How Horton Malone got too much publicity: Part 2
The story that wouldn't go away
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Release Date: January 27, 2026
The Prince of the Mendicants
The morning after New York City Marshal George Hirsch placed a lien on Horton Malone’s motor car for refusing to pay his court-ordered debt and then told members of the press what he’d uncovered about the beggar they knew as “Shorty”, the lobby of Hotel Marlborough was flush with reporters hot on the trail of a scoop.
For his part, Horton was having none of it.
He fled the hotel early, and “remained in seclusion” for most of the day.
His wife, on the other hand, welcomed the newsmen with open arms, eager to dispel any misinformation or ugly rumors they may have heard.
The car, she explained, was “one of the cheapest makes,’ and had been bought on an installment plan, or perhaps given to Horton by his father-in-law – the story changed in the retelling. Either way, it wasn’t an extravagance, she claimed, but rather an economic necessity, what with the high taxi fares in the city, not to mention the cost of traveling back and forth between their home in New York City and their winter business obligations in the South. 1
Oh, and the chauffeur took part of his pay in use of the car, which made the thing nearly free.
The entire scandal, she said, contrived as it was, was making Horton “sick again, and he needs his strength now more than ever, because we’re broke. I haven’t the endurance to sit up with him night after night as I did for two years after his accident.” 2
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By the next day, Horton himself had changed his tune and was ready to talk. He spoke to reporters on the phone and welcomed others into his rooms at the Marlborough. Confident in the charms he’d honed on the bustling streets of New York, the 29-year-old legless mendicant approached the interviews with equal parts defiance and bravado.
“The papers are getting this and will play me up as a ‘rich beggar’,” Horton complained. “If I am, I’m a mighty poor rich beggar!
The suite, he explained, was both inexpensive and temporary – his mother-in-law was visiting for a few weeks, and as soon as she left, he and Sarah would be moving back into their small flat uptown.
And as for those winters in the South? Those were strictly business.
“I work sixteen hours a day every day in the South. I’m a concessionaire at fairs, and I have a doll stand, while my wife manages a sandwich and coffee stand. We make enough that way to carry us through the Summers with my pencil-vending in New York.” 3
Still, Horton apparently saw the writing on the wall. The jig was up.
“The bunk about me may make the public suspicious of all pencil peddlers,” he conceded. He supposed he be pulling up stakes and taking his business elsewhere as soon as the commotion died down. 4
The commotion, as Horton called it, didn’t die down. It exploded.
Within days, Chief Inspector William J. Lahey of NYC’s police department, sent his detectives out to “round-up blind, crippled and aged beggars and peddlers,” tying the actions directly to “the discovery that Horton A. Malone, a legless pencil peddler, earned enough money to live in a Broadway hotel and keep an automobile and chauffeur.” 5
Focused initially on an area between Fourteenth and Forty-second streets, the round-up resulted in just a dozen arrests the first night out, in large part because many of folks engaged in the business of begging had chosen to either lay low or leave town until the spotlight on their chosen career dimmed.
Among those who were arrested, however, the name of Horton Malone was spoken with disgust, according to a New York Times reporter:
“While the prisoners were waiting in line for their fingerprints. They renewed their attack on Malone as the author of their downfall in making the public think that beggars and riches are synonymous.
“Malone has ruined us all,” said a legless man.
“How much are you able to make a day?” he was asked.
“Eight dollars,” replied the man.
“Oh, you fool,” shouted Mary Rose, a legless colored woman, who had just been explaining that it was impossible to make more than two or three dollars a day begging. “You’ll make him think we are all rich.”
“Damn Malone,” added Thomas Devlin, age 32. “We’ll all have to beat it to Philadelphia or Chicago until this blows over.” 6
While some of New York’s estimated 40,000 beggars did leave the city for a time, Horton never did - at least not permanently. Instead, he waited out the storm at the Marlborough and later a series of other less notable hotels and flophouses between New York and Maine.
Then sometime in 1923, he reappeared in his old stomping grounds near Broadway, ready to get back to work. This time, however, instead of appearing “well-groomed, cheerful and smiling,” 7 Horton affected a shabby, downtrodden, pathetic look.
And passersby ate it up.
