THE VAGRANCY PROBLEM
THE CASE FOR MEASURES OF RESTRAINT
FOR
TRAMPS, LOAFERS, AND
UNEMPLOYABLES:

With a Study of Continental Detention Colonies and
Labour Houses.

BY

WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON

Author of "The Evolution of Modern Germany,"
"German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle,"
"Prince Bismarck and State Socialism,"
"The German Workman," etc., etc.

London:
P. S. KING & SON,
ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER.
1910

"In all ways it needs, especially in these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for the idle man there is no place in this England of ours. He that will not work, and save according to his means, let him go elsewhither; let him know that for him the law has made no soft provision, but a hard and stern one; that by the law of nature, which the law of England would vainly contend against in the long run, he is doomed either to quit these habits, or miserably be extruded from this earth, which is made on principles different from these. He that will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his necessity; there is no law juster than that....

"Let paralysis retire into secret places and dormitories proper for it; the public highways ought not to be occupied by people demonstrating that motion is impossible. Paralytic;—and also, thank Heaven, entirely false! Listen to a thinker of another sort: 'All evil, and this evil too, is a nightmare, the instant you begin to stir under it, the evil is, properly speaking, gone.'"—Thomas Carlyle, "Chartism."

[CONTENTS]

[INTRODUCTION.]

There is growing evidence that English public opinion is not only moving but maturing on the question of vagrancy and loafing, and its rational treatment. Foreign critics have maintained that we are slow in this country to listen to new ideas, and still slower to appropriate them, partly, it has been inferred, from aversion to innovation of every kind, partly from aversion to intellectual effort. If a national proneness to cautiousness is hereby meant, it is neither possible to deny the accusation nor altogether needful to resent it. Yet while this cautiousness protects us against the evil results of precipitancy and gives balance to our public life, a rough sort of organic unity to our corporate institutions and a certain degree of continuity to our political and social policies, it has also disadvantages, and one of the chief of these is that it has a tendency to perpetuate hoary anomalies and to maintain in galvanic and artificial life theories of public action which are hopelessly ineffectual and effete, if we would but honestly admit it.

The principles which underlie our treatment of the social parasite afford an illustration of our national conservatism. Alone of Western nations we still treat lightly and almost frivolously this excrescence of civilisation. Other countries have their tramps and loafers, but they regard and treat them as a public nuisance, and as such deny to them legal recognition; only here are they deliberately tolerated and to some extent fostered. Happily we are now moving in the matter, and moving rather rapidly. A few years ago it was still accepted as an axiom by all but a handful of sociologists—men for the most part regarded as amiable faddists, whose eccentric notions it was, indeed, quite fashionable to listen to with a certain indulgent charity, but unwise to receive seriously—that there was really only one way of dealing with the tramp, and that was the way of the Poor Law. That this was also the rational way was proved by the fact that it had been inherited from our forefathers, and who were we that we should impugn the wisdom of the past? And yet nothing is more remarkable in its way than the strong public sentiment hostile to inherited precept and usage which has of late arisen on this subject.

It is the object of this book to strengthen this healthy sentiment, and if possible to direct it into practical channels. The leading contention here advanced is that society is justified, in its own interest, in legislating the loafer out of existence, if legislation can be shown to be equal to the task.

Further justification this book will hardly be held to require at its writer's hands, but a few words as to its genesis may not be out of place. It is now some twenty years since I first directed attention to the Continental method of treating vagrants and loafers in Detention Colonies and Labour Houses. Repeated visits to institutions of this kind, both in Germany and Switzerland, together with active work as a Poor Law Guardian, only served to deepen my conviction that prolonged disciplinary treatment is the true remedy for the social parasite whose besetting vice is idleness.

At the Bradford Meeting of the British Association in September, 1900, I read (before the Economic Section) a paper in which I developed, in such detail as seemed suitable to the occasion, practical proposals based, with necessary modifications, upon the result of a study of Continental methods. This paper was published immediately afterwards in abbreviated form in the Fortnightly Review, and was followed a little later by a second article in the same place, in which the proposals advanced were further elaborated. These proposals attracted great attention at the time; in particular they were discussed by many of the leading London and provincial journals, and it was encouraging and significant that while the novelty of the ideas put forward was admitted, they were all but unanimously endorsed by the Press and by Poor Law authorities. It is desirable to say that the first three chapters of the present book are based on, and to a large extent embody, these writings of ten years ago, though much illustrative evidence of a later date has been added; the remainder of the volume, with the exception of one chapter, although dealing with phases of the subject which I have frequently expounded before, is published for the first time.

Nevertheless, two of the pleas originally put forward have now disappeared from my argument, inasmuch as the measures to which they related have, in the meantime, been realised—one, the establishment of public labour registries, the other, the prohibition of child vagrancy, which has been dealt with in that humane law the Children Act of 1908.

As a result of the more serious attention given to the vagrancy question at that time, the President of the Local Government Board in 1904 appointed a Departmental Committee of Inquiry, before which I was invited to give evidence. The reader who takes up this book is strongly urged to study the Report of the Departmental Committee as well; it is a most able exposition of the vagrancy problem by serious investigators who were less concerned to emphasise their individual predilections than to help on the settlement of the question by uniting on broad principles of procedure. As the thorough-going recommendations of the Committee differ but slightly from the proposals which I advocated before them and here repeat, the value of the present volume will consist chiefly in the description which it contains of a series of disciplinary institutions in which other countries are actually carrying out the methods whose feasibility we are still discussing.

Pressure is happily come from other directions, and particularly from the new school of Poor Law reformers. The publication of the Reports of the Poor Law Commission begins a new era in the history of public relief. The realisation of a constructive policy so large and fundamental as that which the Commissioners have put forward will probably prove to be the work of many years; yet whether our advance on the lines suggested be fast or slow, it must be obvious to everyone that the question of Poor Law reform is now a living one, and cannot again fall into the background.

As regards the aspect of Poor Law administration with which this volume is concerned, all those who have laboured as path-makers in this undeveloped province of social experiment must derive satisfaction from the fact that the Commission, simply endorsing the recommendations of the Vagrancy Committee, regard the disciplinary treatment of loafers of all kinds as an essential part of any reorganisation of the Poor Law. For if the deserving poor, the genuine unemployed, and the hopeless unemployables are to be treated more systematically and more humanely in the future than they have been in the past, it will be impossible to withhold from the loafers the special attention which they need.

Although the subject of vagrancy is necessarily approached in these pages from the standpoint of repression, I should feel that my advocacy had failed of its purpose if a change of the law simply stamped out the tramp without making ample provision for the bona-fide work seeker. I urge the abolition of the casual wards, not merely because they encourage vagrancy, but also because they are altogether unsuited to the decent workers who are on the road owing to misfortune, and not to fault. While accepting the Vagrancy Committee's conclusion that the retention of the casual wards may be necessary by way of transition, I look to the time when there will be provided for such men in sufficiency, and as part of a national system, hostels or houses of call offering on the easiest possible terms accommodation superior to that of the shelter, the doss-house, or even the so-called model lodging-house. This is done on a large scale in Germany and Switzerland, and it is little creditable to us as an industrial nation that we are so behindhand in a matter of such great social importance. The new system of labour registries, by increasing the mobility of labour, will probably help to bring home to the public mind the need for these wayfarers' hostels. With co-operation on the part of public authorities, labour organisations, and private philanthropy the cost should not prove deterrent, while the advantage would be incalculable.

January 1, 1910

W. H. D.

[THE VAGRANCY PROBLEM.]

[CHAPTER I.]

THE PROBLEM STATED.

There are two large sections of sociologists who to-day strongly advocate, the one a radical reform of the Poor Law, the other the reform of the Prison system. The modern Poor Law reformer would administer public assistance with greater discrimination, showing more consideration in the treatment of the unfortunate poor, more rigour in the treatment of those whose destitution is deliberate and preventable, more care for the children, with a view to helping them past the dangers of demoralisation and lifelong intermittent pauperisation. On the other hand, the prison reformer desires to see the punitive and retaliatory aspect of imprisonment made subsidiary to the reformative, or at least he would give to the latter greater prominence than it receives at present.

Now that concerted endeavours are being made to place both Poor Law and Prison in the crucible, with a view to recasting them in new and improved forms, the time would appear to be specially appropriate for filling up an important gap in our penal system dating from the reorganisation of the Poor Law in 1834.

The reform which is urged in these pages appears to me to be the missing link in that long and unique chain of laws and orders and regulations which has in course of time been constructed for the purpose of casting round the residual elements of society influences at once repressive and benevolent, at once deterrent and remedial. While some of these elements have received attention enough—not always wise, perhaps, and often defeating its object—one element has never yet been treated rationally and systematically. I refer to the large and ever-growing class of idlers, who differ from the genuine unemployed in that they will neither seek work nor accept it when offered: the drones of the social hive, the habitual loafers.

We may distinguish in this parasitic class several clearly-defined types.

(1) There is first the type with which we are most familiar—the nomad of the highway, who is always in motion yet never gets to his journey's end, the unmitigated vagabond, who lives by begging and blackmailing and pillaging.

(2) There is also the settled, resident loafer—an urban type in the main, though the country village knows him likewise—who haunts the streets year in year out from morning till evening, living no one knows how, and whose only purpose in life might seem to be to offer disproof in his own obtrusive person of that saying of Adam Smith: "As it is ridiculous not to dress, so it is in some measure not to be employed, like other persons."

(3) There is also the intermittent loafer, three-quarters idler, one-quarter worker of a sort, and altogether good-for-nothing, who is almost invariably an inebriate and often has taken upon himself domestic responsibilities which he saddles upon the shoulders of a too-willing community—a character who mostly comes before public notice in connection with Poor Law prosecutions for arrears of maintenance.

(4) Not to exhaust the classification, there is a pitiable type for which we must go to an almost hopeless class of the other sex, a type which the Poor Law system knows likewise in connection with default in parental obligations which, but for our exaggerated notions of the limits of personal liberty, our laws would see to it were never incurred. For the virtual encouragement which the Poor Law offers to promiscuous, illegitimate, and irresponsible maternity amongst the lowest class of society should shock the sense and excite the alarm of all who are concerned for the moral and mental health of the race.

The idlers of the first two classes keep themselves most persistently before the public gaze, but in any legislative treatment of their shortcomings it is desirable that the other types should not be overlooked, and in these pages the problem of the loafer is viewed as a whole.

What society must do in its own interest, and in the interest of the idlers themselves, is to stamp out, as far as well-devised laws can do it—and we need not be too soft-hearted—the social parasite of every kind. His existence is a positive injury to the State in every way; he robs the State not only of the industry which he owes to it, but he consumes the produce of other people's labour and renders it nugatory, by abstracting from the wealth of society without adding to it; his example scandalises honest workers, for while we preach industry and thrift to the labouring classes, we assiduously foster a huge loafing class, which preaches more eloquently on a very different text, viz., that it pays best to do nothing and sponge on the community; he is a standing menace to public order and safety; and for society to tolerate him is not merely to condone, injury done to itself, but absolutely to place a premium upon social treason of a particularly insidious and vicious kind.

It is only by the veriest abuse of the modern theory of personal liberty that the Legislature, which is not slow to restrict the free action of its citizens in so many ways, has hitherto thrown a paternal and protecting arm over the loafer and the wastrel. For several generations we have done little but pet and coddle the loafer; we have treated his constitutional laziness not as the personal vice and social crime which it is, but as a venial weakness to be excused and indulged, while the man himself we have surrounded with a nimbus of maudlin sentimentality.

Think what we do for the professional idlers. Take the urban type. While honest men are working we give him the free run of our thoroughfares, and set apart for him the best of our street corners. Should he be a vagrant we make it possible for him to travel through England from the Channel to the Tweed without doing one hour's serious work save for the labour tasks which are imposed by some of the workhouses at which he may call. In these institutions—erected at intervals not too far distant to overtask his strength—food is placed before him night and morning, with a bed thrown in; while outside he can always rely upon the alms which he is able to draw from the pockets of the unwisely charitable whom he deceives with his tales of misery, or the unwillingly charitable whom he terrorises into compliance with his demands.

