Pity the Vicar

The Reverend Harry Clapham, Vicar of blitzed St. Thomas' in cockney Lambeth, could "make a luvely sermon--make yer cry if 'e wanted to." He could write lovely letters, too: he liked writing them so well that he sent out 7,750,000 in 17 years. For the venerable, frosty-powed Vicar had made a juicy discovery: the world was wondrously full of charitable persons whose hearts and pocketbooks bled at letters of appeal, and who made no importunate inquiries as to what became of the money. So the methodical Vicar compiled his own card-indexed list containing 20,000 of the choicest, most tenderhearted names in England, found he could have his own motor, furnish the vicarage like a house in London's swank West End, spend more than 20 times his Vicar's miserable stipend of -L-400 yearly.

The Vicar was a popular man in Lambeth. A specialist in charity, he supplied needy parishioners with loans and groceries, took 1,500 slum children to the seaside every summer, opened two night shelters for homeless unfortunates. For them it was a pity when Crime Accountant Joseph Cook nabbed him on a wretchedly small irregularity of -L-7, found his piteous appeals had netted the spanking sum of about -L-150,000 in his 17 letter-writing years. Last week the hoary old rascal went to jail.

Lambeth will miss him, especially its ex-convicts, admiring a man who operated on such a resplendent scale. He had achieved Britain's biggest charity racket since the palmy days of Horatio Bottomly. In the pubs they said: "There was more give away since they rumbled* 'im larst Christmas nor ever before."

* Got wise to.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.