There actually were people who pretended to have disabilities when they begged for money when this film was made. In more than one city it was made illegal to be a "fake beggar," a person who is pretending to have a disability. More than one beggar was arrested and sentenced to jail for violating this law. These laws were not inspired, however by any sense of sympathy or compassion for the condition of people with disabilities. Many police officers, in fact, would have liked to arrest beggars who had authentic disabilities.
Many able-bodied citizens held very discriminatory views of all people with disabilities. An editorial in the New York Times obscured the difference between the beggars with disabilities and those who pretended to have disabilities. It applauded Boston's successful prosecution of the "fake beggars": "This vigorous action will undoubtedly tend to diminish the visible supply in Massachusetts of blind persons, hopeless cripples, wrecks of the civil war, and the like," it suggested that the police heretofore did not usually enforce vagrancy and beggary laws against truly disabled people. "Even when, as in several authentic cases, a blind or disabled beggar manages by diligence and frugality to amass much more money by begging than he could hope to acquire by labor if he were able-bodied," grumbled the Times, "his incapacity to labor is regarded as an excuse."
"The Fake Beggar" represents a strongly discriminatory attitude that was previously held about people with disabilities. "Children of A Lesser God", "Shattering Stereotypes on Mount Everest", and "Freaks" show how much American attitudes, opinions regarding and even laws about people with disabilities have improved.
