I was desirous of ascertaining some information concerning the routes of the vagrants, and the reason why they frequent one district or county more than another. It will be seen from the following table, computed from the Poor-Law Returns for the 1st July, 1848, that the vagrants were far from equally distributed over the country at that period.
NUMBER OF VAGRANTS RELIEVED IN THE DIFFERENT COUNTIES OF ENGLAND AND WALES ON THE 1st OF JULY, 1848.
| Durham | 1425 |
| Middlesex | 1393 |
| Lincolnshire | 1355 |
| West Riding | 1197 |
| Cumberland | 1087 |
| Lancashire | 673 |
| Southampton | 648 |
| Derbyshire | 541 |
| Warwickshire | 509 |
| Monmouthshire | 475 |
| Staffordshire | 351 |
| Surrey | 319 |
| Glamorganshire | 244 |
| Worcestershire | 227 |
| Kent | 179 |
| Berkshire | 175 |
| Northumberland | 172 |
| East Riding | 152 |
| Sussex | 150 |
| Essex | 147 |
| Northamptonshire | 136 |
| Wiltshire | 135 |
| Westmoreland | 130 |
| Nottinghamshire | 129 |
| Norfolk | 128 |
| North Riding | 105 |
| Bedfordshire | 102 |
| Hertfordshire | 100 |
| Devonshire | 94 |
| Cheshire | 92 |
| Somersetshire | 88 |
| Shropshire | 80 |
| Huntingdonshire | 75 |
| Leicestershire | 72 |
| Cornwall | 63 |
| Merionethshire | 54 |
| Gloucestershire | 52 |
| Herefordshire | 48 |
| Oxfordshire | 46 |
| Carmarthenshire | 46 |
| Radnorshire | 46 |
| Denbighshire | 45 |
| Dorsetshire | 43 |
| Cardiganshire | 39 |
| Carnarvonshire | 38 |
| Buckinghamshire | 28 |
| Suffolk | 21 |
| Cambridgeshire | 20 |
| Brecknockshire | 17 |
| Pembrokeshire | 15 |
| Montgomeryshire | 14 |
| Anglesea | 11 |
| Flintshire | 10 |
| Rutlandshire | 6 |
| Total | 13,547 |
In order to discover the cause of this unequal distribution, I sought out a person, whom I knew to be an experienced tramper, and who had offered to give any information that I might require upon the subject. There was a strange mystery about the man. It was evident, both from his manner and his features, that he had once been well to do in the world. He was plainly not of the common order of vagrants, though his dress was as filthy and ragged as that of the generality of the class.
“I have been right through the country on the tramp,” he said, “about six or seven summers. What I was formerly I do not wish to state. I have been much better off. I was, indeed, in receipt of a very large income at one time; but it matters not how I lost it. I would rather that remained a secret. You may say that I lost it through those follies and extravagancies that are incident both to the higher and the lower classes; but let it pass. You want to know about the habits and characters of the vagrants generally, and there is no necessity for my going into my private history, further than saying, I was a gentleman once, and I am a vagrant now. I have been so for the last six years. I generally start off into the country about April or May. I stay, after the refuges are closed, until such time as I have tired out all the unions in and around London. I go into the country because I am known at all the casual wards in the metropolis, and they will not let a tramper in a second time if they know it, except at the City of London, and there I have been allowed to stay a month together. The best of the casual wards used to be in Bermondsey, but they are closed there now, I believe, as well as many of the others; however, the vagrants seldom think of going to the London unions until after the refuges are closed, because at the refuges the accommodation is better, and no work is required. I know that the vagrants come purposely to London in large bodies about the end of December, on purpose to sleep at the refuges for the winter. I myself always make it a point to come up to town every winter, so as to have my lodgings for nothing at the refuge, not being able to get it by any other means. There are at the refuges, of course, many worthy objects of charity. I have met with men who have become destitute, certainly not through any fault of their own; a good many of such persons I have found. But still the greater number at such places are persons who are habitual vagabonds and beggars, and many thieves. As the refuges are managed at present, I consider they do more harm than good. If there were no such places in London in the winter, of course I, and such as are like me, would have been driven to find shelter at our parishes; whereas the facilities they afford for obtaining a night’s shelter—to the vagabond as well as to the destitute—are such that a large number of the most depraved and idle classes are attracted to London by them. I believe some such places to be necessary, in order to prevent persons dying of cold and starvation in the streets, but they should be conducted on a different plan. You see I tell you the truth, although it may be against my own interest. After these refuges are closed, and the unions round the suburbs are shut against me, as far as Richmond, Kingston, Bromley, Romford, Stratford, Greenwich, and similar distances from the metropolis, I generally proceed upon my travels for the summer. Those who make a practice of sleeping at the casual wards are vagrants either by nature, by habit, or by force of circumstances. They generally support themselves by begging or thieving, and often by both. They are mostly boys, from about nine up to twenty years of age. The others are principally Irish beggars, and a very few are labourers and mechanics out of work. The youths I believe to be, with some exceptions, naturally bad, and almost irreclaimable. I know that many of them have been made vagrants by harsh treatment at home; they have run away. They have been threatened to be punished, generally for going to some place of amusement, as Greenwich fair, or ‘penny gaffs,’—that is, to the low theatres; and, being afraid to return, they have sought shelter, first at the low lodging-houses, and when they have had no money left, they have gone to the casual wards of the unions. Other boys have contracted bad habits from being allowed by their parents to run about the streets and pick up vagabond companions. These soon initiate them into their mode of life, and they then leave their homes in order to follow it. This is the way that most of the lads are depraved. I am sure that the fault lies more with the parents than with the boys themselves. The lads are either neglected or ill-treated in their youth. Some of the lads are left destitute; they are left orphans—probably to the care of some distant relation or friend—and the lads very soon find that they are not treated or cared for like the other members of the family, and they take to the streets. The majority of the vagrants are very sharp, intelligent lads, and I believe they are induced to take to a vagabond life by the low lodging-houses, the casual wards, and the refuges. These make shelter and provision so easy to them, that they soon throw off the restraint of their parents or guardians. Were there a greater difficulty of obtaining food and lodging, I am sure that there would certainly not be the number of juvenile vagrants that there are. The Irish people who resort to the casual wards are beggars at heart and soul. Many of them I know have lodgings of their own, and they will give them up at the time the refuges are open. Some I have known to go into the refuge with the whole of their family on the Saturday night, and stop all Sunday, till the Monday morning, for the express purpose of obtaining the bread and cheese which is given away there on the Sunday. The children have the same allowance as the parents, and the mother and father take all the young ones they can into the place, to get the greater quantity. This they take back home with them, and it serves to keep them the greater part of the week. The Irish, I think, do not make a point of travelling the country so much as the English vagrants. When they go into the provinces, it is generally to get work at harvesting, or ’tato getting, or hop-picking; not like the English, for the mere sake of vagabondising.
“The low Irish do better in London. They are the best beggars we have. They have more impudence and more blarney, and therefore they do much better than we can at it. A very large portion of the Irish beggars in London are in possession of money, which they have secreted about them in some way or other. I recollect seeing one Irishman have 8s. taken from him by the vagrant boys in the casual ward of St. George’s Workhouse, in the Borough. The boys generally suspect the Irish vagrants of having money on their persons; and I have often seen a number of them hold, or, as they call it, ