may be called as the train clatters underground train crews and station men are supposed to evict the lodgers but they are human and pity those forced to such bedrooms so the sleepers remain until day comes then they wash up and disappear only to return at night nowhere else is it possible to obtain shelter such as it is for a nickel periodically there are drives on the part of the police department to rid the subways of sleepers those caught are taken into court on a charge of disorderly conduct last spring the number of such arrests ran up to a month one magistrate dismissed all brought before him on the ground that sleeping in the subway was no crime on the other hand band there have been many complaints that not all the subway sleepers are ares merely down and out ers women have been molested and annoyed and in a number of instances subway sleepers have turned out to be pickpockets pick pockets in fact conditions reached such a state in the cites own subway system that a number of washrooms wash rooms had bad to be closed at night on my way home early one morning I 1 noticed what looked like a huge pile of old newspapers on the platform of a downtown station As I 1 was looking at it the pile started to move A hand band came out and then another finally three men crawled from beneath the waste that had served not only as a bed but as a covering then too on cold winter nights I 1 have seen men sleeping on the bridge that leads from the uptown to the downtown tracks at street the greater number of subway sleepers are men of course but occasionally there are women and even girls at street I 1 saw a woman and two girls sleeping on a bench in the station evidently a mother and her daughters with no home for quite sometime some time after that new york have the same glitter while shack dwellers have disappeared from central park the old reservoir that was once their home has been filled in and turned into a playground the cites great midtown breathing space still has a number of per permanent manent dwellers for them clumps of bushes are a bedroom or they sleep among the rocks as did cave dwelling ancestors drinking fountains furnish water tor for washing and shaving an odd job now and then or canhan adling brings money tor for food police on duty in the park are supposed to chase or arrest such vagrants gut but the cops are few and hiding biding places many 0 the water front is a refuge tor for many derelicts to them bottin rotting g piers are homes some are fortunate enough to find straw filled packing cases others stretch out on string pieces broken by the of misfortune or sodden through liquor they slumber wherever they lie on occasions caught perhaps by nightmare a derelict rolls in his sleep and days later the tide gives up a body I 1 times square eavesdropping whatever he be says comes from his heart that gives it a stone foundation 0 bell syndicate service lc |