[00:00.00]In big cities like New York
[00:26.04]you can find homeless women with shopping bags wandering on the streets
[00:31.22]They choose to live in an isolated,mistrustful world of their own
[00:36.08]They are called lady hermits of just shopping-bag ladies
[00:43.06]LADY HERMITS WHO ARE DOWN BUT NOT OUT
[00:47.53]Every large city has its shifting population of vagrants
[00:52.99]But in most cases these are men
[00:55.75]Usually with an unhealthy appetite for alcohol;
[00:59.80]Only New York, it seems,
[01:01.74]attracts this peculiar populace of lone and homeless women
[01:06.91]who live in an isolated mistrustful world their own.
[01:11.04]Shopping-bag ladies do not drink.
[01:14.59]They do not huddle together for warmth and companionship like bums.
[01:19.34]They do not seem to like one another very much.
[01:22.61]Neither are they too keen on conventional people
[01:26.37]Urban hermits, one sociologist has called them.
[01:30.63]They will spend their days
[01:33.08]and nights in the same neighbourhood for months on end,
[01:36.35]then disappear as inexplicably as they came.
[01:40.19]They know the hours when restaurants
[01:39.19]put their leftovers in the garbage cans
[01:41.54]where they search for food.
[01:43.55]And local residents,
[01:45.30]seeing the same bag lady on the same corner every day,
[01:48.98]will slip her some change as they pass.
[01:51.83]Shopping-bag ladies do not overtly beg,
[01:55.86]but they do not refuse what is offered,
[01:58.81]Once shopping-bag lady becomes a figure of your neighbourhood,
[02:03.06]it is as hard to pass her by without giving her some money
[02:06.80]as it is to ignore the collection box in church.
[02:10.38]And although you may not like it,
[02:12.83]if she chooses your doorway as her place to sleep in night,
[02:16.86]it is as morally hard to turn her away as it is a lost dog.
[02:22.50]There are various categories of bag ladies:
[02:25.74]those who live on the streets
[02:27.52]claiming they enjoy the freedom from the society
[02:31.56]those who became homeless because a relative died
[02:34.78]because they couldn't keep up rent payments,
[02:37.36]and they didn't know where to go how to apply for relief;
[02:40.99]and quasi bag ladies who have  an anchor point
[02:45.15]a sister of brother whom they can visit
[02:47.63]once in a while to take a bath
[02:49.88]Most shopping-bag ladies seem to be between the ages of 40 and 65.
[02:55.41]They wear layers of clothes even in summer time
[02:59.28]with newspapers stuffed between the layers
[03:01.84]as further protection against bad weather.
[03:04.56]In general, the more bags the ladies carry
[03:07.93]the better organised they are to cope with life on the streets
[03:12.13]"You may think I have a lot of garbage in these bags,"
[03:15.76]one shopping bag lady volunteered over lunch in a church soup kitchen
[03:20.52]"but it's everything I need.
[03:22.58]Extra clothes,newspapers for the cold."
[03:25.32]Shopping-bag ladies are not very communicative
[03:28.85]and take general conversation as intrusion.
[03:32.30]But after a while,Warmed by chicken soup,
[03:35.33]She began to speak.
[03:37.08]"The place is nice," she volunteered, people are friendly
[03:41.02]Most New Yorkers are very cold .
[03:43.98]I have sisters in the city,
[03:45.88]but when you grow up, each goes his own way. Right?"
[03:49.59]"I go out a lot because of my teeth.
[03:52.88]You know how it is:
[03:53.93]you pick up something in a restaurant and your teeth turn rotten
[03:57.59]no matter how careful you are
[03:59.31]People aren't considerate.
[04:01.27]The restaurants don't wash the glasses properly
[04:04.22]and before you know where you are you have caught it
[04:07.56]That's what happened to me
[04:09.08]I don't like meeting people until I have this dental work done
[04:12.92]So I go out to forget my troubles
[04:15.56]I sit a little while somewhere,
[04:17.70]have something to eat at one of these places
[04:21.23]then go wherever I have to go
[04:23.26]I take all my things with me because you can't trust people
[04:27.63]The story of the dental work was a typical shopping bag lady fantasy
[04:32.59]Psychiatrists say that even after long interviews shopping bag ladies
[04:37.84]are still at a loss to separate truth from imagination.
[04:41.84]One quasi bag lady spends about eight hours every day
[04:46.51]at the foot of the main escalator in a railroad station
[04:50.35]although she rents room in a cheap hotel in the neighbourhood
[04:53.98]One of the priests from the nearby church found this lodging
[04:58.03]for her after he discovered that she was entitled
[05:00.98]to a small disability pension
[05:03.05]which she had never claimed
[05:04.82]But every day from about nine to five
[05:08.33]she still takes a milk crate and sits by the station escalator
[05:12.37]not doing anything or talking to anyone.
[05:15.33]It's like a job to her.
[05:17.10]No one knows how many shopping bag ladies there are in New York.
[05:21.93]The figure is going up.
[05:24.00]Some priests, nuns and researchers spend a great deal of time
[05:28.62]shepherding or observing shopping bag ladies
[05:31.47]and are doing what they can
[05:33.27]to better the life of the lady hermits who are down.
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