The money rolled in. Life for Horton was good again.
Then, in the spring of 1927, nearly five years after becoming an instant celebrity, Horton found himself back on the front pages:
Beggar Earns More Than $700 Weekly
How it happened is unknown. Whether it was a sting, someone recognized him and snitched or he was just having an unlucky day, Horton drew the attention of two of New York City’s finest, Detectives Snydecker and Patten. And, as they watched from afar, the detectives saw Horton collect $2.48 in one ten minute period.
$2.48 in ten minutes. $15.48 in an hour. $123.84 in eight hours. $742.04 in six days. All without ever selling a pencil.
He was arrested on the spot, made bail in ten minutes and several weeks later was brought before West Side Court Magistrate Jessie Silberman having been charged with the crime of panhandling.
His defense attorney, Joseph Wolfman, vehemently denied the charge. Horton, he explained, was an excellent and law-abiding salesman. He couldn’t be held accountable if his customers paid more than was owed, or even failed to take the merchandise for which they’d paid.
Magistrate Silberman didn’t see it that way, however, and sentenced Horton to thirty days in the city workhouse. 8
On his way out of the courtroom, a reporter asked the man known on the streets as the “Prince of the Mendicants” what his wife would do while he was serving out his time on Welfare Island.
“It won’t make any different with her plans,” laughed Horton. “She’s spending the winter at our place in Miami.”
The commotion around Horton never did fade. If anything, it grew, turning him into something of a folk legend to some, a worst-case example to others.
Every few years, as local authorities across America set about dealing with the growing problem of beggars and vagrants in their towns, newspapers would recycle the story of Horton Malone, sometimes accurately, but more often than not with flagrant improvisation: He had luxurious homes on both coasts and diamond-encrusted teeth, he was the kingpin of a vast network of mendicants, a criminal syndicate of cons. He actually had two working legs which he trussed up each morning before hitting the street and untied in the back of his private limo.
The truth was something else, of course.
By 1928, Horton was using street drugs, and in 1934, he, Sarah and two others were arrested and charged with possession of narcotics. The next year Sarah passed away. Her death certificate listed the cause of death as “addiction to narcotics.”
At some point after Sarah’s death, Horton left the Big Apple for good, and returned to Ohio. He died there in 1945 at the age of 51. The next year, his name appeared in a syndicated article about rich beggars.
Copyright 2026 Lori Olson White
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End Notes
1 “Beggars Lament Thinnest Day Ever: Contributors Tighten Up After Reading about Malone’s Motor Car.” The New York Times, New York, NY, September 1, 1922, P. 15.
2 “Legless Peddler Lives in Hotel suite; Also Keeps a Car; His Chauffeur Arrested,” The New York Times, New York, NY, August 31, 1922. P.1.
3 “Legless Peddler Lives in Hotel suite; Also Keeps a Car; His Chauffeur Arrested,” The New York Times, New York, NY, August 31, 1922. P.1.
4 “Beggar can Choose, So He will Leave City: Malone finds his Field is Blighted by Publicity,” New York Herald, New York, NY, September 1, 1922, P. 20.
5 “Panhandlers Curse Splurge of Malone: Tale of Peddler’s Car Leads to Round-Up and Arrest of a Dozen,” The York Times, New York, NY, September 3, 1922, P. 13.
6 “Panhandlers Curse Splurge of Malone: Tale of Peddler’s Car Leads to Round-Up and Arrest of a Dozen,” The York Times, New York, NY, September 3, 1922, P. 13.
7 “Beggars Lament Thinnest Day Ever: Contributors Tighten Up After Reading about Malone’s Motor Car.” The New York Times, New York, NY, September 1, 1922, P. 15.
8 “Revealing the Richness of the ‘Prince of Panhandlers,’ The San Francisco Call Bulletin, San Francisco, CA, November 19, 1927, P. 36.
I find this story fascinating for the mythic power it has held over time. That beggars are thieves and the bums are rich serves an essential function in American history to create a social order based on caste. You've humanized Horton Malone; he's more than a poster child for a political agenda and more an illustration of the results of such historic policies. He and Sarah scratched out a life the best they could with what little they had and neither lived in luxury.
What a story! Only in New York!