Serves him right. In Victorian London, he would've been fined or sent to the workhouse.

Yeah. Why didn't they have the poor holding up cardboard signs with "Pity Me!" messages on them in Victorian England? It seems to me that sort of thing didn't start happening until after World War One. I wouldn't mind shoveling coal at the power plant to work off my debts, especially if it meant I could rank my way up to a position as an engineer.

A lack of cardboard is why, the use of begging signs in general was well known.

Around 1830 London was estimated to have about 7500 beggars on the streets, (~0.5% of the entire population).

You're right. have seen photos of beggars in the US big cities which were hand painted on thin, wooden boards, r just about anything handy. I never realized the numbers were so high though. Do you have anything on the numbers of jobless folks after World War One in the US?

Nothing in particular, there was the typical post-war spike but it was muted in the US[1]. Exact numbers look hard to come by, (things like the detailed BLS statistics don't get going until about 1940), depending on exactly what measurement is used and which estimates you go by it looks to have been somewhere between the recession in the early 1980s and the peak of the 2008 crash.



[1] For the US it wasn't that much worse than the wild swings it had been seeing for decades by that point. US participation in WWI was smaller than that of the Entente nations and thus it did not have the same labour force impacts.

Good thing He was not a flasher, creep !!!!!!

To quote Dr. Smith... "Oh the pain! The Paaaain!"

It looks like the Yellow Kid is now selling both shirts and trash cans!

You caught my little joke and homage. You should see the Calder poster hanging in Mike Doonsbury's dorm room.

Someone got burned!

;p

...And dragon drool can be worse than Napalm.

Sometimes, dragons say it better than anyone without using a word. Amusing.

Glad you liked it.

one of the many dragons I'd like to meet

Ken doesn't like using computers, but he's in NAF once in awhile. Write him a letter if you can. He can use the cheering up.

actually I did draw up his dragon in a commentary for NAF and I guess he used it for address stickers

Oh yeah! Now that you mention it, I do recall his little dragon letter stickers. My bad.

When you care to flame the very best...

A "Real" Flaming instead of a Virtual one. I hadn't thought of that. I won't mention Al getting stuck in the USS Pampanito, or the incident at Gherhardelli Square.

Oh yeah. Ding da ding da dinga ding ding! The Trolley car just won't be the same.

Love the detail that the pony speaks through his sweater.

As mentioned above, I got the idea from "The Yellow Kid," an old comic strip from the 1920s I believe.

This is why there are now so many laws forbidding the homeless from being anywhere.

It's kind of a different story along Haight Street and close to the cross road of Ashbury. The area has become a glitzy "Tourist Trap" where Yuppie types can visit and re-live the days of the Hippie scene without as much recreational narcotics use. To add "Color" for the crowds, buskers, chantrilles, beat poets and "Professional Panhandlers" walk the streets expressing themselves looking for a quick and easy handout. The character this comic was based on seemed to enjoy "Freaking out the Norms" with his Tattoos, grubby clothes, and his "Pity me, Pity me" act with the "One two punch" of a rather vulgar and rude expression scrawled on the other side of his sign. Unfortunately I didn't see what it said as I had my back turned to the creep, but my brother got full brunt of the visual assault, and muttered a "Navy style" curse back at him.

There was a good "Country fiddle" band in front of the Rasputin records store which was contrasted by a large man sitting across the street before a guitar case and was obviously drunk or mentally ill. He'd sit at his perch and cast rude insults to passers by, thinking he was being funny, and I never once saw him pick up or play that guitar. Ironically he might be one of those street performers that every hipster comes to see. A bit more obnoxious than "Waving Tommy," but more of a noisy nuisance than a threat.

It seems kind of a pity that a City attraction allows social misfits to make spare change by insulting and harassing tourists. Then again, this guy with the sign looked so stoned, he was beyond caring for his fellow man.

You get that; a lot of the institutions shut down around the 70s, the idea being that they were cruel and unhelpful and community care and programs would be better. Only nobody really got around to that so now we have the mentally ill and addicted wandering the streets at a cost to themselves and society that's far greater than treatment ever was. It's a misery all round.

Right. San Fransisco and Los Angeles being in a semi tropical climate is still feeling the effects of Regan's cutbacks to facilities for the mentally disabled. On the other hand I read that one wag pointed out the savage, cold winters on the East Coast would "Freeze out" the "Undesireables" in a few years.

Then again, according to the Hindu, "The greatest cause of misery is desire." Some steet people I've met in my travels seem to LIKE their way of life. Are they happy? No, but they still find reason to continue their lifestyle. For one thing, most are escaping paying rent or having to deal with Government Bureaucracy.

People seldom freeze to death, no matter what the temperature. Humans are a smart bunch. Even in Alaska it's surprisingly rare. (Except in a few cases where the police drove drunk people out to the middle of nowhere.) Another problem is that there's always more; people raised poorly, the mentally ill, even those who just got behind on rent, got evicted and thus lost their job.

Reminds me of the Buddhist 'Life is suffering' (A rather obtuse way to say that attachment to material possessions causes woe.) or even the oft-misquoted biblical line 'The love of money is the root of all evil' (Love of course, not money itself.) Heck I know a fur here that has been, for the large part, homeless for 30 years. (They live in a car mostly.) but is quite fine. (They're pretty sure they'll be dead in a few years, before reaching the age of 60, but again this is a bonus to them.)