Age. Months.No. of Applicants.
Children under117
Children of14
„242
„321
„414
„514
„626
„730
„87
„914
„107
„115
201
Age. Years.No. of Applicants.
128
222
328
430
536
639
756
838
992
10108
11104
12107
13177
14102
15268
16259
17380
18336
19385
20296
21335
22386
23295
24399
25122
26238
27219
28238
2984
30294
3156
3291
33105
3498
35186
3698
3763
3856
3942
40117
4163
4291
4349
4442
4591
4628
4735
4856
4984
50108
5128
5246
5344
5421
5549
5635
5727
5835
5927
6035
617
6214
637
6414
6512
666
6710
687
694
707
714
726
737
746
757
766
772
784
790
802

“Having investigated the general causes of depredation, of vagrancy, and mendicancy,” say the Constabulary Commissioners, in the Government Reports of 1839 (p. 181), “as developed by examinations of the previous lives of criminals or vagrants in the gaols, we find that scarcely in any cases is it ascribable to the pressure of unavoidable want or destitution, and that in the great mass of cases it arises from the temptation of obtaining property with a less degree of labour than by regular industry.” Again, in p. 63 of the same Report, we are told that “the inquiries made by the most experienced officers into the causes of vagrancy manifest, that in all but three or four per cent the prevalent cause was the impatience of steady labour.” My investigations into this most important subject lead me, I may add, to the same conclusions. In order to understand the question of vagrancy thoroughly, however, we must not stop here; we must find out what, in its turn, is the cause of this impatience of steady labour; or, in other words, we must ascertain whence comes the desire to obtain property with a less degree of labour than by regular industry. Now, all “steady labour”—that is to say, the continuance of any labour for any length of time—is naturally irksome to us. We are all innately erratic—prone to wander both in thought and action; and it is only by a vigorous effort, which is more or less painful to us at first, that we can keep ourselves to the steady prosecution of the same object, to the repeated performance of the same acts, or even to continuous attention to the same subject. Labour and effort are more or less irksome to us all. There are, however, two means by which this irksomeness may be not only removed, but transformed into a positive pleasure. One is, by the excitement of some impulse or purpose in the mind of the workman; and the other, by the inculcation of a habit of working. Purpose and habit are the only two modes by which labour can be rendered easy to us; and it is precisely because the vagrant is deficient in both that he has an aversion to work for his living, and wanders through the country without an object, or, indeed, a destination. A love of industry is not a gift, but a habit; it is an accomplishment rather than an endowment; and our purposes and principles do not arise spontaneously from the promptings of our own instincts and affections, but are the mature result of education, example, and deliberation. A vagrant, therefore, is an individual applying himself continuously to no one thing, nor pursuing any one aim for any length of time, but wandering from this subject to that, as well as from one place to another, because in him no industrial habits have been formed, nor any principle or purpose impressed upon his nature.

Pursuing the subject still further, we shall find that the cause of the vagrant’s wandering through the country—and indeed through life—purposeless, objectless, and unprincipled, in the literal and strict meaning of the term, lies mainly in the defective state of our educational institutions; for the vagrants, as a class, it should be remembered, are not “educated.” We teach a lad reading, writing, and arithmetic, and believe that in so doing we are developing the moral functions of his nature; whereas it is often this ability to read merely—that is to say, to read without the least moral perception—which becomes the instrument of the youth’s moral depravity. The “Jack Sheppard” of Mr. Harrison Ainsworth is borrowed from the circulating library, and read aloud in the low lodging-houses in the evening by those who have a little education, to their companions who have none; and because the thief is there furbished up into the hero—because the author has tricked him out with a sort of brute insensibility to danger, made “noble blood flow in his veins,” and tinselled him over with all kinds of showy sentimentality—the poor boys who listen, unable to see through the trumpery deception, are led to look up to the paltry thief as an object of admiration, and to make his conduct the beau idéal of their lives. Of all books, perhaps none has ever had so baneful an effect upon the young mind, taste, and principles as this. None has ever done more to degrade literature to the level of the lowest licentiousness, or to stamp the author and the teacher as guilty of pandering to the most depraved propensities. Had Mr. Ainsworth been with me, and seen how he had vitiated the thoughts and pursuits of hundreds of mere boys—had he heard the names of the creatures of his morbid fancy given to youths at an age when they needed the best and truest counsellors—had he seen these poor little wretches, as I have seen them, grin with delight at receiving the degrading titles of “Blue skin,” “Dick Turpin,” and “Jack Sheppard,” he would, I am sure, ever rue the day which led him to paint the most degraded and abandoned of our race as the most noble of human beings. What wonder, then, that—taught either in no school at all, or else in that meretricious one which makes crime a glory, and dresses up vice as virtue—these poor lads should be unprincipled in every act they do—that they should be either literally actuated by no principles at all, or else fired with the basest motives and purposes, gathered from books which distort highway robbery into an act of noble enterprise, and dignify murder as justifiable homicide?