This was not, of course, the old English tradition. The very earliest of our Poor Laws drew a very clear distinction between the normal poor—the "aged, poor, and impotent persons compelled to live by alms," as they are described in the Act of 1530—and the idle beggar and vagabond. While provision was made for the due relief of the former, penal measures were consistently directed against the latter.[1] And when such methods of repression as the felon irons, the stocks, the whip, serfage, and transportation no longer commended themselves to the public conscience, there remained the method of summary despatch home to the town or village of legal domicile in the custody of zealous parish constables who relieved the monotony of their dignified calling with many a pleasurable jaunt over country in those old leisurely days. But the noteworthy thing about the old laws against vagrants is that their uniform purpose—whatever their effect—was not the mere restriction of this class within due numerical bounds, or the regulation of its movements within decorous limits of liberty, but its absolute extinction. In those brave days the idea of maintaining the vagrant at the public expense, and of encouraging him in idleness and vice, never occurred to the Legislature.

We have so whittled down the laws on vagrancy and idleness, however, that there are now only two ways in which it is possible to convict and punish the tramp and loafer as such. The law regards as "idle and disorderly persons" such persons, being able wholly or in part to maintain themselves or their families by work or other means, who wilfully refuse or neglect so to do, by which refusal or neglect they or their families whom they may be legally bound to maintain become chargeable to the public funds; also any persons wandering abroad or placing themselves in public places, highways, courts, or passages, to beg or gather alms, or causing or procuring children so to do, and the penalty in such cases is imprisonment with labour up to one calendar month, though should a fine be imposed instead of imprisonment hard labour must not be adjudged for default in payment. The law also regards as "rogues and vagabonds" such persons wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air or under a tent or in any cart or waggon, not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a good account of themselves, and the penalty is imprisonment with labour for a period not exceeding three calendar months, though on a second conviction such offenders may be imprisoned with hard labour as long as one year.

So runs the law, and in theory it does not seem ineffectual; in practice it is wholly so. For the penalties visited on "rogues and vagabonds" are virtually annulled by the care which the Poor Law has taken to allow these offenders to evade apprehension. A vagrant may be as "idle and disorderly" as he likes by day, so long as he pursues his irregular life undetected but at night he has only to present himself at the handiest workhouse, and he is forwith certified to be a deserving citizen, and is lodged and fed at the public expense.

And even about the enforcement of the penal provisions against the tramp, when his native wit and cunning fail him, and he is caught in the meshes of the law, there is an unreality and a frivolity which brings both the statute and its administration into disrepute. Nine-tenths of the "idle and disorderly persons," of the "rogues and vagabonds," who come before the justices of the peace are hardened offenders, who know more about the county gaols of the country than the most experienced of Prison Commissioners; yet the view which most commonly prevails in the police courts is that so long as the itinerant mendicant is sent on his way, and is thus got safely out of the district, expedience if not justice is satisfied. To be fair to our justices, it should be remembered that this blind-eyed administration of the law is no modern innovation. It is really only a survival of the ancient custom, already alluded to, of harrying vagabonds from parish to parish—often after a rigorous application of the whip, but in any case after a blood-curdling warning from the local justice, duly followed by a special commination from the parish constable on his own account—lest they should by any mischance fall upon poor funds to which they had no domiciliary claim. The result, however, is the same now as of old. The tramp takes his admonition, and, if need be, his punishment, with stoical indifference, and continues a tramp. The offence is condoned or corrected, as the case may be, but the offender knows that he is free to commit it again—at his peril, of course—directly the law has done with him, and that in the bathroom of the casual ward he may each evening purge the day's offences, and so begin anew on the morrow his career of licensed crime.

Who shall wonder, then, that our past indulgent treatment of the vagrant has had the effect of perpetuating and multiplying this class? The dictum of wise Sir Matthew Hale, uttered just two and a half centuries ago, is as true to-day as ever: "A man that has been bred up in the trade of begging will never, unless compelled, fall to industry."

As for the casual ward itself, it was to a large extent an accident of legislation, and certainly it was not contemplated when the Poor Law was reformed in 1834. The great constructive measure of that year, introducing the existing type of workhouse, made no reference to vagrants. The Act presupposed only the relief by the new Boards of Guardians of the settled poor. "But," the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy write, "when workhouses had been established vagrants applied for admission to them, representing themselves to be in urgent need of relief. The masters of workhouses had no means of investigating the facts and had to deal with each case on their own responsibility. At that time workhouse inmates who had no settlement were maintained at the expense of the parish in which the workhouse happened to be; this made the relief of the vagrant in the workhouse more difficult, and workhouse masters were pressed by the Guardians to refuse such cases altogether. In 1837 the Poor Law Commissioners, on being appealed to by the Commissioners of Metropolitan Police with regard to the question, expressed the opinion that it was the intention of the Act that all cases of destitution should be relieved, irrespective of the fact that the applicant might belong to a distant parish. They stated that it was the duty of the relieving officer to relieve casually destitute wayfarers and of the workhouse master to admit such cases to the workhouse. These cases were distinguished from beggars by profession, who were to be dealt with under the Vagrancy Act of 1824."[2] In 1838 the Commissioners issued instructions to the Boards of Guardians in the Metropolis pointing out their duties in regard to the relief of the casually destitute, and suggesting the adoption of arrangements for securing the performance by them of task work, and the following year a further Circular threatened with instant dismissal officers who neglected to relieve cases of urgent casual destitution. In this way the right of the vagrant to admittance became asserted: "as a class vagrants came to be recognised by the Central Authority, who from this time issued a series of circulars and orders dealing with them directly or indirectly." As a natural result between 1834 and 1848 vagrancy increased to an alarming extent in all parts of the country.

It is interesting to recall the fact that as late as 1840 the Poor Law Commissioners, though the vagrancy evil was steadily growing, were "convinced that vagrancy would cease to be a burden if the relief given to vagrants were such as only the really destitute would accept." Hence they recommended that the Central Board should be "empowered and directed to frame and enforce regulations as to the relief to be afforded to vagrants." An Act of 1842 empowered Boards of Guardians to prescribe a task of work for persons relieved in the workhouse "in return for the food and lodging afforded," though no one was to be detained against his will for more than four hours after breakfast on the morning following admission, which meant that the casual might do little or much, according to his whim. The same year the Poor Law Commissioners ordered the setting apart of separate wards for casuals, prescribed special diet for them, and regulated the task-work system. Meantime, the vagrant proved himself more and more the master of the Board of Guardians; his claim to relief having been admitted, he settled down to the view that the casual wards were convenient houses of call, intended the better to facilitate his roaming life, and this view was implicitly accepted by Poor Law authorities. More than anything else, therefore, the casual ward is responsible for the present perplexities of the vagrancy problem.

One of the first acts of the new Poor Law Board of 1848 was to inquire into the extent of the casual pauper nuisance and the causes of the abuse of casual relief; and overlooking the fact that the Boards of Guardians had been forced to accept the vagrant against their will, it blamed these bodies and told them that a remedy must be sought "principally in their own vigilance and energy." Among the measures recommended were (1) the refusal of relief to able-bodied men not actually destitute; (2) the employment of police officers as assistant relieving officers for vagrants, and (3) the adoption of a system of passes and certificates (restricted as to time and route) to be issued "by some proper authority" to persons actually in search of work. The first two of these recommendations were widely acted upon, though lack of uniformity in policy seriously hampered the efforts of those Boards of Guardians which honestly tried to do their duty.

Of the later measures introduced in the vain hope of checking vagrancy three are specially noteworthy:—

(1) A Poor Law Board Circular of 1868 and a General Order of 1871 recommending the introduction of the separate cell system.

(2) The Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act of 1871 empowering Boards of Guardians to detain casual paupers for the following times: If a pauper had not previously been admitted within one month, until 11.0 a.m. on the day following admission; if he had already been admitted more than twice within a month, until 9.0 a.m. on the third day after admission. The Casual Poor Act of 1882 extended the periods of detention as follows: First admissions during the month, until 9.0 a.m. on the second day following admission; second and further admissions during the month, until 9.0 a.m. on the fourth day.

(3) An Order of December 18, 1882, making admission to a casual ward dependent upon the order of a relieving officer or an assistant relieving officer, except in urgent cases. In effect it is well known that nearly all cases are urgent.

Considering now the extent of the vagrant population, using the term in its wider signification, and not confining it to the casual paupers[3] who are particularly enumerated in Poor Law statistics, the admission must be made at the outset that the data available are very inconclusive. It seems desirable first to call attention to the limitations of strictly official information on the subject. Since 1848 a count of the vagrants relieved in casual wards has been made by order of the Local Government Board on January 1 and July 1 in each year; since 1890 there has also been a count of vagrants relieved on the nights of January 1 and July 1; and since 1904 a count has been taken each Friday night.

According to the Annual Report of the Local Government Board for 1908 the average number of casual paupers relieved in England and Wales on each Friday night of that year was 11,491, comparing with an average of 10,401 for the year 1907; the maximum number was 13,798 on August 22 and the minimum 8,341 on July 4. The average relieved on Friday nights in London alone during the year was 1,114. A further return of the number of persons in England and Wales in receipt of relief on January 1, 1909, shows that the casual paupers numbered 15,852, 1,420 being relieved in London unions and 14,432 in provincial unions. As to these numbers, however, the Local Government Board state:—

"These are the total numbers of casual paupers entered in the returns as relieved on January 1, 1909. The total number relieved on the night of January 1, was 9,747. To what extent the former totals include twice over persons who received relief in more than one union on the same day is not ascertainable, and it is possible that the total of the paupers relieved on the night of January 1, although omitting many casual paupers who, after their discharge from the workhouse in the morning, did not again have recourse to the Poor Law on the same day, is the more reliable."[4]

That the vagrant population, even enumerated in this partial manner, is increasing is shown by the following table, showing for a period of ten years the number of casuals relieved during day and night on January 1:—

It would appear from these figures that a certain relationship exists between vagrancy and trade cycles. Of the years of maximum vagrancy, 1904, 1905, and 1908 were years of more or less acute unemployment, while those of minimum vagrancy, 1900, 1901, and 1902, were years of good or fairly good trade. That the fact of an inter-relationship between vagrancy and the state of trade cannot be pressed unduly, however, is proved by the comparatively narrow limits within which, allowing for increase of population, the figures move. Certainly the figures afford no prima facie justification for supposing that trade depression causes any considerable number of genuine workmen to join the highway population.

Poor Law statistics, however, fail entirely to do justice to the extent of the vagrancy problem. They show the number of vagrants relieved at one time and in one way only; but all vagrants do not receive public help at the same time, and the total number on the road is far larger than the number who call at the workhouses. As to this the testimony of Poor Law Inspectors and all who have studied the vagrancy question at close quarters is unanimous. "A very large number, probably the majority, of vagrants seldom come to the vagrant wards," wrote Mr. J. S. Davy, as Poor Law Inspector for Sussex, Kent, and part of Surrey.[5] "It ought to be remembered," says another Inspector, "that the vagrants admitted to the vagrant wards represent only a very small percentage of the vagrants of the country."[6]

The Departmental Committee on Vagrancy of 1904 endorse this view:—

"The returns of pauperism published annually by the Local Government Board give figures relating to casual paupers, that is, vagrants relieved in casual wards, but these represent only a small portion of the total number of vagrants.... The vagrant is to be found in many places—on the road, in casual wards, common lodging houses, public or charitable shelters, and prisons, besides which he has many other resorts, such as barns, brickworks, etc. Then, again, the number of homeless wayfarers varies greatly from time to time, and at different periods of the year, owing to conditions of trade, the state of the weather, or the attraction of seasonal employments."[7]

Although a simultaneous census of the entire vagrant population has never been taken, certain data exist which furnish the basis for at least an approximate estimate. Several of these will be mentioned.

(1) Up to 1868 yearly returns were collected by the Home Office from the different police forces of England and Wales showing the number of vagrants of all kinds known to them. The number on the latest date, April 1, 1868, was 38,179, against 32,528 on April 1, 1867. The number of persons relieved in the casual wards of the country on January 1, 1867, was 5,027, and on January 1, 1868, 6,129, showing that the "casual paupers" at that date represented only about one-sixth of the total vagrant class. If the same proportion to population still held good to-day the number of vagrants of all kinds, based on the mean of the known number of casual paupers on January 1 of the five years 1904-8, viz., 9,355, would be about 56,000.

