Chapter I: The Problem Stated (2)

"An attack on a lady in a lonely country road, between the Potteries and Leek, has been reported to the local police. The lady, who lives near Dunwood Hall, had been visiting an invalid, and on her way home was waylaid by a tramp, who attempted to rob her. A severe struggle took place, during which the lady was viciously handled. In the end the tramp was frightened by something and decamped."

"At the Mansion House, a plasterer was charged with vagrancy and assault. On Tuesday night the prisoner knocked at the door of St. Mary Aldermary Rectory, and applied for assistance. The rector's butler, after consulting the rector, told him to go away, whereupon he struck him in the mouth, cutting it, and loosening two of his teeth. The rector went to his man's assistance, and the prisoner placed himself in a menacing attitude and attempted to strike him, saying that he would have his rights. The prisoner placed his shoulder against the door and prevented it being shut. Ultimately he was given into custody.... Sentenced to six weeks' hard labour."

The reports of Poor Law Inspectors frequently illustrate this aspect of the vagrancy problem. To quote from one only:--

"Another aspect of vagrancy, peculiar to rural districts, is the sense of insecurity which is created in the minds of people living in remote localities. Sometimes methods of threats and intimidation are resorted to enforce demands when it is safe to do so. Truculent and insubordinate, as is proved by his frequent appearances before the magistrates for refusing to perform his allotted task, he is a burden to the community, and a nuisance alike to the police and to the Poor Law authorities."[24]

[Footnote 24: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1908; report of Mr. G. Walsh for Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, etc., pp. 78, 79.]

The laxity with which the law against mendicancy is enforced is notorious, and upon this question also the reports of Poor Law Inspectors contain interesting reading. "It is impossible," wrote Mr. J. S. Davy several years ago, "to deal adequately with the question (of vagrancy) without having regard to the mode in which the police carry out their obligations under the statute, and the action of magistrates when vagrants are charged before them. There are obvious difficulties in the way of the police laying too much stress either on the apprehension of beggars or the prevention of sleeping out, and these difficulties affect magistrates, who occasionally discourage the police from proceeding against offenders under the Vagrancy Act."[25]

[Footnote 25: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, p. 57.]

Another Poor Law Inspector wrote in 1906:--

"With regard to the punishment of vagrant offenders, it is very unfortunate that there is so little uniformity in the sentences in Leeds. While the stipendiary magistrate gives, as a rule, lenient sentences, the West Riding magistrates deal more rigorously with those who come before them. There seem to be no fixed principles governing the cases."[26]

[Footnote 26: Mr. P. H. Bagenal in Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1906, p. 337.]

The following extract is taken from a Yorkshire newspaper of April, 1903:--

"Three labourers of no fixed abode (it is the police constable's well-known euphemism for a vagrant), were charged at Skipton with begging at Kelbrook. The prisoners fairly took the village by storm. They were singing and shouting, and swore at women who would not relieve them. One of them kicked a door, and their conduct generally was altogether disgraceful. After they had collected 3-1/2d., they went to the public-house and asked to be supplied with a quart of beer for that amount. The girl who was in supplied them for the sake of quietness, and after drinking the beer the men went out, collected the same amount, came back, and demanded another quart for 3-1/2d. The men were sent to gaol for fourteen days each."

Very outrageous, of course, yet very common, and also very natural. For given the implicit licence to beg, why not give the tramp also the licence to spend the proceeds of begging in his own way, and if he gets drunk and is violent, is it not the fault of those who furnished the money? But "fourteen days!" There is the true irony of the incident. For the same men probably served fourteen days a month before, and would serve fourteen days a month later, since the vagrant's time is notoriously divided pretty equally between the gaol and the highway. If, however, our penal laws are intended to be not merely punitive, but also, and mainly, reformatory, a system which consists of sending men into and out of prison at more or less regular intervals is obviously futile and childish. It is the obligation to work which these men, and tens of thousands like them, need to come under. Dislike of regular labour makes them tramps, tramping makes them criminals--the two conditions are inseparably connected as cause and effect, for their kinship lies in the very constitution and instincts of human nature, and the police laws which ignore it are engaged in an encounter from which they must of necessity emerge foiled and beaten. They may hide the tramp for a time from view, but they will not cure him; the very iteration of the futile penalties which are imposed upon him only confirms him in the conviction that vagrancy, mendicancy, rowdyism, and blackmailing are venial offences, the commission of which society almost takes for granted, since it has arranged that they may be compounded for upon terms so easy as to amount to open incitement to illegality.

"Evidence is available on all hands, both from magistrates and from those connected with the administration of the Poor Law," the Vagrancy Committee of the Lincolnshire Quarter Sessions of 1903 write, "that the present short-term sentences, especially in view of the improved prison dietary, are a treatment of no deterrent value.... If the present methods are not deterrent, the evidence is also clear that neither are they reformatory. If the man _bona-fide_ out of work and seeking work be excluded, a very large proportion of those convicted for vagrancy are found to be habituals. Many of these cases are either mentally or physically below the normal standard, and it is obvious that such cases cannot be successfully dealt with during the very short periods for which they are brought under the prison influence."