Nor are the habits of the young vagrant less cultivated than his motives. The formation of that particular habit which we term industry, and by which the youth is fitted to obtain his living as a man, is perhaps the most difficult part of all education. It commences at an age when the will of the individual is beginning to develope itself, and when the docile boy is changed into the impatient young man. Too great lenity, or too strict severity of government, therefore, becomes at this period of life dangerous. If the rule be too lax, the restless youth, disgusted with the monotony of pursuing the same task, or performing the same acts, day by day, neglects his work—till habits of indolence, rather than industry, are formed, and he is ultimately thrust upon the world, without either the means or the disposition of labouring for his living. If, on the other hand, the authority of the parent or master be too rigidly exercised, and the lad’s power of endurance be taxed too severely, then the self-will of the youth is called into action; and growing restless and rebellious under the tyranny of his teachers, he throws off their restraint, and leaves them—with a hatred, instead of a love of labour engendered within him. That these are two of the primary causes of vagrancy, all my inquiries have tended to show. The proximate cause certainly lies in the impatience of steady labour; but the cause of this impatience is referable to the non-formation of any habit of industry in the vagrant, and the absence of this habit of industry is usually due to the neglect or the tyranny of the lad’s parent or master. This is no theory, be it remembered. Whether it be the master of the workhouse, where the vagrants congregate every night—whether it be the young vagrant himself, or the more experienced tramp—that speaks upon the subject, all agree in ascribing the vagabondism of youth to the same cause. There is, however, another phase of vagrancy still to be explained; viz. the transition of the working man into the regular tramp and beggar. This is the result of a habit of dependence, produced in the operative by repeated visits to the casual wards of the unions. A labouring man, or mechanic, deprived of employment in a particular town, sets out on a journey to seek work in some other part of the country. The mere fact of his so journeying to seek work shows that he has a natural aversion to become a burden to the parish. He is no sooner, however, become an inmate of the casual wards, and breakfasts and sups off the bounty of the workhouse, than he learns a most dangerous lesson—he learns how to live by the labour of others. His sense of independence may be shocked at first, but repeated visits to the same places soon deaden his feelings on this score; and he gradually, from continual disuse, loses his habit of labouring, and ultimately, by long custom, acquires a habit of “tramping” through the country, and putting up at the casual wards of the unions by the way. Thus, what was originally designed as a means of enabling the labouring man to obtain work, becomes the instrument of depriving him of employment, by rendering it no longer a necessity for him to seek it; and the independent workman is transformed after a time into the habitual tramper, and finally into the professional beggar and petty thief. Such characters, however, form but a small proportion of the great body of vagabonds continually traversing the country.

The vagrants are essentially the non-working, as distinguished from the hard-working, men of England. They are the very opposite to the industrious classes, with whom they are too often confounded. Of the really destitute working-men, among the vagrants seeking relief at the casual wards, the proportion is very small; the respectable mechanics being deterred by disgust from herding with the filth, infamy, disease, and vermin congregated in the tramp-wards of the unions, and preferring the endurance of the greatest privations before subjecting themselves to it. “I have had this view confirmed by several unfortunate persons,” says Mr. Boase, in the Poor-law Report on Vagrancy: “they were apparently mechanics out of employment, who spoke of the horrors passed in a tramp-ward, and of their utter repugnance at visiting such places again.” “The poor mechanic,” says the porter at the Holborn workhouse, “will sit in the casual wards like a lost man—scared. It’s shocking to think a decent mechanic’s houseless,” he adds; “when he’s beat out, he’s like a bird out of a cage: he doesn’t know where to go, or how to get a bit.” But the highest tribute ever paid to the sterling honesty and worth of the working men of this country, is to be found in the testimony of the master of the Wandsworth and Clapham Union. “The destitute mechanics,” he says, “are entirely a different class from the regular vagrant; they have different habits, and, indeed, different features. They are strictly honest. During the whole of my experience, I never knew a distressed artisan who applied for a night’s shelter commit an act of theft; and I have seen them,” he adds, “in the last stage of destitution. Occasionally they have sold the shirt and waistcoat off their backs, before they applied for admittance into the workhouse; while some of them have been so weak from long starvation, that they could scarcely reach the gate, and, indeed, had to be kept for several days in the infirmary, before their strength was recruited sufficiently to continue their journey.” For myself, I can safely say, that my own experience fully bears out this honourable declaration of the virtues of our working men. Their extreme patience under the keenest privations is a thing that the wisest philosophers might envy; their sympathy and charity for their poorer brethren far exceeds, in its humble way, the benevolence and bounty of the rich; while their intelligence, considering the little time they have for study and reflection, is almost marvellous. In a word, their virtues are the spontaneous expressions of their simple natures; and their vices are the comparatively pardonable excesses, consequent upon the intensity of their toil. I say thus much in this place, because I am anxious that the public should no longer confound the honest, independent working men, with the vagrant beggars and pilferers of the country; and that they should see that the one class is as respectable and worthy, as the other is degraded and vicious.