(2) In the county of Gloucester a count has been made for many years on a night of April of the numbers sleeping in casual wards and in common lodging houses, and the results show that the lodging-houses contain five times as many vagrants as the casual wards. Allowing for vagrants who sleep out of doors, the ratio would not seriously differ from that shown by the police enumeration already mentioned. Applying to the whole country the number of vagrants per thousand of the population of Gloucestershire, the nomad army would be shown to be 30,000. It should be remembered, however, that Gloucestershire is a county of small towns, and lies away from the great streams of population; hence it should not feel the full effect of the vagrant movement.[8]

(3) An enumeration made on March 17, 1905, by the chief constable of Northumberland, by means of police officers placed at the most important points, of vagrants on the roads between the hours of 7.0 a.m. and 7 p.m. gave a total of 300 (exclusive of Newcastle and Tynemouth), equal to about 1 per 1,000 of the population of the area covered. On this basis he placed the number of vagrants in England and Wales at 36,000. Here the omission of two important towns largely invalidates computation; their inclusion would unquestionably give a much higher ratio.

(4) A careful census of vagrants, beggars, migratory poor, etc., is taken by the police for each county, city, and burgh police district in Scotland on two nights in the year, in June and December, showing the number of these persons in (1) prisons or police cells, (2) homes and refuges, hospitals and poorhouses, (3) common lodging-houses or other houses, (4) public parks, gardens or streets, outhouses, sheds, barns, or about pits, brick and other works. The two counts of 1908 gave the following result:—

This was equal to 2.1 and 1.8 per 1,000 of the population respectively, and if these ratios were applied to England and Wales they would represent aggregates of 76,000 and 63,000.

(5) An enumeration of homeless persons in the administrative County of London, made by the London County Council on the night of January 15, 1909, showed a total of 2,088. On that night there were also 1,188 persons in the casual wards of London, and 21,864 in the common lodging-houses and shelters, of whom 10 per cent. were supposed to belong to the vagrant class. This would give a total of 5,462 vagrants as follows:—homeless (sleeping out and walking the streets), 2,088; in casual wards, 1,188; in common lodging-houses and shelters, 2,186; total, 5,462. As the population of the administrative County of London at the date named was estimated at 4,795,757, this total is equal to a ratio of 1.14 per 1,000 of the population. The same ratio for England and Wales would give a vagrant population of about 41,000.

(6) Dr. J. R. Kaye, Medical Officer of Health for the West Riding of Yorkshire, in a report upon the influence of vagrancy in the dissemination of disease, published in 1904, estimated the roving population at 36,000. He has, at my request, explained the basis of his calculation as follows:—

"The estimate of 36,000 refers to England and Wales, and it includes the inmates of casual wards and nomads of the same class who inhabit alternately the casual wards and the common lodging houses according to the state of their pockets. The county police here (West Riding), make an annual census of tramps, and the figure comes out at about 1,000 persons, of whom about 200 are in the casual wards on any given night. Now the Local Government Board reports give the casual-ward population of England and Wales at about 10,000, so that if the same proportions hold good there should be about 50,000 wanderers. Or, on the other hand, if you take our ascertained 1,000 in the county area in relation to our population of 1,249,685, and apply the ratio to the population of England and Wales, we get a figure of 26,000. My figure of 36,000 comes about mid-way between the two estimates given above."

(7) A final estimate which may be quoted is that made at the request of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy on the night of July 7, 1905, by the various police forces in England and Wales of persons without a settled home or visible means of subsistence: (a) in common lodging-houses; and (b) elsewhere than in common lodging-houses or casual wards. The result was as follows:—

These totals were made up of:—

In the opinion of the Vagrancy Committee, a considerable deduction must be made from the number returned for common lodging-houses, though, on the other hand, it appears from some of the returns that many vagrants, who would otherwise have been in tramp wards or common lodging-houses, were at the time engaged in temporary work such as fruit-picking and harvesting, and so were not included in the count. Further, an addition of about 10,000 is necessary to include the vagrants in casual wards. The Committee came to the conclusion that the census could not be accepted as "a trustworthy guide to the actual number of vagrants," and their Report contains the following guarded verdict:—

"The number of persons with no settled home and no visible means of subsistence probably reaches, at times of trade depression, as high a total as 70,000 or 80,000, while in times of industrial activity (as in 1900) it might not exceed 30,000 or 40,000. Between these limits the number varies, affected by the conditions of trade, weather, and economic causes. In our Inquiry we are more concerned with the habitual vagrant, that is, the class whom trade conditions do not affect. Of this class there is always an irreducible minimum, though successive depressions of trade may increasingly swell the numbers. No definite figures as to this permanent class can be obtained, but we are inclined to think that the total number would not exceed 20,000 to 30,000."[9]

It may be added that the estimates of the vagrant population made by witnesses who gave evidence before this Committee ranged from 25,000 to 70,000.

The mean of all the seven estimates put forward above, as approximations only, is about 50,000, which is probably below rather than above the actual number in normal times. The estimates differ so widely, however, as to shake one's faith in the possibility of arriving at a safe figure except by a special census on even more comprehensive lines than those which underlay the Home Office enumerations up to 1868.

But even when the casual wards, model lodging-houses, shelters, and other resorts of the roaming poor have been enumerated, the full extent of the vagrant population is not told.

According to a statement made by the Prison Commissioners to the Vagrancy Committee, 3,736 out of 12,369 convicted male prisoners on February 28, 1905, were, in the opinion of the prison governors, "persons with no fixed place of abode and no regular means of subsistence"; and of 2,595 convicted female prisoners, 372 answered the same description. In other words, one-fourth of the prison population belonged at that date to the vagrant and loafing class.

The prosecutions in England and Wales for vagrancy offences in the narrower sense—begging, sleeping out, misbehaviour by paupers, and theft or destruction of workhouse clothes—fluctuated as follows during the ten years 1898-1907:—

At whatever figure we place the vagrant population, there is little doubt that the number tends to increase. The Vagrancy Committee frankly accept this view.

"The army of vagrants has increased in number of late years," they state, "and there is reason to fear that it will continue to increase if things are left as they are. It is mainly composed of those who deliberately avoid any work, and depend for their existence on almsgiving and the casual wards; and for their benefit the industrious portion of the community is heavily taxed. We are convinced that the present system of treating casual paupers neither deters the vagrant nor affords any means of reclaiming him, and we are unanimously of opinion that a thorough reform is necessary."[10]

As to the class of men who frequent the casual wards the great mass, both in town and country, are unquestionably unskilled labourers, though nearly all trades contribute a share, larger or smaller, to the sum total of vagrancy. A classification of the men relieved in the casual wards of Hitchin and Brixworth during twelve months ending September, 1906, showed the following result:—[11]

The following classification of the casuals admitted into the wards of a rural union, unnamed, is published by the Poor Law Commission:—[12]

Of 450 men admitted into the casual wards of the Skipton-in-Craven workhouse during the period September 1 to November 12, 1904, 50 were aged and infirm, while 250 described themselves as general labourers, and 150 as tradesmen.

The classification of the latter was as follows:—

It must be granted, of course, that every highway wanderer is not a loafer, and that the workhouse casual ward itself offers a rude hospitality to many a decent wayfarer who is deserving of a better fate, though a good deal of misapprehension exists on this subject. There is no means of learning the percentage of bona-fide work-seekers amongst that section of the vagrant population which fights shy of poor relief, but when one enters the casual ward it is possible at once to divide the sheep from the goats. Those who theorise upon the basis of intuition, and much more those who confuse the voting of other people's money with Christian charity, are apt to conclude that, as a matter of course, the casuals "in a lump" are not "bad," but only unfortunate, and deserve all such relief as is afforded them. It would be futile to deny to the most habitual of vagrants the power to impress even the case-hardened listener by fiction which is a good deal stranger than truth, by doubtful emotions and still more doubtful morals. Let appeal be made, however, to the trained observation of the Poor Law clerk and the weather-beaten soul of the workhouse master, and a different story will be learned. Some years ago I questioned all the Poor Law authorities of Yorkshire on the subject; half the answers placed the number of the genuine work-seekers at 5 per cent. of the whole, though in special cases a much higher percentage was allowed. The Vagrancy Committee, on the evidence placed before them, estimated the proportion of genuine work-seekers at 3 per cent. of all casual paupers.

These figures are in keeping with all we know of the experience of the Poor Law Inspectors who report from year to year to the Local Government Board upon the vagrancy question. To quote one opinion only by way of illustration:—

"The more I see of the vagrant class the more strongly I am impressed with the conviction that the number of those really in search of work is relatively very small. Over and over again I have gone into the casual wards and have, in answer to my question, been told by the vagrants that they were all seeking work but could not find any; but when I have pointed out that farmers were everywhere advertising for hands, they had nothing to say, except, perhaps, that farm labour did not suit them. In the agricultural districts it may be said, generally, that enough labourers can rarely be obtained, and the local newspapers are scarcely ever without advertisements for them. No doubt some of the able-bodied paupers know nothing of farm work, and if they can be enticed to labour colonies, which would teach them, agriculture may gain, but there is a large demand for absolutely unskilled men which they refuse to supply. For example, last summer, a tradesman in a small town in Somerset asked the master of the workhouse to send him half-a-dozen labourers, to whom he would give permanent employment for 18s. a week. Six of the occupants of the casual wards professed themselves as eager to accept this offer, but, on leaving the workhouse in the morning, all but one slipped away. That one remained, and has been earning his 18s. a week ever since, but the other five have presumably found begging more profitable."[13]

The Local Government Board, as we have seen, have endeavoured to check vagrancy by urging Boards of Guardians to adopt the cell system, and to impose upon the casuals systematic labour tasks proportioned to the frequency of their visits. Yet though the cell system has been pressed upon workhouse authorities since 1868, so far only two-thirds of them have adopted it. As to the labour task, the Local Government Board advise that vagrants should, as a rule, be detained for two nights and required to perform a full day's work, but that the period of detention should be extended to four nights in the case of those who seek admission twice within the same month.

There is no general practice to this effect, however, for every union follows its own devices for making the life of the tramp hard or easy as the case may be, and in the absence of a uniform policy, few unions take the question of vagrant regulations seriously. The average Board of Guardians attacks all its problems on the line of least resistance, and the line of least resistance in dealing with the tramp is to follow the advice of the incomparable constable Dogberry, and get him out of sight as soon as possible, thanking God that it is rid of a knave.

The reports of Poor Law Inspectors have for years abounded with complaints of absence of uniformity in the treatment of vagrants and of the evil results of the existing state of anarchy. To quote several of recent date:—

"While many unions have adopted the Local Government Board's suggestions, others have ignored them. It is useless for one union to take steps for driving casuals away from their workhouses simply to plant them on others."[14]

"There is a want of uniformity as regards detention and the task of work in the various casual wards, and it is worthy of notice that at Loughborough, where the guardians, after a short trial of two nights' detention, decided to revert to a one night's detention only, the number of vagrants has increased from 10,751 in 1906 to 12,058 in 1907."[15]

"There is a great want of uniformity in the treatment of vagrants as regards accommodation, detention, diet and tasks of work, and guardians are naturally averse to taking any action involving expense pending legislation on the subject."[16]

"Some mitigation of the evils of vagrancy might be possible if guardians fully exercised the powers possessed by them. No uniform practice prevails. The system of a two nights' detention, with the imposition of an adequate task, is uncommon in this district. Some kind of task is prescribed in the majority of vagrant wards, but for the most part vagrants are released the following morning after admission. Here and there the regulations are enforced with beneficial results. Guardians are, perhaps, apathetic or disinclined to detain more often, because they are not enabled to deal effectively with this class owing to insufficient accommodation. A system of two nights' detention, combined with proper discretion and supervision on the part of the workhouse master, has generally been followed by a diminution in the number of vagrants, but an absence of any such similar practice in neighbouring unions largely defeats these good results. Vagrants simply avoid these wards, and pass on to those where the restrictions are less severe."[17]

As the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy say:—

"It is much easier for a workhouse master, or the superintendent of the casual ward, to allow vagrants to discharge themselves on the morning after admission without labour, than to detain them, and insist upon their doing the regulation task of work, and the discretion which is left to the officers with respect to the discharge of certain classes of vagrants results in a complete variety of practice."[18]

Again:—

"Where a union carries out the regulations as to detention and task of work there is always a reduction in the number of admissions to their casual wards, but the evidence before us shows that severity of discipline in one union may merely cause the vagrants to frequent other unions."[19]

In London, according to the evidence given before that Committee:—

"Some guardians do not detain, some give one task, some another, and some practically none at all.... Some Boards of Guardians say the casuals are working-men honestly looking for work, and there is no doubt they are, but they know where they are going to get it. When they leave, they know to what casual ward they are going, and whether they are going to break stones or pick oakum. The consequence is, that the London vagrants flock to Poplar, Thavies Inn, and the other wards where detention and work are not enforced, or where only a light task is given."[20]

All experience shows that the frequency with which vagrants visit given parts of the country is in exact proportion to the comfort or otherwise of the casual wards, and a change either way means a difference in the number of loafers entertained. "If a tramp likes the ward he is there again within the month, and perhaps in a fortnight," was the verdict of a witness before the Poor Law Commission.

