Today, forty years on, the same poem and the same letter pass regularly through the post. The suther, who writes openly from hi own address, has long exhausted Burke and Debrett and descended to com-mone At present he is working steadily through another alphabetical list, and the C.O.S., which frequently receives in about him, has discovered that he now employs a secretary to send out his poem:
Another writer, with a shorter record than the poet's, has specialised in Members of Parliament. This man, who works under three names and who uses a South London "Poste Restante" address, has a remarkable knowledge of the country. He writes to a Member, claiming to be a constituents, supplying confirmatory detail, and si that as he has been offered work in Bradford on the following Monday (he encloses the firm's telephone number) he would be grateful for money to pay his fare. On cne occasion. the Society found, he was a constituent of four different M.P.s within two day Then there is the man who writes to every admiral in the Navy List. He served with them during the War and no doubt they could oblige him with £5. Another man, &peciausing in Scottish people—his late father, it appears, had often spoken of the particular "victim"—asks always for £6, and begins: "Do not I beg you, consider this an ordinary begging letter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.