Characteristics of the various Classes of Vagrants.

I now come to the characteristics of vagrant life, as seen in the casual wards of the metropolitan unions. The subject is one of the most important with which I have yet had to deal, and the facts I have collected are sufficiently startling to give the public an idea of the great social bearings of the question; for the young vagrant is the budding criminal.

Previously to entering upon my inquiry into this subject, I consulted with a gentleman who had long paid considerable attention to the question, and who was, moreover, in a position peculiarly fitted for gaining the greatest experience, and arriving at the correctest notions upon the matter. I consulted, I say, with the gentleman referred to, as to the Poor-law officers, from whom I should be likely to obtain the best information; and I was referred by him to Mr. Knapp, the master of the Wandsworth and Clapham Union, as one of the most intelligent and best-informed upon the subject of vagrancy. I found that gentleman all that he had been represented to me as being, and obtained from him the following statement, which, as an analysis of the vagrant character, and a description of the habits and propensities of the young vagabond, has, perhaps, never been surpassed.

He had filled the office of master of the Wandsworth and Clapham Union for three years, and immediately before that he was the relieving officer for the same union for upwards of two years. He was guardian of Clapham parish for four years previously to his being elected relieving officer. He was a member of the first board of guardians that was formed under the new Poor-law Act, and he has long given much attention to the habits of the vagrants that have come under his notice or care. He told me that he considered a casual ward necessary in every union, because there is always a migratory population, consisting of labourers seeking employment in other localities, and destitute women travelling to their husbands or friends. He thinks a casual ward is necessary for the shelter and relief of such parties, since the law will not permit them to beg. These, however, are by far the smaller proportion of those who demand admittance into the casual ward. Formerly, they were not five per cent of the total number of casuals. The remainder consisted of youths, prostitutes, Irish families, and a few professional beggars. The youths formed more than one-half of the entire number, and their ages were from twelve to twenty. The largest number were seventeen years old—indeed, he adds, just that age when youth becomes disengaged from parental control. These lads had generally run away, either from their parents or masters, and many had been reared to a life of vagrancy. They were mostly shrewd and acute youths; some had been very well educated. Ignorance, to use the gentleman’s own words, is certainly not the prevailing characteristic of the class; indeed, with a few exceptions, he would say it is the reverse. These lads are mostly distinguished by their aversion to continuous labour of any kind. He never knew them to work—they are, indeed, essentially the idle and the vagabond. Their great inclination is to be on the move, and wandering from place to place; and they appear, he says, to receive a great deal of pleasure from the assembly and conversation of the casual ward. They are physically stout, healthy lads, and certainly not emaciated or sickly. They belong especially to the able-bodied class, being, as he says, full of health and mischief. When in London, they live in the day-time by holding horses, and carrying parcels from the steam-piers and railway termini. Some loiter about the markets in the hope of a job, and others may be seen in the streets picking up bones and rags, or along the water-side searching for pieces of old metal, or anything that may be sold at the marine-store shops. They have nearly all been in prison more than once, and several a greater number of times than they are years old. They are the most dishonest of all thieves, having not the least respect for the property of even the members of their own class. He tells me he has frequently known them to rob one another. They are very stubborn and self-willed. They have often broken every window in the oakum-room, rather than do the required work. They are a most difficult class to govern, and are especially restive under the least restraint; they can ill brook control, and they find great delight in thwarting the authorities of the workhouse. They are particularly fond of amusements of all kinds. My informant has often heard them discuss the merits of the different actors at the minor theatres and saloons. Sometimes they will elect a chairman, and get up a regular debate, and make speeches from one end of the ward to the other. Many of them will make very clever comic orations; others delight in singing comic songs, especially those upon the workhouse and gaols. He never knew them love reading. They mostly pass under fictitious names. Some will give the name of “John Russell,” or “Robert Peel,” or “Richard Cobden.” They often come down to the casual wards in large bodies of twenty or thirty, with sticks hidden down the legs of their trousers, and with these they rob and beat those who do not belong to their own gang. The gang will often consist of a hundred lads, all under twenty, one-fourth of whom regularly come together in a body; and in the casual ward they generally arrange where to meet again on the following night. In the winter of 1846, the guardians of Wandsworth and Clapham, sympathising with their ragged and wretched appearance, and desirous of affording them the means of obtaining an honest livelihood, gave my informant instructions to offer an asylum to any who might choose to remain in the workhouse. Under this arrangement, about fifty were admitted. The majority were under seventeen years of age. Some of them remained a few days—others a few weeks—none stopped longer than three months; and the generality of them decamped over the wall, taking with them the clothes of the union. The confinement, restraint, and order of the workhouse