"The slightest relaxation with reference to the quantity or quality of food given in workhouses leads immediately to an increase of vagrants," writes a Poor Law Inspector.[21]

Another Inspector, explaining decreases in the numbers of vagrants in some of his districts, says:—

"A small cause will apparently divert the vagrant stream from its usual course. Where a change of master has taken place, or where gruel has been substituted for bread and water, or vice versa, there has frequently occurred, very rapidly, a large increase or decrease in the numbers applying for admission to the casual wards where these changes have taken place."[22]

An illustration of tramp susceptibility to the attractions of the dietary is related by the Poor Law Inspector for Cumberland, Lancashire, and Westmorland, as follows:—

"In 1908 ... the guardians of the Leigh Union decided in the autumn to make an improvement in the dietary at their casual wards, a proceeding in which they did not invite the co-operation of other Boards of Guardians. The result was an influx of vagrants into the union, which swamped the accommodation, and rendered administration impossible. The admission to the Leigh casual wards for the first six months of the year had shown an increase of 33 per cent., as compared with 1907; in the second half of the year, the comparative increase was 164 per cent. The comparative increase for the latter half year in Lancashire as a whole was under 30 per cent., and none of the unions adjoining Leigh showed an increase greater than 60 per cent."[23]

Only those who have had practical experience of Poor Law work know how fastidious the tramp is in the choice of his involuntary tasks. In connection with the casual wards of a Board of Guardians of which I was for many years a member the task imposed was breaking 13 cwts. of stone. We added to this task the riddling and wheeling away of the stone. The result was that many tramps would come to the door, read the regulations, and walk off, while others, who entered and asked what they would have to do, would at once leave with "No, thank you." Several tramps resolutely argued the illegality of the extra task with the master, and tried to evade it.

It may be said that the case advanced against the vagrant up to this point rests upon negative grounds. Even were he an idler and a parasite and nothing worse, however, he has no claim to be tolerated. Those who tell us that vagabonds and loafers form, after all, an insignificant proportion of the population, and that the Poor Law holds out severer problems for our solution, forget or undervalue the fact that every one of these people is a centre of moral contagion. To ignore them because they are a small minority in society is just as rational as it would be to ignore gangrene because its effects are local only, or a plague because its victims are as yet few in number. Each of these loafers creates imitators. On the highways he is a walking advertisement of the advantages of idleness; in the model lodging-house, the night shelter, the wayside inn, he acts the part of recruiting sergeant for the great army of sloth and vice.

The vices of the vagrant, however, are by no means all of a negative order. From the standpoint of public security and order it is intolerable that the known criminals, which the majority of tramps are, should be afforded every facility for following their irregular calling. Incidents like the following, cited at random, are of weekly and almost daily occurrence in all parts of the country, and bring home better than argument the folly of our present method, or lack of method, of treating the tramp and loafer:—

"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 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]

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]

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]

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 3½d., 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 3½d. 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:—

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:—

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.)

"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 Infection was Introduced.	Number of 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]

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]

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.

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."

[CHAPTER II.]

THE URBAN LOAFER.

The vagrant is only one type of social parasite, however, and in some respects he is not the most obnoxious. When we leave the casual wards and enter the workhouses themselves, a further loafing element confronts us, adding to the difficulty of our problem. For though these institutions nominally exist for the reception of people who are not only destitute but are unable to prevent their destitution, we find that the able-bodied pauper is to a large extent in possession.

It is interesting to recall the fact that when workhouses were established, the tendency which the Poor Law authorities fought against was, that the aged and infirm of the labouring class regarded them as infirmaries for their permanent maintenance. A Report of the Poor Law Commissioners of 1840 protested against the idea that workhouses should be placed on the same footing as almshouses.

"If the condition of the inmates of a workhouse," they wrote, "were to be so regulated as to invite the aged and infirm of the labouring classes to take refuge in it, it would immediately be useless as a test between indigence and indolence or fraud—it would no longer operate as an inducement to the young and healthy to provide support for their later years, or as a stimulus to them, whilst they have the means, to support their aged parents and relatives. The frugality and forethought of a young labourer would be useless if he foresaw the certainty of a better asylum for his old age than he could possibly provide by his own exertions...."

Nowadays, the difficulty of Poor Law Guardians is to prevent, not the aged and infirm, but the middle-aged and able-bodied from making the workhouse their permanent home.

"Once admitted into the workhouse in England," says the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission, "the pauper is usually left undisturbed, the Guardians seldom exercising their power of discharge." This generalisation is unjust, yet what is said certainly holds good of a large number of workhouses. While, however, Boards of Guardians are mainly to blame, the laws which they have to administer are also, in part, responsible. In the absence of institutions for the detention of loafers such as exist in Continental countries, these loafers are able to abuse the Poor Law at will, and snap their fingers at the police. Within the workhouse they are a cause of perpetual annoyance, and their presence and example are a fruitful source of demoralisation and disorder.

Speaking of this class of able-bodied paupers in relation to the Sheffield Union, Mr. P. H. Bagenal, Poor Law Inspector for the West Riding, reports:—

"The master states that this class gives infinite trouble. They have no fear of prison; in fact many of them prefer it, and state that the work is not so hard and the food better. Many of them have got good trades, such as fitters, plumbers, builders, iron workers, etc., and could earn from £3 to £4 a week if they chose. They prefer to go to the workhouse, where, however, they only work under compulsion, and give all the trouble they can to the officers."

Commenting upon the fact that of the persons relieved in England and Wales during the year ending September 30, 1907, 26,179 had been relieved five times or more, the Poor Law Commission state:

"The number of persons ascertained to have been relieved five times or oftener during the year shows the existence of a troublesome class who make a convenience of the workhouse, and whose improvidence is born of the knowledge that that institution is always at hand."[31]

The Poor Law Inspector for the Metropolis relates that, as a result of a call-over of the 900 inmates of a London workhouse in 1907, it was found that fifty able-bodied men and fifty-three able-bodied women were among them. The Committee reported:—

"In a large number of these cases there did not seem to be any tangible reason why they were in the workhouse at all.... Many admitted that they had done no work for years; in fact could not give the date or place where they had last worked. Many of this class were so reduced in physique on admission that they could not be classed as able-bodied, but with the regular diet and absence of intoxicating liquors they rapidly recovered; but unfortunately for the worst classes the conditions of the house appear to be conducive to their disinclination to shift for themselves.

"Upon such cases again coming before the committee, it was found that several inmates, who appeared to be quietly settling down for the remainder of their lives, had awoke to the fact that the guardians were making investigations, and had taken their discharge."

The Committee were also impressed by the number of men who

"When their wives refused to keep them longer, and as some of them openly expressed it 'the wife turned me out,' came to settle down in the house—in many cases drink and desertion were found to be the causes of the wives' action."[32]

Mr. Lockwood, another Poor Law Inspector, stated before the Poor Law Commission:—

"Probably, if it is an overcrowded workhouse, it is impossible to prevent the able-bodied class from sharing in the comfort, and I may say the luxuries of the older ones.... You cannot prevent that class finding the conditions of life in a mixed workhouse such as they are not entitled to, and ought not to share in."

Another witness, speaking of the Marylebone Workhouse, said:—

"The association in large numbers in the able-bodied blocks becomes an attraction; and it appears to me that some method of breaking up such associations, accompanied by systematic training under healthy conditions, would be advantageous.... The master feels very strongly that what the men require is to be given continuous work, which they are able to do, and to be separated the one from the other. They regard the workhouse as a kind of club house in which they put up with a certain amount of inconvenience, but have very pleasant evenings."[33]

It was stated that the Marylebone workhouse deals with 300 of these men every week.

The master of the Bethnal Green workhouse confirmed what has been said. "This class of man," he said, "is well known to the master of every London workhouse as the able-bodied loafer. As a rule he is a strong, healthy fellow, knowing no trade, having a great dislike to work, and possessing all the attributes of the soft-shelled crab, willing to live upon the fruits of the labour of the worker, so long as he can avoid the sharing of responsibility himself. There is no doubt that the moment this man becomes an inmate, so surely does he deteriorate into a worse character still. Unless rigorously dealt with and made to work under strict supervision, he has a fairly good time in the house, and after a month or so he has mastered every trick of the trade, and becomes a confirmed in-and-outer, taking his day's pleasure by giving the necessary notice, and returning the same evening more contented than ever with his lot in the house. Something for nothing is degrading the man, until all of the manhood has left him, and there remains for the ratepayers to keep an idle, dissolute remnant."

To quote another witness, who referred specially to the Poplar Union:—

"The pauper in the workhouse intends to be there; he is either going to be there or in some other institution all the days of his life. My experience is, that the average have been in from ten to twelve years, and some of them nineteen years, and they are young men now. The workhouse is no deterrent to any man. It simply harbours them, and as long as the workhouses exist, these men will exist."

Similarly, the report of the Stepney Guardians for 1908 states:-

"There are too many opportunities in a general workhouse for the vicious of both sexes to meet. The dining hall and other parts of the workhouse common to all classes afford means of communication—generally of an evil character. It is no uncommon event for a man and woman to strike up an acquaintance in a workhouse, which ultimately results in increased burdens on the ratepayers. Messages are conveyed, billets doux, ill spelt but tender, are exchanged; an assignation is made, resulting in the amorous couple leaving the workhouse together when, dispensing with the blessing of the Church on their union, they tramp the countryside as man and wife during the summer months. At the approach of winter the man returns, with a sigh of relief, to his old bachelor quarters in the workhouse, where the gleeful account of his exploits is listened to with open-mouthed admiration by the youthful male pauper, and with envy by the hoary sinner. In this manner, a feeble-minded woman and a physically enfeebled man—both chronic paupers and chargeable to this union—begat five children, all of whom were born in the workhouse, and were reared at the expense of the ratepayers."

The same testimony comes from rural districts. "It is certain," Mr. B. Fleming, the Poor Law Inspector for Dorset, writes, "that the tendency has been to induce the loafer class to think that they would have provision made for them, and that therefore they need not trouble much about it for themselves."[34]

Writing of the "in-and-out" class of workhouse inmates, the Poor Law Commissioners say:—

"It is not too much to say that this class has been created by our administration of the Poor Law, while the law itself affords no means of checking it now that it has come into existence. These are the men and women who frequent the workhouse for short periods, often taking their families with them, and are constantly taking their discharge. They go out when they want more licence, and return when they need to recruit themselves after a debauch."[35]

Moreover, the married urban loafer, like the married vagrant, inflicts incalculable injury upon others. While it has been made a misdemeanour to drag children round the country, the pauper of the "in-and-out" type can still with impunity commit a crime no less outrageous upon the offspring for whose decent maintenance he is legally and morally responsible. For the children of such intermittent paupers are introduced to workhouse life and breathe the atmosphere of pauperisation from their earliest consciousness. When the father enters the house, the children go with him, and for them, as for him, life is an alternation of abject dependence and equally abject liberty.

"Through these children," says the Report of the Poor Law Commission truly, "the evil (of pauperisation) is being perpetuated to another generation, for they get no chance of education, while they become habituated to constant appeals to the Poor Law, and lack the advantages of either home or school life."[36]

As a Poor Law Guardian, I had to do, on one occasion, with an able-bodied pauper of this kind, who, on the ground of destitution, obtained admittance to the workhouse with his large family. Once in, he was so satisfied with his new surroundings and freedom from responsibility, that for many months it proved impossible to dislodge him. Under the master's eye he was willing to do the work required of him, but he had no wish to find employment outside, and did not leave the house until he was literally ejected.

It is true that the Poor Law Act of 1899 gives power to Boards of Guardians to appropriate neglected children, and so preserve them from the ill effects of their vicious training.[37] That is undoubtedly kind to the child, and in the end it is bound to be advantageous to the public. But here comes in an absurd anomaly: Whatever the theory of the law may be, we practically leave it to the option of the parents to evade responsibility or not as they will. All they have to do is to make themselves scarce, and the Poor Law officials and the police may find them or they may not. I know of one Union in whose workhouse there are, at the moment of writing, six children of one father, and he an able-bodied man, who has fled from the district once, and only refrains from doing so again because he knows that he is under strict police supervision. Rousseau deposited his offspring on the steps of the Foundling Hospital at dead of night, and went away, thinking noble thoughts, for this was a part of the harmonious "Social Contract," and everybody else could do the same. The English loafer yields his children to workhouse care with but the gentlest pretence of unwillingness, and betakes himself to liberty, lightened of a disagreeable burden, and reflecting that of all strange devices for relieving him and his kind of parental responsibility and of encouraging the multiplication of paupers, the Poor Law is the strangest.