The Committee cite one notorious case in which between December 8, 1881, and October 23, 1903, a period of under twenty-two years, a man of thirty-seven years had been sentenced to imprisonment thirty-one times in Lincolnshire, and after he had done all continued an unprofitable servant. His sentences were as follows:--

Sentence of seven days 5 times.
" ten days 2 "
" fourteen days 9 "
" three months 12 "
" six months 1 "
" twelve months 2 "

An interesting feature of these sentences was the way in which shorter and longer sentences alternated. In another case a man of thirty years had been sentenced twenty-three times within five years, _viz._, between July 14, 1898, and June 29, 1903, as follows:--

Sentence of seven days 6 times.
" ten days 3 "
" fourteen days 4 "
" one month 2 "
" six weeks 1 "
" three months 5 "
" six months 2 "

To quote the words of the Prison Commissioners:--

"The elaborate and expensive machinery of a prison, whose object is to punish and at the same time to improve by a continuous discipline and applied labour, cannot fulfil its object in the case of this hopeless body of men who are here to-day and gone to-morrow, and who, from long habit and custom, are hardened against such deterrent influences as a short detention in prison may afford."[1]

Moreover, our medical authorities are at last on the track of the tramp, and none too soon, for several recent epidemics have convinced them that he is one of the most proficient disseminators of disease. The following incidents, all relating to the last wide-spread epidemic of small-pox, are typical of his services to society in this respect:--

[27]"A tramp who was making his way through the Lake District was found lying by the roadside near Ullswater on Sunday evening in an advanced state of smallpox. He was removed to a smallpox hospital, and it was ascertained that he had been infected by another tramp, who is now in the Penrith Hospital." (_March 5, 1903._)

[Footnote 27: Report for the year ended March, 1905.]

"At Northwich three more begging cases were dealt with. The chairman said tramps were mainly responsible for the smallpox prevalent in the district. Cheshire was infested, and if vagrancy could be put down they intended to do it."

"Smallpox has broken out in a somewhat serious form at Barking, and several families have been removed to the isolation hospital. The outbreak is attributed to a tramp, who was found lying in the roadway at Ripplesdale with a severe attack of the disease."--(_May 19, 1903._)

How disease is disseminated by tramps is graphically told in the following newspaper paragraph relating to the epidemic above referred to:--

"On December 20, 1902, a tramp named ---- entered Doncaster Workhouse. He said he came from Worksop way; had been sleeping out; had not had any food for three days; and complained of aches and pains all over him. He was isolated as much as possible in an end ward of the Workhouse Infirmary. On December 26, he was found to be suffering from small-pox, and immediately removed to the Small-pox Hospital. Four inmates who had been in contact with the case were isolated and re-vaccinated, and a nurse, also re-vaccinated, was told off to attend to them, and not allowed to go near the other inmates.

"On January 8, a second case of small-pox occurred in the workhouse. This inmate, it appears, had sorted the clothing of the first case. He complained of illness on January 4, and developed the disease on January 8. The amount of trouble that was given in isolation, re-vaccination, and disinfection must have been very considerable, and must all be debited to the tramp who introduced the disease."

The report for 1903 of Dr. J. R. Kaye, the West Riding of Yorkshire Medical Officer of Health, stated:--

"Yorkshire towns have had such a visitation of smallpox, that we read with interest the part played by the tramp genus in spreading it. Last year there were 144 cases of the disease in the West Riding. In nearly every centre affected, the tramp was responsible for its introduction. Thus we find at Keighley, where the greatest number of cases occurred, the infection was brought by a man who had been 'on tramp' seeking employment. The 15 cases at Barnsley were attributed to tramps of the lodging-house class. A recent investigation has shown that out of 138 towns having cases of small-pox, in no less than 100 its introduction was attributed to persons of the same class. At Sheffield, out of 28 importations, 21 were brought about by tramps, and at Huddersfield, 8 out of 13 invasions were traced to similar channels. It is significant, that in districts away from the main roads trodden by these nomads, small-pox was unknown. Clearly something will have to be done with this highly objectionable person if we are not to have small-pox always with us."

In a paper on "Tramps and the Part they Play in the Dissemination of Smallpox," read in July of the same year at the Sanitary Institute's meeting, Dr. Kaye said:--

"In the recent prevalence of small-pox, some 12,000 cases have occurred in the provinces (since January, 1902), and experience all over the country shows that the most subtle agency of distribution is not to be found in the close commercial intercourse of our communities, but in the wanderings of the relatively insignificant number of people whom we designate tramps."

As a result of the discussion which followed, it was resolved to request the Government to "take into consideration the necessity for legislation to deal more effectually with those resorting to common lodging-houses and workhouse tramp-wards, as a constant and dangerous element in the propagation and dissemination of smallpox."

The following year Dr. H. E. Armstrong, Medical Officer of Health for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, published an elaborate report on the same epidemic, based upon inquiries addressed to the Medical Officers of Health throughout the country. As a result of the epidemic, which began in the latter part of 1901, and lasted the two following years, 25,341 cases occurred. As to their origin, Dr. Armstrong came to the following conclusions:--

(1) Of the 126 districts from which returns were received, 111 had been invaded by small-pox in the epidemic, and in 57 or 51 per cent. of these, the disease was first introduced by vagrants. In 25 of these latter districts spread of infection from vagrants occurred.