were especially irksome to them. This is the character of the true vagrant, for whom my informant considers no provision whatsoever should be made at the unions, believing as he does that most of them have settlements in or around London. The casual wards, he tells me, he knows to have been a great encouragement to the increase of these characters. Several of the lads that have come under his care had sought shelter and concealment in the casual wards, after having absconded from their parents. In one instance, the father and mother of a lad had unavailingly sought their son in every direction: he discovered that the youth had ran away, and he sent him home in the custody of one of the inmates; but when the boy got to within two or three doors of his father’s residence, he turned round and scampered off. The mother afterwards came to the union in a state of frantic grief, and said that he had disappeared two years before. My informant believes that the boy has never been heard of by his parents since. Others he has restored to their parents, and some of the young vagrants who have died in the union have, on their death-beds, disclosed the names and particulars of their families, who have been always of a highly respectable character. To these he has sent, and on their visits to their children scenes of indescribable grief and anguish have taken place. He tells me he is convinced that it is the low lodging-houses and the casual wards of the unions that offer a ready means for youths absconding from their homes, immediately on the least disagreement or restraint. In most of the cases that he has investigated, he has found that the boys have left home after some rebuke or quarrel with their parents. On restoring one boy to his father, the latter said that, though the lad was not ten years old, he had been in almost every workhouse in London; and the father bitterly complained of the casual wards for offering shelter to a youth of such tender years. But my informant is convinced that, even if the casual wards throughout the country were entirely closed—the low lodging-houses being allowed to remain in their present condition—the evil would not be remedied, if at all abated. A boy after running away from home, generally seeks shelter in one of the cheap lodging-houses, and there he makes acquaintance with the most depraved of both sexes. The boys at the house become his regular companions, and he is soon a confirmed vagrant and thief like the rest. The youths of the vagrant class are particularly distinguished for their libidinous propensities. They frequently come to the gate with a young prostitute, and with her they go off in the morning. With this girl, they will tramp through the whole of the country. They are not remarkable for a love of drink,—indeed, my informant never saw a regular vagrant in a state of intoxication, nor has he known them to exhibit any craving for liquor. He has had many drunkards under his charge, but the vagrant is totally distinct, having propensities not less vicious, but of a very different kind. He considers the young tramps to be generally a class of lads possessing the keenest intellect, and of a highly enterprising character. They seem to have no sense of danger, and to be especially delighted with such acts as involve any peril. They are likewise characterised by their exceeding love of mischief. The property destroyed in the union of which my informant is the master has been of considerable value, consisting of windows broken, sash-frames demolished, beds and bedding torn to pieces, and rags burnt. They will frequently come down in large gangs, on purpose to destroy the property in the union. They generally are of a most restless and volatile disposition. They have great quickness of perception, but little power of continuous attention or perseverance. They have a keen sense of the ridiculous, and are not devoid of deep feeling. He has often known them to be dissolved to tears on his remonstrating with them on the course they were following—and then they promise amendment; but in a few days, and sometimes hours, they would forget all, and return to their old habits. In the summer they make regular tours through the country, visiting all places that they have not seen, so that there is scarcely one that is not acquainted with every part within 100 miles of London, and many with all England. They are perfectly organised, so that any regulation affecting their comforts or interests becomes known among the whole body in a remarkably short space of time. As an instance, he informs me that on putting out a notice that no able-bodied man or youth would be received in the casual ward after a certain day, there was not a single application made by any such party, the regular vagrants having doubtless informed each other that it was useless seeking admission at this union. In the winter the young vagrants come to London, and find shelter in the asylums for the houseless poor. At this season of the year, the number of vagrants in the casual wards would generally be diminished one-half. The juvenile vagrants constitute one of the main sources from which the criminals of the country are continually recruited and augmented. Being repeatedly committed to prison for disorderly conduct and misdemeanour, the gaol soon loses all terrors for them; and, indeed, they will frequently destroy their own clothes, or the property of the union, in order to be sent there. Hence they soon become practised and dexterous thieves, and my informant has detected several burglaries by the property found upon them. The number of this class is stated, in the Poor-law Report on Vagrancy, to have been, in 1848, no less than 16,086, and they form one of the most restless, discontented, vicious, and dangerous elements of society. At the period of any social commotion, they are sure to be drawn towards the scene of excitement in a vast concourse. During the Chartist agitation, in the June quarter of the year 1848, the number of male casuals admitted into the Wandsworth and Clapham Union rose from 2501 to 3968, while the females (their companions) increased from 579 to 1388.