Prosecution for maintenance, if the offender can be found, and a short imprisonment if he refuses to pay, are the corrective measures already available against the parents who culpably transfer their parental liabilities to the public, and over 3,000 convictions are registered yearly by the courts for neglect to maintain family.[38] It is notorious, however, that proceedings of this kind are taken by Poor Law authorities reluctantly, since the magistrates in many districts habitually stretch the law in favour of defaulting parents. What we should do, and shall have to do, in such a case, is to take the loafer, too, and after disciplining the idleness out of his nature, give him back his family obligations, and see that he discharges them.

Furthermore, in all large towns a considerable proportion of the frequenters of the casual wards are not even bona-fide vagrants, but simply idlers of the locality, who, so long as these refuges exist, feel no disposition to work and establish homes for themselves. Of the men admitted to the casual wards of the Manchester and Chorlton Unions in a certain year, no fewer than 4,000 were found on analysis to belong to the neighbourhood. The experience of Birmingham is to the same effect. Of the London casual it has been said:—

"He is in most cases a loafer who simply migrates from one ward to another. He is in Whitechapel to-night, and in St. George's-in-the-East to-morrow night, and he will go across to Kensington the next night, but he does not leave London.... They have their times for excursions, when they go either to the seaside or hop-picking or fruit-picking, but for the greater part of the year they are in London, and they circulate round about the casual wards."

The number of admissions to the Metropolitan casual wards in 1907 was 196,470; the number of separate individuals was not known, but 18,009 persons were identified as having been admitted more than once during a month. The Report of the Vagrancy Committee states, indeed, that 98 per cent. of the persons admitted to the casual wards of London are loafers. A witness stated before that Committee:—

"They are not working men. If you give them a job for a day or two days perhaps they might do that, but you must not expect them to work longer; they do not like working longer than a day or two.... A lot of them are young fellows. If you could get hold of them when first they come into the casual ward and get them away, something might be done."[39]

By way of substantiating the foregoing statement, it may be recalled that of 689 casual paupers prosecuted at the Metropolitan police courts by the Poor Law authorities in 1907, 538 or 78 per cent. were charged with refusing or neglecting to work.

The indulgent spirit in which the urban loafer is regarded in this country is well illustrated by the free hand given in London to the army of work-shirkers and unemployables, irrespective of nationality, to take possession of the public streets for the purpose of demonstrations in every time of acute unemployment. A large number of the men who paraded the streets on the latest occasion of the kind were unquestionably deserving men, who would have accepted any work offered to them, but the vast majority were notoriously only unemployed because they had neither desire nor intention to be otherwise. "Those who are not loafers are worse," was the verdict of a police inspector who had scrutinised one of the processions; "there are very few genuine unemployed among them; most of them never did a day's work in their lives," and another police officer, who analysed a procession at my request, assured me that he knew every man, and not one in fifty would ever do a day's work if he could help it. It was even worse with the London "unemployed" processions of the early months of 1903. When these were in full progress, the Chairman of the Wandsworth and Clapham Board of Guardians wrote to The Times:—

"The superintendent of the casual wards at our workhouse has had opportunities this week of seeing the processions of the so-called 'unemployed.' He assures me that he detected amongst the number several hundreds who habitually came before him as vagrants, and it is his opinion, after consultation with others holding similar positions to his own under the Poor Law authorities, that 80 per cent. of those who are allowed to parade the streets belong to the casual class."

At a meeting of the Strand Board of Guardians it was reported that "hundreds of the processionists were tramps and workhouse inmates, who had asked leave to look for work and took part in the march so that they might spend their share of the collection in beer." From first to last these demonstrations were organised and engineered by socialistic agents, who called the tunes and paid the pipers generously so long as the public provided the necessary funds. Beginning with a couple of men and a collecting box, they expanded on the snowball principle day by day, until they numbered hundreds of men and scores of collecting boxes, and at last created a street scandal which was daily anticipated with mixed curiosity, disgust, and alarm. There was never any spontaneity about the processions; agitators fixed the rendezvous, marshalled their hosts, conducted the tours, and paid the demonstrators so much per head for the walk round, according to the proceeds of the collecting boxes. So far did the farce go, that police constables were at last told off to assist the loafers to perform their perambulations with due convenience and order. And these bands of "demonstrators," composed of such elements, had the audacity to go through the solemn farce of passing deliberately drawn-up resolutions day after day, protesting that owing to the selfishness of the propertied classes they were doomed to lives of "compulsory idleness," and calling on the Government to adopt measures to remove the "state of famine in time of peace" from which they suffered!

It was quite in keeping with the absurdity of the whole proceedings that a strike of the processionists, caused by a deduction from the day's pay by way of contribution towards the expenses of the show, should have threatened the collapse of the parades long before the philanthropy of the spectators was exhausted. And yet while this wholesale begging was condoned by the police authorities, and carried on with their help, isolated mendicants were all the time pursued with the customary rigours of the law. "At the North London Police Court," ran a newspaper record, while the processions were at their height, "a costermonger was sent to twenty-one days' hard labour for begging as one of the unemployed. He admitted that he had hitherto been in organised processions, but thought he would do better by begging alone. A gaoler stated that he had known the prisoner for many years, and he seldom, if ever, did any work."

Happily, although public convenience suffered, public security was not seriously threatened during those eventful days, when, out of sheer jealousy lest the sacred principle of the "liberty of the subject" to do what he likes should be infringed, the authorities, day after day, handed over the principal thoroughfares of the Metropolis to a mob, whose will to create anarchy was probably only checked by its physical inability. Under the same favourable circumstances, a well-fed mob might have placed London, for a time, under a reign of terror.

What the intelligent foreign observer thinks about English town loafers, and the indulgent way in which we humour their weaknesses, may be judged from the following reflections of a recent German visitor to London:—

"When the Londoners say, 'These are our unemployed,[40] they do not see what strikes a foreigner at once—that all these dirty, ragged figures do not give the impression of out-of-works at all—that they look rather like people who endeavour to keep miles away from work. No man who really wants work looks like the average London unemployed. He has no time to lounge at street corners or patrol the principal streets—which are certainly not places where work is to be found. Doubtless there are thousands of genuine out-of-works in London, but these are not the people whom the foreigner sees.

"The foreigner naturally asks: How do these people live? And the answer makes him acquainted with an English institution which is probably unique of its kind in the whole world—which is certainly unknown to the German: it is the 'workhouse.' The name recalls our own house of correction, but the 'workhouse' is in fact the opposite of that. As a rule, it is a fine building—in Lambeth we might almost call it a palace—to which every man who is out of work has access. There he receives supper, bed, and breakfast, after which he is able to go in search of work again. If he finds none he may return to the workhouse in the evening, and, as one might expect, this is what he generally does.

"The workhouses are maintained at enormous cost, and it is characteristic of the good heartedness of the Englishman—for the Englishman is good hearted—that he pays this cost, out of local taxes, without grumbling. That the institution is a wise one, however, I doubt. The man who says to himself that he must have sixpence or he will have nothing to eat to-morrow will go to far more trouble to get these coppers together than the one who says: "At the worst I can go into the workhouse.'"[41]

[CHAPTER III.]

DETENTION COLONIES AND LABOUR HOUSES.

In whatever direction we look, misguided indulgence is seen to be shown to classes amongst the least deserving in the community. But our systematic playing with this question cannot relieve us from the duty of facing it in all its seriousness, and of adopting whatever measures a due consideration of public policy may suggest.

I come, then, to the question of remedies. What can, what should, be done? Shall we, in despair, settle down to the conviction that the loafer is not to be extinguished, but must be regarded as filling an inevitable, though not, of course, a desirable, place in society? Or shall we try to exterminate him by the expedient of compelling him to perform the social functions which alone establish for him or for anyone a right to any place in the commonwealth? I take the latter view, and I base my contentions upon the maxim of Stuart Mill—no unreasoning advocate of interference with personal freedom:—

"Whenever there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty and placed in that of morality or law."[42]

To the proposals originally put forward so many years ago, I return with increased conviction, not only of their practicableness, but of their urgency; with the assurance, moreover, that public opinion now fully recognises their reasonableness and necessity. Proceeding from the presupposition that the maintenance of vagrants at the public expense is contrary to sound economic law, to the common interest, and to commonsense, I contend that the status of vagrancy should be made in reality, what it is already in theory, illegal. That principle admitted, the task which remains will be less to do away with the vagrant than to make the vagrant do away with himself. To do this will entail no revolutionary change of the law; on the contrary, it will only be necessary to put into operation, seriously and systematically, the law as it exists at the present time.

And first I would lay down as a foundation principle, as the starting point from which all reformative measures must proceed, the transference from the Poor Law to the Penal Law of the entire tribe of loafers who systematically abuse public relief—the vagrant of the casual ward; the shirker of domestic responsibilities, who throws his family upon the Union and absconds, or who sneaks into the workhouse on every possible pretext, dragging wife and children with him; the drone who makes periodical visits to the labour yard; and the able-bodied pauper whose destitution is due to intemperance or an otherwise irregular life.

To the Poor Law and to Poor Law institutions people of these classes emphatically do not belong, and all past failure to make the slightest impression upon them is in my opinion primarily due to the persistent mistake of treating their case as coming under the law of public charity—a mistake which is also a wrong so long as the idle poor are maintained, in any degree whatsoever, at the expense of the industrious poor.

The practical measures which would be needful are these.

(1) In the first place, let loafing of every kind, and not merely the loafing of the casual pauper, be made a misdemeanour. For if we begin to exterminate the idler of the highway, we must, in fairness, deal with his kinsman of the street and of the workhouse.

(2) In sympathy with this measure, restrict the right of free migration in the case of the destitute unemployed to the extent of making it dependent on permission to travel in search of work. (The man with money in his pocket is his own master all the world over.)

(3) Further, and particularly, abolish the casual ward, as we logically must do. This may seem a strong measure, but so far as the tramp is concerned, it is really the fulcrum on which the lever of reformation must rest. "The why is plain as way to parish church." If vagabondage is to be regarded as an offence to be punished instead of an innocent weakness (which it never was and never can be) to be humoured, then the vagrant's free lodging-house must disappear. It is obvious that so long as we maintain wayside shelters for the special reception of tramps, it will be hopeless to repress vagrancy. The casual ward invites vagrants and creates them. Moreover, it is entirely incompatible with the laws which already exist for the nominal repression of vagrancy. It is illegal to beg, it is illegal to wander about without means of subsistence, but there is no habitual vagrant living who is not guilty of this compound fracture of the law, and few who have not been punished for it. Nevertheless, we wink at these misdemeanours, and in housing some 10,000 vagrants every night in the casual wards, we offer direct encouragement to known law-breakers to persist in illegality.

(4) But at these negative and repressive measures it will be impossible to stop. Their very operation would compel us to go further, for the tramp and the loafer having been hustled from their wonted haunts, and the casual ward having been shut in their faces, they would either have to betake themselves to honest work, or they would fall into the hands of the police, either as mendicants or homeless wanderers.

Here is seen the need for a new departure in our penal system. At present no correctional institutions exist suited to offenders whose radical fault is constitutional idleness. Discipline, enforced by all necessary use of compulsion, is their principal need, and this discipline can only be given in special institutions.

The ordinary prison has proved its uselessness for the treatment of the vagrant and loafer, for not only has it failed as a reformative agency, but its life has no terrors for him. By the testimony of prison governors and magistrates, the tramp, on the whole, prefers the prison to the present workhouse; an institution that would exercise a deterrent influence must, therefore, offer a severer discipline than either.

Complaint was made by the Standing Joint Committee of the Lincolnshire magistrates some time ago that mendicancy had increased 100 per cent. on account of the superiority of the prison dietary. "The professional tramp," said one magistrate, "was no fool, and he very much preferred in many instances to go to prison than to enter the casual wards of the workhouse." The Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee appointed in 1903 to consider the question of vagrancy reported :—

"Frequent cases have come to the knowledge of the Committee in which tramps in the casual wards, when threatened with prosecution before the magistrates as a consequence of a refusal to work, have openly avowed their preference for prison life, and cases are also noted where, after sentence, the prisoners have made a similar statement as to their having no dislike for prison. This failure, they believe, is also partly due to the changes in the form of the 'hard labour' enforced, due to the abolition of tread wheel, crank, etc. Owing to the difficulty of arranging suitable work, and to requirements of the prison for chapel, meal hours, marching to and from work, etc., the hours of actual labour, as well as the severity of the work available, bear no comparison with those of many kinds of free labour outside. Prison conditions, indeed, to many persons with so low a standard of physical comfort as the average vagrant, must be extremely comfortable and even attractive."

