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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 20, 1902
Chicago, Illinois – Police Raid and Capture Little Beggar Children
From the Duluth Labor World of August 16, 1902:
From The Chicago Daily Tribune of July 30, 1902:
LOCK UP CHILD BEGGARS.
———-TWO SCORE YOUNG MENDICANTS
OR PEDDLERS CAPTURED.
———-
Raid Made by Police Through Downtown Streets
and Many Little Ones Are Caught
Telling Tales of Poverty and Suffering
-Flight and Capture of the Popp Family
-Newspaper Alley Visited and
a Number of Boys Are Arrested.
———-In a raid through the downtown streets last night forty children, all beggars or peddlers, were arrested and taken to the Harrison street police annex and to the Juvenile home, 625 West Adams street.
Three patriot wagons followed the police men and picked up the children arrested. Many were caught as they were telling pitiful tales of cruel parents and sick mothers. Several others were too quick for the detectives and dodged into alleyways and other avenues of escape. The raids will be continued until the streets are cleared of the baby beggars.
When the raid began 7 year old Camillio Popp, with the tears running down his dirty cheeks, was telling a young woman dressed in the uniform of a nurse about his sick mother and a little baby sister at home in Polk street, with no food and no money. The nurse had her purse open and was dropping a quarter into the hand that was not brushing away the tears when Officers Goggin and Short of the Visitation and Aid society came around the corner at State and Monroe streets. Camillio had seen Goggin before. Several times he had run when he had seen Goggin coming, and he ran again. The quarter was forgotten. The nurse picked it up from the sidewalk.
Flight of the Popp Family.
Dodging through the crowd, the youngster darted north and ran into the first alley. Short and Goggin followed, but without success. Returning, they walked across Monroe street to Dearborn. There they saw Camillio run to his mother, speak a few words in Italian, and start to run south with her. A minute later Bennie, an 8 year old Popp, joined the family party on the run for the Polk street home. At Jackson boulevard Sue, who will be 11 Christmas day, was found, and she, too, started for home. In the entrance of the Great Northern hotel Juliett, the oldest of the Popp children, had been telling her stories, and the four children, with the mother pushing them all ahead of her, continued their journey. Then the officers, with Detectives Heeman and Murnane of the central detail office, caught the children, while the mother ran screaming away.
The Popp children have all been arrested for begging and are paroled from the Juvenile court. The police say they have been educated in the art of street begging. Either of the boys can cry on a minute’s notice. The home is at 104 Polk street. Tony Popp, the father, sometimes works in the railway yards as a laborer.
Girl Denies Begging.
The four children sat in a row at the detail station last night. Sue was the spokesman for the family. She is a pretty child with big black eyes and long dark hair. As she talked she shrugged her shoulders, fanned her face with a piece of paper, and told of the injustice of the arrest.
“I was going home at 9 o’clock,” she said, “and it was a quarter of 9 when the police man caught me. I was not begging, only selling some papers. I go to school at the Harrison street school. My father is so sick that we all have to help him. Many times after his lunch is all ready for him to take he gets sick. It is hard. And my mother has a little baby, too.”
Lieut. Collins accused her of trying to flirt with his policemen, but she shook her head as she indignantly denied it. She, with her sister and two brothers and a dozen other children, all under the age of 16 years, were loaded into a patrol wagon and taken to the Juvenile home.
Newspaper Alley Visited.
After the raid on State and Dearborn streets the police descended on Newspaper alley, between Washington and Madison streets. A score of boys were found, some sleeping on the doorways, some shooting craps, and were brought in with the younger children. Most of them were over 16, and they were taken to the Harrison street annex.
During the last month a large number of complaints have been made at the police stations of the number of persons robbed while sleeping in the doorways of their homes. The thefts were almost always committed by children who roam about during the night sleeping wherever they find an empty box.
Reports have been made to the Visitation and Aid society of the large number of small street beggars. Children with big bundles of unsold papers standing crying near the elevated stations and the depots have been seen every night, and many dimes and quarters have been given them. Of those arrested last night but a small percentage have not been before the Juvenile court and have been paroled to different probation officers.
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[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote EVD, Children of the Poor, AtR p2, Mar 17, 1900
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/000317-appealtoreason-w224.pdf
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-Aug 16, 1902
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78000395/1902-08-16/ed-1/seq-1/
The Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-July 30, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/107903062/chicago-tribune/
See also:
Poverty
-by Robert Hunter
Macmillan, 1905
https://books.google.com/books?id=Dik5A16-EfIC
The Bitter Cry of the Children
-by John Spargo
Macmillan, 1906 (1915 edition)
https://books.google.com/books?id=jRtShCzm4ygC
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We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years – Bruce Brackney