Jersey Street and Jersey Lane: Urban and Suburban Sketches

Jersey Street and Jersey Lane: Urban and Suburban Sketches

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1896 Copyright, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York Sir: In yesterday's issue you took occasion to speak of the organ-grinding nuisance, about which I hope you will let me ask you the following questions: Why must decent people all over town suffer these pestilential beggars to go about torturing our senses, and practically blackmailing the listeners into paying them to go[Pg 3] away? Is it not a most ridiculous excuse on the part of the police, when ordered to arrest these vagrants, to tell a citizen that the city license exempts these public nuisances from arrest? Let me ask, Can the city by any means legalize a common-law misdemeanor? If not, how can the city authorities grant exemption to these sturdy beggars and vagrants by their paying for a license? The Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, it seems, provide for the[Pg 4] punishment of gamblers, dive-keepers, and other disorderly persons, among whom organ-grinders fall, as being people who beg, and exhibit for money, and create disorder. If this is so, why can the police not be forced to intervene and forbid them their outrageous behavior?for these fellows do not only not know or care for the observance of the city ordinance, which certainly is binding on them, but, relying on a fellow-feeling of vulgarity with the mob, resist all attempts made to remove them from the exercise of their most fearful beggary, which is not even tolerated any longer at Naples. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 21597
Author: Bunner, H. C. (Henry Cuyler)
Release Date: May 24, 2007
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Clinedinst, B. West (Benjamin West), 1860-1931 , Wiles, Irving Ramsay, 1861-1948