Evidence to the same effect might be cited in abundance from other quarters. The point is one to which the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy gave special attention. Asked by the Committee "Do you not find that the seven days' sentence given to these tramps induces many of them to commit some small offence to get imprisonment, with a view to being helped along by rail to their destination?" Lieut.-Col. J. Curtis Hayward, Chairman of the Gloucestershire Vagrancy Committee, replied:—

"I do not think the prison has any terror. For instance, in one union they have had a great number of cases of refractory tramps, and they have always stated, when they have been had up, that they would rather do the hard work in prison than break stones in the workhouse, because it is easier work. I have been told by the governor of a gaol that some of the prisoners said that they liked the fare better than they did that of the workhouse."

Another witness, before the same Committee (Mr. A. C. Mitchell), speaking for Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, said:—

"I think that under present conditions the sending of vagrants to gaol is utterly useless. They want to go to gaol; the conditions in gaol are better than those in casual wards, and particularly in bad weather they prefer going to gaol. Over and over again it has come before us: a man commits some petty offence in order to go to gaol for a short period."[43]

What are needed in this country are the Detention Colonies and Labour Houses[44] which have long been provided in Continental countries for this type of offender. To these institutions, differentiated according as they were intended for hopeful or for incorrigible cases, all vagrants and loafers should, after due warning, be committed for a period sufficiently long for disciplinary purposes.

Besides being penal in character, these institutions might also offer, under suitable conditions, a temporary home to unemployed persons of all kinds. It might be objected that this would be a practical admission of the principle of the Right to Work. For myself I do not care much for phrases, but even if this should be the case, I would reply that the Right to Work is an infinitely better and wiser and safer principle to concede to the masses than the Right to be Idle. And yet the admission of the Right to Work would be no new thing in this country. It was enacted as early as the fourteenth century, in a Poor Law of 12 Richard II. That law drew a distinction between "beggars impotent to serve" and "beggars able to labour." The former were "continually to abide during their lives" in their native towns, or wherever else the enactment of the statute happened to find them, and the latter were to be given work suited to their strength and capacity. It may be recalled, too, how this same principle was carried further by the Poor Laws of Elizabeth's reign.

It follows that the Detention Colonies and Labour Houses, by offering admission to unemployed persons willing to enter voluntarily, would allow Poor Law authorities to abolish the labour yards for test work. Few Poor Law workers defend these yards, which under the existing law are flagrantly abused by local able-bodied loafers.

Forced labour for the loafer is still more an English tradition, though, like the Right-to-Work principle, long disregarded. The Act of 27 Henry VIII. (1535) enjoined local authorities, besides maintaining the impotent and aged poor:—

"To cause and to compel all and every the said sturdy vagabonds and valiant beggars to be set and kept to continual labour, in such wise as by their said labours they, and every one of them, may get their own living with the continual labour of their own hands."

The cost of these institutions was to be defrayed by alms collected by the churchwardens and others, but any parish which neglected to carry out the Act was liable to a fine of 20s. for every month of omission. The Act of I Edward VI. (1548) contained similar provisions. Early in the reign of Elizabeth a proposal was laid before the Government by a Somerset justice of the peace for the erection of houses of correction, adjacent to gaols, for the reception of convicted vagrants, who should be there "kept in work, except some person would take them into service," and, added the memorialist, "I dare presume the tenth felony will not be committed that now is." An Act of 14 Elizabeth (1572) empowered the local justices to use surplus monies collected for the relief of the impotent poor in putting rogues and vagabonds to work in "convenient places," under the control of the overseers. A more systematic plan was that proposed by the Act of 1575, requiring Quarter Sessions to establish "abiding houses or places convenient in some market town or corporate town or other place," to be called houses of correction, and to be stocked with wool, hemp, flax, iron, or "such other stuff as was best suited to the country" (i.e., the locality), with implements for the manufacture thereof, and in these houses were to be "straitly kept, as well in diet as work, and also punished from time to time," vagrants and beggars, and other people of questionable utility to the commonwealth. The Act threatened with a fine of £5 every justice who left Quarter Sessions "before conference had touching the execution of this statute," the fines to go towards the cost of establishing and furnishing the houses of correction. Similarly, an Act of 1597 required the justices to provide houses of correction for vagrants to be used in addition to the county gaols. In 1609 an Act was passed exposing to a penalty of £5 every justice of a county in which a house of correction was not provided within two years. These institutions were established on a considerable scale, but in course of time their reformative purpose gave place to a penal one. As the Vagrancy Committee point out:—

"In 1630 a Royal Commission, issued for the purpose of enforcing the vagrancy laws, directed that the houses of correction should be made adjacent to the common gaols and the gaoler made governor of them, so that the prisoners in the gaols might be taught to work as well as those committed to the houses of correction. After this date the houses of correction seem to have been regarded more and more as places of punishment, to which persons were committed for definite terms to do hard labour, rather than to be taught to work; and in many counties the common gaols were used as houses of correction. It is from an amalgamation of the two that the modern local prison has sprung."[45]

Throughout the following century the tendency to regard vagrancy less from the standpoint of public safety and policy than from that of public expense gained the upper hand. Vagrants, as such, had ceased to be obnoxious; what was disliked was their propensity for throwing themselves upon the charity of parishes in which they had no settlement. Hence the policy of whipping these offenders, whether women or men, and restoring them to their legal parishes, was consistently followed in the eighteenth century. It was an irrational and costly policy, though in keeping with the particularist spirit of the times. In 1821 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to consider the abuses which had arisen out of this system of "passing" vagrants, and, as a result, the existing legislation on the subject was repealed in 1822. It was stated in the House of Commons at that time that in Wiltshire and an adjoining county £2,587 had been expended from the county funds in one year in "passing" vagrants and that in 1821, £100,000 had, in the aggregate, been spent in this way.

Nevertheless, that the idea of curing the loafer by forced labour was not entirely forgotten, is proved by the fact that in 1848, when the Poor Law Board took the place of the Poor Law Commissioners appointed under the Poor Law Act of 1834, a proposal to return to the old disciplinary method was put forward by one of the first Poor Law Inspectors, Mr. Aneurin Owen, who recommended the establishment of pauper depots on islands off the coast, at which local stone might be broken for road use.

I confess to attaching more importance to the disciplinary influence of rigorous restraint, coupled with active exertion, than to any number of periodical months in county gaols. Punishment may do good or may not: but punishment is not enough. It is not—in the main, at any rate—a dangerous criminal class with which we have to do, but for the most part the weak and aimless characters whose great need is the moral tonic of discipline and compulsion. Lodged in such institutions as will be described in later chapters, these evaders of all social obligations would learn, or at least would be taught, both how to work and the duty of industry. As I shall show, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland have all found it advantageous to establish Labour Houses, true to their name, for the special treatment of social parasites of this kind, and while imitation in details may be neither possible nor desirable, their experience throws valuable light upon both sides of the problem—on the one hand, the case of those hardened offenders upon whom indulgence is thrown away and, on the other hand, the case of the budding loafers who have not irrevocably chosen between the life of diligence and that of sloth.

The possibilities of the philanthropic Labour Colonies of the Continental pattern, to be conducted by Boards of Guardians, have impressed many Poor Law reformers who have begun to occupy themselves with the tramp. I may claim to know well the work of the best voluntary Labour Colonies of the Continent, having visited some of them, and while agreeing that institutions of this kind—albeit with the addition of compulsory powers of detention, which the Continental colonies do not possess—might do for young and first offenders, I am confident that a régime many degrees stricter and more methodical would be necessary before they could hope to make any impression upon the habitual loafer. Here, however, we see the idea of coddling the tramp, even while we are trying to reform him, creeping in already in a new guise. These good people readily admit that discipline of some kind is necessary; but while they would restrain the tramp henceforth, it would be with cords of love. The poor fellow has been taught by the rude buffeting of the workhouse to hate labour. Who would love work after he had, for years, been passing through the mill of the casual ward, which grinds the instinct of diligence and self-respect slowly, indeed, but exceeding small? This has been the hard experience of the tramp. The continual sight of heaps of stones and oakum, which he was expected to disintegrate according to their kind, by way of paying for his humble bed and board, has created in him a distaste for even more dignified kinds of labour, so that the very sight of a spade, a pick-axe, or a dirty apron gives him quite a turn. So the tramp's tender-hearted, ever-faithful sympathisers are arguing; he shall not be passed under draconian laws if they can help it.

There can be no hope of advance on the right lines until this mischievous appeal to sentiment is abandoned. It has been the bane of the Vagrancy Laws for generations, and more than anything else is responsible for the present difficulties of the tramp problem in its several phases. Short of compulsion, the tramp will not work, and the hope of inducing him to take to a life of industry, by placing him in an atmosphere of art and poetry, perfumes and texts, is to go counter to all the lessons of experience, and to utterly misunderstand the instincts of the tramp nature. Else how explain the notorious fact that wherever a workhouse adopts a fairly severe labour test there the tramp cannot be persuaded to go; while, conversely, the easier the terms of admission—or, more truly, of exit—the fuller is the casual ward. I read in the newspapers, at the moment of writing, that "The new labour tests adopted by the Sleaford Guardians are answering very satisfactorily, and at the fortnightly meeting, the master reported that during the past six months there had been a decrease of 250 vagrants at the Union." The fact that this official had also to complain of "dissatisfied vagrants," and "the breaking of windows and other Union property" by these irreconcilable visitors, only confirms the truth that vagrancy and hatred of work are convertible terms. But, if so, it follows that it is only by curing this unsocial aversion to exertion that the unsocial practice of vagabondage will cease to perplex and scandalise society, and to do that, coercive measures of a very definite kind will have to be employed, let the repository of power be as it may. The treatment of the tramp must, of course, be humane—that it should be other is inconceivable in these days, when even the inmates of our prisons are assured a standard of life far beyond the reach and hope of thousands of the poor who help to maintain the prisons and the prisoners—but it must, none the less, be distinctly punitive and deterrent. It must not be desirable to be sent to a disciplinary establishment of this kind; a man must rather be willing to work voluntarily outside than to work compulsorily inside.

In addition to those sentenced to detention for vagrancy, the forced Labour Houses would meet the case of several other classes of notorious delinquents. They include the following:—

(1) Husbands who desert their families, and against whom legal redress cannot be obtained.

(2) Paupers of the "in-and-out" class who use the workhouse as a means of evading their parental responsibilities.

(3) Able-bodied paupers whose destitution is due to idleness and unwillingness to maintain themselves.

(4) Dissolute persons whose life is an alternation of more or less regular work and spells of indulgence from which the workhouse is their only hope of recovery.

(5) Certain classes of confirmed inebriates.

(6) Unmarried women of inferior mental and moral capacity, dependent on the rates, who have had more than one illegitimate child.

Some of these offenders would be committed by the magistrates owing to the action of the police in the ordinary way. In Poor Law cases it would be justifiable to dispense with open judicial proceedings, and to empower the Poor Law Authority to commit, on a certificate signed by one or more magistrates, giving the offender (as in Hamburg)[46] the right of appeal, first to the authority itself against the execution of its resolution to proceed, and before the execution of a magisterial certificate to Petty Sessions.

There remains another class of persons who constitute a serious social burden and inconvenience, the criminals, loafers, and paupers of alien origin, who probably are more numerous, and certainly are more indulgently treated, in England than in any Continental country. At present a small minority of the criminal aliens convicted are deported after the completion of their sentences. The number of aliens (the Colonies and India not counted), convicted and committed to the local prisons in 1907 was 2,799, or 4.3 per cent. of the total number. The aliens recommended for deportation in that year numbered 289.[47] It is conceivable that deportation will be resorted to upon a very much more extensive scale, and eventually that the duty and expense of punishment, where the alien is detained, will be undertaken by the country of nationality; there is obviously little reason or satisfaction in maintaining criminal aliens in prison when banishment awaits them immediately on release.[48] As for the alien vagabond and loafer we have the example of Continental States to guide us. The laws of Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland expressly enjoin expulsion as the treatment of such persons; they are simply taken across the nearest frontier, and are warned against returning. It would not be unreasonable to apply to alien loafers the summary treatment which their own Governments do not hesitate to enforce. As to the destitute who fall upon the Poor Law, it should be possible to conclude with Continental Governments treaties applying internationally the principle of "relief settlement," under which each State would either receive its own citizens who became chargeable to the public funds of another country, or at least would refund the costs of their maintenance to the Poor Law Authority which discharged this duty for it.