(2) Small-pox was introduced secondarily by vagrants into 58 districts, and, perhaps, into two other, at least 305 times. Such secondary introductions of infection took place with the following frequency:--

Number of Times Number
Infection was of
Introduced. Districts.

1 11 or 12
1 or 2 1
2 11 or 12
3 5
4 5
5 3
6 3
7 2
8 7
9 7
9 or 10 7
11 7
12 7
13 7
23 4
24 4
31 4
34 4

(3) It was found that the vagrants were housed in the workhouse in 41 districts, and in common lodging-houses in 58. The number of cases of small-pox occurring in these lodging-houses was 'at least 606,' and probably more, though 19 districts reported that the disease was introduced into common lodging-houses (169 with 165 cases) otherwise than by vagrants.

(4) In 35 districts there was reason to believe or suspect that infection had been carried elsewhere by vagrants leaving those districts--in most cases twice or more.

(5) Infection was first introduced by vagrants into 58 per cent. of the 63 large towns to which the inquiries extended, and was carried sooner or later into 72 per cent. of these towns, and on an average about five times to each. The disease had been taken to 30 workhouses and about 70 common lodging-houses, causing a large number of fresh cases, but had been of comparatively slight prevalence in such houses when not brought there by vagrants.[28]

[Footnote 28: Report on Small-pox in relation to Vagrancy in England and Wales during the year 1903, by Dr. H. E. Armstrong, Newcastle.]

So, too, at the meeting of the Sanitary Institute, held on February 7, 1903, at Manchester, Dr. E. Sergeant, Medical Officer of Health to the Lancashire County Council, reported that "The spread of smallpox was owing most largely to the vagrant class," and he claimed that "these parasites should not be allowed to go about the country spreading disease, and it was very little to ask that they should be vaccinated," for it seems that under present legislation, while the parasite can require you to support him, you cannot require him to protect himself, much less you, against infectious disease!

Furthermore, guardians of the poor have become increasingly alive to the fact that one of the most difficult tasks which they have hitherto had to discharge, in the administration of the existing law, will compel them before long to face this wider problem: I refer to the question of child vagrancy. For oftentimes the tramp has both wife and children, and unless a benevolent public interposes and relieves him of their maintenance, they accompany him on his wanderings. Passing over the humane aspect of the question, I would ask: What does this ghastly parody of family life mean? It implies that where there is one vagrant now there will in all human probability be two, three, four, a few years hence. Calling attention to the fact that during the year 1908 3,899 children were admitted to vagrant wards, the Report of the Local Government Board remarks:--

"Debarred from education and all that is essential to the formation of settled habits, they are subjected to great hardships, and it would be strange if, under such conditions, they did not become bound to the road."[29]

[Footnote 29: Annual Report for 1908, p. 79.]

Our forefathers recognised three and a half centuries ago that vagrancy was hereditary, for an Act of 3 & 4 Edward VI. (1550), reciting that "many men and women going begging carried children about with them, which, being once brought up in idleness, would hardly be brought afterwards to any good kind of labour or service," gave _carte blanche_ to any person willing to appropriate such children and bring them up to honest labour till the age of eighteen years if boys, or fifteen if girls. It may be said that this was legalised kidnapping, and that our modern way of dealing with the children of tramps is better. For we have got so far as to recognise that the liberty of vagrant parents to drag their offspring round the country is a vicious liberty, and should not be tolerated, though we are not agreed on preventive measures. The Poor Law Acts of 1889 and 1899 empower Boards of Guardians, under certain specified circumstances, to assume and exercise parental rights over the children of pauper parents, and the Children Act, 1908, prohibits child vagrancy under penalty, and makes provision for placing in public or other suitable custody the children of persons who are unfit to discharge parental duty.[30] These statutes do not interfere with parents' liability to maintain their children, though in other hands, yet the enforcement of that liability will prove difficult, if not impossible, in the case of a vagrant. Unless such a parent voluntarily abandoned a roaming life, the Poor Law and police authorities would have to choose between the alternatives of perpetually chevying him from pillar to post or letting him go scot free. Obviously, legislation which leaves the question of parental responsibility in so unsatisfactory a position cannot be the final word on the child vagrancy problem.

[Footnote 30: The passages in which the question of child vagrancy was dealt with ten years ago have been modified, owing to the passing of the Children Act, 1908, yet important though the provisions of this statute are, they are no final solution. Extracts from the Act are given in Appendix I., pp. 251-253.]

Viewing the question of vagrancy from all sides, we shall be compelled to endorse the verdict of the Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee:--

"The cost to the community of this class is immense, for they produce nothing, they necessitate large additions to our workhouses, involving heavy cost to the rates, and they overcrowd our prisons. At the same time they form a ready recruiting ground for the criminal classes, they are a continual nuisance to rich and poor alike, and they leave behind them families worse than themselves."