What, then, is the “professional” beggar to do? The root cause of this attempt to gather a livelihood is the housing shortage. It is not possible to pay the rent demanded for even the poorest room unless one member of the family is in receipt of a steady wage. Many of these beggars have lost their husbands, and have no trade by which they can support their family. Even if they had a trade they would have no place in which to ply it. For once a family has been dispossessed of a roof tree, it is unimaginably difficult for them to find another resting place. Wherefore these professional beggars alternate between the streets, the cheaper doss houses, the casual ward and prison. Generally speaking, during one of these terms in gaol, the accused’s children are compulsorily adopted. A law exists which empowers the Guardians to take over children without the consent or even knowledge of the parents, who have no right to see them, or even to know their whereabouts until they reach the age of fourteen. Some very pitiful cases have come to my knowledge where a woman, forced by circumstances out of her home, has been charged with neglecting her children, has been sent to prison, and has come out to find that she is childless. Her babies have been taken away from her, and she will see them no more.