The latest complete return of alien paupers in England and Wales relates to July 1, 1903, when their number was 1,753, of whom 897 were relieved in London, and 856 in the provinces. They included 587 indoor paupers, 694 outdoor paupers, and 472 insane in asylums. Exclusive of the insane, they consisted of 117 men relieved with wives or children, 95 wives of men relieved, 95 women relieved with children, but not with husbands, 362 other men, 193 other women, 359 children of men and women relieved, and 60 other children. Of the total of 1,753 alien paupers of all classes, 715 or 41 per cent. were from Russia and Poland, 502 or 30 per cent. from Germany, 110 or 6 per cent. from France, 106 or 6 per cent. from Italy, 70 or 4 per cent. from Norway and Sweden, and the remaining 250 represented twenty-three other countries. In London the aliens represented 0.74 per cent. of the total pauperism, in the provinces they represented 0.33 per cent. The support of these outsiders constitutes a public burden for which there seems no moral justification. The question of their treatment is one which should not be approached in a captious, much less a bigoted, spirit, but if it is inequitable—as the law declares it to be—that one English Poor Law Union should support the paupers of another, it is doubly inequitable that the nation should show to other countries an unequally reciprocated generosity in the care of so many of their citizens, and these amongst the least desirable.

It would be essential to success that detention should, in all but the most hopeful cases, be for a long period. This is not only the practice of all Continental Labour Houses, but the past prison treatment of vagrants in this country proves the uselessness of short sentences. In Germany the term of commitment may extend to two years; in Belgium it must fall within two and seven years. At the same time discretion should be given to the authorities to curtail the sentence, within fixed limits, where the detainee gives proof of reformation and a desire to follow a regular mode of life. In such a case, release would be on parole, and in the event of a repetition of the offence which entailed commitment, the man would be reapprehended and sent back to the Labour House to complete his sentence without further legal procedure.

There are strong reasons why Detention Colonies and Labour Houses should be county institutions, just as they are provincial institutions in Prussia. The fact that many of their inmates, under the organisation proposed, would be defaulters committed on the application of the Poor Law Authorities, is a strong argument for such a local basis. There is reason to fear that if the Colonies and Labour Houses were formally incorporated in the prison system of the country, they would imbibe too much the prison atmosphere and spirit, and would tend to become identical with existing houses of correction, just as the houses of correction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ultimately lost their special character as reformatory institutions. It might be desirable that offenders sentenced should be removed for detention to the county in which they had legal settlement, in preference to being punished in the county in which the offence was committed, but failing that course, the county or parish of settlement would be liable for all costs of maintenance as in the case of non-settled paupers.

While primarily the cost of these institutions would be a county charge, Poor Law Authorities would be required to pay on a fixed scale for the maintenance of all persons detained at their instigation, and it might be expedient to require in respect of every detainee a certain contribution from the parish in which he had legal settlement, as is the case in some of the Swiss cantons. The liability of the detainees themselves would be compounded by their labour, which it would be the business of the Colonies and Labour Houses to employ to the best possible advantage. Although, on this plan, the institutions would be under county management, it would be necessary that the State should exercise far-going powers of control, either through the Home Office, the Local Government Board, or the Prison Board, and that all schemes of organisation, regulations, the more important appointments, and also expenditure of certain kinds, should receive the approval of the Central Authority.

It should not be required, nor would it be necessary, that every county should have its own Detention Colony or Labour House. For reasons both of economy and efficiency counties would be allowed to combine. Only in this way would it be possible to secure variety of type in the establishment of these institutions. Not much experience would be needed to show that the same treatment would not suit every class of offender; most of the Colonies, no doubt, would be fairly uniform, but one or more would be required for the more rigorous discipline which would have to be meted to old offenders. Possibly, a single Colony of this kind, organised after the pattern of the Beggars' Depot of Merxplas, in Belgium,[49] would serve for the whole country. If the existing Poor Law is, in the elegant phrase now current, to be "broken up", it might be found that some of the existing rural workhouses would serve as the nuclei of Detention Colonies of the milder type.

It would be a condition of establishing Detention Colonies and Labour Houses, that they should exist for the purpose of hard work, for the art of labour is only acquired by labour. Of such work the average loafer is quite capable, if only the necessary pressure could be applied. As to vagrants, official statistics show that the majority of them are in the able-bodied period of life: of 5,579 casual paupers relieved on January 1, 1900, about 70 per cent. were between thirty-five and sixty-five years of age; 23 per cent. were between sixteen and thirty-five years, and only 5 per cent. were above sixty-five. If the vagrant can, every day, walk the almost incredible distances which he tells us, there is in him immense store of energy which is going to waste. A Detention Colony, properly organised, and infused with an atmosphere of industry, would use this energy for the good of society and of the loafer himself.

It would be judicious, as well as equitable, to pay the detained worker wages, or a bonus on output, by way of encouraging him to diligence and exertion, and of providing him with decent clothing, tools, and a small sum of money wherewith to begin life again on regaining his liberty. Even the most conscientious of free workmen is spurred by the thought of the wages which will reward his efforts, and there is nothing ignoble in such a stimulus. The natural atmosphere of a Detention Colony is that of the outside labour market, to which, by right, the detained workers belong, and the existence of a money nexus between the man and his work will be a set-off against the chafing thought of bondage, a constant reminder that the man, in doing well for the colony, is also doing something good for himself, and an incentive to those habits of honesty and application which will alone enable him to regain, and permanently retain, control over his own life. Moreover, the wages or bonus should be held before the worker in the clearest and most definite manner—not as an act of charity, but as a "business proposition," not as largess, but as a right. If the man can be incited to a healthy egoism, so much the better; he will be the less likely to fall back when he has to fight his way outside. In short, payment should be an essential part of Detention Colony policy, and the moral value of the habit of money earning should not be spoiled by too much talk of privileges and favours. The character of the Colonies and of their inmates, the unfavourable conditions under which much of the work would have to be done, and the limited market that would be available for its produce, would necessarily restrict the wages to a very small sum; the essential thing is that they should be paid, and that the workers should be able to estimate the amount of their possible gains beforehand.

It would seem expedient that every Colony or Labour House should follow a mixed economy of agriculture and industry. Wherever possible, a farm should be an essential part of it, in order that all such primary necessaries of life as milk, butter, meat, roots, and vegetables, might be produced, as far as practicable, by the aid of the inmates' labour. It would also be advantageous, following the example of the Voluntary Colonies which have been established in this and other countries, to begin each settlement on a tract of land, a considerable part of which, at least, is undeveloped, with a view to the provision of an abundance of rough outdoor labour by means of works of reclamation, and to securing to the Colony the increased value which such works would create. It is also desirable that the Colonies, while lying away from towns, should have good means of communication.

On this subject some words may be quoted from a letter recently written to me by Monsieur Louis Stroobant, the energetic director of the Belgian State Beggars' Depot at Merxplas:—

"It is expedient to create establishments like Merxplas in districts but little populated and situated at some distance from towns. It is also indispensable that a colony of this kind should be near a small railway station or a canal, in a healthy country, should be well provided with drinking water, and should be in a locality in which the inmates would be able to make the bricks needed for buildings."

While, however, farm and land labour would form an essential source of employment and of gain in the Detention Colonies, the broad basis would need to be industrial. This is proved by the experience of all the forced Labour Colonies of the Continent of which I have knowledge, with the one exception of the Rummelsburg Labour House, near Berlin, and in this exceptional case the labour of the inmates is largely used in working the extensive sewage farms of the Berlin municipality. For obvious reasons, it would be necessary to choose such trades as could be carried on economically. In the first place, comparatively few men of the type suited to a Vagrant Colony are fit for ordinary farm work, which needs far more skill and intelligence than most urban advocates of Labour Colony schemes seem to imagine. After allowing for the relatively small number of inmates whose labour would be needed on the farm all the year round, the remainder, the great majority, would have to be employed on works of improvement, and in the workshops. The former work would necessarily be of an intermittent character, and even so would, in time, be reduced to very limited proportions. Unless outdoor employment altogether outside the establishment, such as road-making, draining, levelling, gardening, and forestry, were to be resorted to, as in some of the German forced Labour Colonies, it would be necessary to fall back on industrial work. Probably it would also be found that training in such work would offer most men the best chance of reinstating themselves in society when they obtained their release, and from the financial standpoint it would undoubtedly yield the best results for the Colony.

The question of allowing the products of Detention Colonies to compete with the products of free labour would inevitably arise, and not improbably the bare possibility of such competition occurring would be used as an argument against the establishment of these Colonies. It is obvious, however, that if the object of Detention Colonies is to assist their inmates to go back into the world able to earn an honest livelihood by industry, there must be some slight sacrifice of private interest to public advantage. Clearly, a policy of give and take would have to be adopted. There are products which forced Labour Colonies might legitimately be allowed to send into the open market without injury to the most sensitive outside industry—farm produce, for example, if a superfluity were available—but, as far as possible, the goods produced should be for home consumption and for the public services, as is the case in other countries. The interchange of products between the various Colonies should be encouraged, as it would not only lighten the common burden of maintenance, but would facilitate trade specialisation and the classification and grading of the inmates.

It would be unwise to hope, however, that any Labour Colony would be made self-supporting, in spite of some confident opinions to the contrary which were put before the Vagrancy Committee. The very fact that the Colonies would have to be worked with an inefficient class of labour, and the inevitably high costs of administration and oversight, make it impossible to regard them as profit-earning institutions. Nevertheless, if a Colony were well organised, well managed, and not too tightly restricted in the character of its industries and the extent of its market, the costs of maintenance should not be heavy. In this respect the experience of the Belgian and some of the Prussian and Swiss Labour Houses, dealt with later, is very encouraging.

More important than any consideration of immediate financial results, however, is the permanent influence of Colony discipline upon the inmates; if that were assured, financial success would also be certain, if not to the Colony itself, then to the community outside, which is practically the same thing. It is imperatively necessary, however, that we should at the outset be perfectly clear, not only as to the object aimed at in setting up Detention Colonies, but as to the practical possibilities of these Colonies. The object must not and cannot be to make perfect men out of most imperfect material; it will be the far more modest one of correcting tendencies of character and conduct which are socially injurious, with a view to returning the objects of care to freedom, if they seriously wish to regain freedom, able, under favourable circumstances, to take an independent place amongst the social hewers of wood and drawers of water. Only by setting before ourselves sane and moderate views shall we be working to serious purpose; to act otherwise will be to waste effort and court certain disappointment. It is hardly too much to say that it will be safer to aim too low than too high in undertaking the difficult task of socialising and moralising the loafer.

Let us indulge in no illusions on the subject: the proportion of the detainees who will be really "reformed" will be exceedingly small; those upon whom some wholesome influence, of longer or shorter duration, will be exerted, will form a larger number; but it is possible that the great majority will return again and again to detention and may even prove irremediable and entirely unfit to be restored to society.

In the main, therefore, the Detaining Colonies may, in the end, prove to be largely institutions of restraint. Yet even on that basis they are necessary, and the service which they will do to society will by no means be a negative service. They will, in fact, be carrying out the idea which more and more finds favour amongst penologists, and which must inevitably be far more rigorously applied in the future than it is now, that persons whose liberty is injurious to the commonwealth must be deprived of that liberty, permanently if necessary, and in any case so long as they continue capable of social harm.

It may be asked, can a place be found in a system of Detention Colonies and Labour Houses for the Voluntary Labour Colonies and Depots of various types which already exist in this country? To my mind, the latter would still be able to do a most important and indispensable work, and to do it under conditions more favourable to successful results than those which prevail at present. There is a fashion in opprobrium as in other things, and it appears to be fashionable to reproach these voluntary institutions with the small percentage of their good cases, and to question their efficiency and expediency. Even if their visible success were far less than it is, the Labour Colonies and Depots established by philanthropic agencies are deserving of the highest praise. They are trying to discharge, with inadequate resources, and with little public recognition, the duty of society towards two large classes of people—the unemployed and the unemployable, and they would have work enough of the same kind to do, even were Detention Institutions of the kind proposed in full operation.

The existing Labour Colonies and Depots would be specially useful in dealing with men who were temporarily unemployable owing to physical and moral deterioration. The Detention Colonies could not be expected to yield satisfactory results if they were handicapped with inmates of this kind, who belong rather to infirmaries than to workshops. Hence, in committing a physical wreck, incapable of immediate employment, the magistrates should have discretion to order the first part of his sentence to be passed in one of these Voluntary Institutions, where he would be able to receive more particular, and perhaps more sympathetic, treatment than would be possible in a hard-working Labour House. If, in the opinion of the authorities, the effect of this recuperative treatment made it unnecessary to pass the man, when fit, into a Detention Colony, there to complete his sentence, he would be released on parole, on the understanding that he would be liable to immediate reapprehension if his conduct gave rise to complaint. The Voluntary Colonies would continue to be managed as at present, but they would be entitled to grants of public money, the amount of which should be dependent less upon the exact number of cases received from the magistrates, than upon the rescue work of all kinds in which they were engaged, for this work is one of common advantage, and it is indefensible that the whole burden of cost should be borne by voluntary well-wishers.

Before leaving the question of repressive measures, it can hardly be superfluous to say that much could be done at once to discourage vagrancy and loafing if greater discrimination in almsgiving were shown. It sounds paradoxical, but it is true, that many of the people who, by their thoughtless doles, make loafers, are among the warmest friends of institutions called into existence for the one purpose of unmaking them. Nothing in the world is easier than to get rid of an importunate beggar by the gift of a coin; nothing is more difficult than to undo the harm which results, in most cases, from this open incitement to a life of idleness. To the average man all benevolence of this kind is a virtue; Emerson knew better when he spoke of the "vicious shillings" which he gave indiscriminately and against his better judgment. In Tudor times attempts were made by law to check almsgiving, insofar as it encouraged idleness and vagrancy;[50] and as late as 1744 (17 George II.) a law was passed exposing to a penalty of not less than 10s. or more than 40s. (or in default, one month's detention in a house of correction), any person who knowingly gave to a rogue or vagabond lodging or shelter and refrained from handing him over to a constable. Legislation of this kind is still in operation on the Continent. In 1889 the Canon of Schwyz, in democratic Switzerland, passed a law making "persons, who, by giving alms, favour begging from house to house or in the street," liable to a fine of 10 francs. Some time ago, also, a police ordinance was issued in the Uelzen district of Prussia, to the following effect:—

"(1) The giving of alms of any kind whatever to mendicant vagrants is prohibited on pain of a fine not exceeding 9 marks (9s.).

"(2) The giving of food and clothing for the relief of visible want is as before subject to no penalty, provided that there be no possibility of the recipient exchanging such gifts for money or brandy."

The legal prohibition in this country of indiscriminate charity, so called, even when offered to mendicants, and thus contributing to illegality, would nowadays be regarded as so serious an invasion of the "liberty of the subject" as to be inconceivable, and no writer who has a due reverence for that august principle would propose it.[51] Much may be done to discourage the practice, however, by educating public opinion to a recognition of the fact that only the philanthropy that is wise and well-directed can be truly helpful and beneficent.

The further question follows: What part, then, might the existing workhouse continue to play in our Poor Law system? In my opinion a part far more important than it has played in the past. For when the tramp and the loafer have been disposed of, there will remain the dependent and infirm poor, to the relief of whose needs it might, under improved conditions, be henceforth exclusively and more intelligently devoted. As, however, it would be no longer a workhouse, even to the extent of its casual wards, it would be expedient from every standpoint to discard for ever the hard name which it now bears, and to return to the earlier and less repulsive name of Poorhouse. One need not be very old to be able to recall the time when the name Bastille ("Basty," with a long "y," was the popular distortion of the word in my native Yorkshire), was the name by which the poorer classes universally expressed their horror of the workhouse: so much of modern French history had reached their contracted minds. That ill-repute has to some extent been outlived, yet the evil that institutions, as well as men, do lives after them, and an intense prejudice against the workhouse is still laudably common amongst the more deserving poor, and it will persist so long as the present name lasts, in spite of all that may be done to humanise our principles and methods of Poor Law administration. Poorhouses, of some sort, however named, we shall need to have so long as a Poor Law is necessary; and when the stigma has been removed from honest poverty, there is no reason to believe that the deserving recipients of public relief would show the old sense of humiliation and dread when necessity decrees their passage through portals which would no longer be those of hopeless indignity but of honourable comfort.

Happily, the improvement of these institutions proceeds apace, and to my mind the best thing is to continue improving them until they are good enough to serve as asylums for the most deserving of our aged and infirm poor, and infinitely too good for the idle and worthless. Several years ago the writer of the annual "Legal Poor of London" article in The Times called attention to the ameliorative influences which are so actively working in the metropolitan workhouses, and questioned whether too much was not being done for the inmates of these places:—

"For aged and deserving inmates," he said, "discipline is relaxed, the wards are made comfortable with carpets, window curtains, table covers, and arm chairs, and the cheery day rooms are supplied with literature, while a certain amount of privacy is allowed. The dietary has been improved, the electric light established, and warmth and comfort prevail, the inmates having no care as to the provision of maintenance. It is not surprising that they 'appear to appreciate' such attentions, nor is it matter for wonder that additions are made to their numbers. Nobody desires to see the poor, especially the aged poor, who are compelled to resort to the workhouse, treated otherwise than in a humane way; but sound views should prevail; and if we are to reckon the piling up of comforts in the workhouses as being 'so much to the good in the organisation of the life of the otherwise destitute poor,' we must be prepared to see thousands of ratepayers who are now less eligibly placed than the inmates of the workhouse, and whose burdens, in having to contribute to the maintenance of those inmates in greater comfort than themselves, are annually growing heavier, added to our present mass of indoor pauperism. Old age pauperism, encouraged by the altered conditions of the workhouses, has really become a serious question."

That is one aspect of the question, but there is another. The really pertinent point is, are the conditions of life nowadays prevalent in the workhouse in themselves too humane; do they go beyond the requirements of our modern civilisation? If not, there is no justification for holding the reforming hand. The right thing, surely, is to level up the conditions of life outside. Just as the admirable example set by so many public authorities in the treatment of their servants exerts a favourable influence in favour of employees in private service, so the standard of life insisted upon for the public workhouse, infirmary and asylum is bound to react upon the homes and habits of the independent labouring classes. If the workman who is taxed to keep the pauper in tolerable comfort does not enjoy at least equal conditions of existence himself, he will ask himself, and then others, the reason why. And who will blame him for so doing? Least of all the sociologist, who knows that no factor in the civilisation of society is more potent or more irresistible than the expansion of one's view of life and the multiplication of rational needs.

There remain the bona-fide seekers of work. For them no adequate provision exists, and the neglect to make it is a crying wrong. The present indiscriminate treatment of all wayfarers works unjustly in every way. It is unfair to the dissolute idler, whom it confirms in his sloth; it is monstrously unfair to the unwilling idler, whom it penalises for his misfortune. When society has done its duty to the tramp, it will not hesitate to recognise its responsibilities towards the genuine unemployed. It will do so not from motives of philanthropy alone, though it is a platitude to say that a society which professes to be based on Christian principles owes far more than it has ever paid or acknowledged to its workless members; it will do it also from considerations of social interest and well-being, recognising that it is the best charity and the truest economy to get an idle man's hands employed as soon as possible, the worst extravagance to allow him to remain unproductive a day longer than can be avoided. Labour is the first element in all wealth-creation, and every idle man is, in greater or less degree, a source of national impoverishment, for he is consuming without producing.

Wherever public labour registries have been established as part of a co-ordinated system, as in Bavaria and other parts of Germany, and in Switzerland, it has been found that, short of a free use of the railway, which is no doubt the ideal arrangement, hostels for decent wayfarers of the working class are essential. Those who think that such institutions are superfluous will do well to read the following story told by a working man correspondent in The Times:—

"Last summer some two hundred of us were given a week's notice, through slackness of work, by a powerful London company, and, although we all brought characters when we entered the company's service, we were informed on discharge that the company never gave references, and would not answer any letters with regard to our characters. Now, as everyone in London requires a personal character, unless we have influence at our back what chance have we for anything but casual work? One of the men, in despair of finding employment in London, left for the Lincolnshire potato harvest. He tells me that, not having money for all his journey, he walked down, and on several occasions had to put up at a casual ward, where he had to break 13 cwt. of stones in return for the shelter from the rain for the night. He says in some unions one has to lay on boards, with filthy rugs for bedclothes, and only dry bread to eat at meals, except at dinner, when you are allowed 1½ oz. of cheese. To avoid this organised charity he one night crept into a cart-shed. He was there found by the police, and by the goodness of the magistrates was sent on by train to Lincoln, and at the expense of the country provided with free board and lodge for fourteen days at the prison there. On being released he was fortunate enough to obtain work in the harvest fields, and being an all round good worker followed up a threshing machine all the winter till now. This is only one case, due entirely to the fact that many large firms will not give characters to men on discharge."

The incidents here recorded afford a striking illustration of a passage in the report of the Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee on Vagrancy:—

"With regard to the man seeking work, your Committee are of opinion that the present methods of dealing with vagrancy constitute a real danger.... A certain number of such men find their way into our prisons owing to their failure to establish their bona fide character as working men before the courts. The temptation afterward to drift gradually into the ranks of the professional tramp class is considerable. Loss of manual or technical skill soon follows, and the man who ought to be a producer becomes a costly burden to the community."

To distinguish between the genuine work-seeker and the fraud would be no difficult task. All that would be necessary would be to require the former to authenticate himself by a way-ticket or pass, attested either by the police, a trade union, a labour bureau, or a recent responsible employer.[52] On the strength of such a certificate, which a bona-fide applicant should have a right to demand, unless good reasons existed to the contrary, he might well be allowed to proceed on his journey, and be admitted to such public hostels as happened to lie in his way. Vagabondage pure and simple would be a game no longer worth the candle. If the itinerant were an industrial malingerer, the fact would speedily come to light, and with no Poor Law to fall back upon, the sure prospect of detention in a Labour House would await him. The entire supplanting of the so-called "model" lodging-houses by travellers' hostels in public hands would be one of the greatest benefits that could be conferred upon the working classes.

It is worthy of note that the use of way-tickets, minus the houses of call now proposed, is not unknown to English legislation on vagrancy. So long ago as 1824 an Act was passed empowering magistrates to grant certificates or passes to vagrants discharged from prison, to enable them to reach their places of settlement, and to obtain relief from parochial authorities on the way, though this pass system appears to have been carried out in four counties only, and to have soon fallen into disuse. Further, a Minute of the old Poor Law Board, dated August 4, 1848, in recommending differential treatment as between the work-seeking and the work-shy wayfarer, urged, in particular, that the former should be helped by a system of way-tickets, applicable to fixed routes and valid for a definite period.

"There is obviously a wide distinction," said the Minute, " between those who are temporarily and unavoidably in distress and the habitual tramp or vagrant who simulates destitution; and one of the worst results of the present undiscriminating treatment of all who are commonly denominated 'casuals' is, that some of the most fitting objects of public charity are subjected to the discomforts that were intended to repel the worthless. Among all the unfortunate there are none whose destitution is more unquestionable, and whose hard lot presents stronger claims to sympathy, than the widow and orphan, deprived, at a distance from home, of their natural supporter, and the honest artisan or labourer who is seeking the employment of which accidental circumstances have suddenly deprived him. Yet, under the present system, such persons as these either share the discomforts, the filth, the turbulence, and the demoralising fellowship of the thief, the mendicant and the prostitute, who crowd the vagrant wards of the workhouses, or are compelled to brave the inclemency of the weather and the pains of hunger by reason of their unconquerable aversion to such companionship.

"It would not appear to be difficult to establish a system by which this deserving class of persons might be furnished with such evidence of their character and circumstances as might afford a fair presumption of the truth of their plea of destitution. A wayfarer of this class might, at the place where the cause of destitution occurs, be enabled by those who are cognisant of it to obtain a certificate from some proper authority, setting forth his name, the cause of destitution, and the object and destination of his journey. On his presenting this certificate at any workhouse, the master, on finding that it was satisfactory, that the applicant was on the road to his destination, and that he was without money or other means, might at once admit him, and supply him with the usual accommodation of the inmates. In this way the honest but destitute wayfarer, possessed of such credentials, would obtain the advantage of being admitted into the workhouse without reference to the relieving officer, and also of receiving better accommodation, than that at present afforded to him in the vagrant ward."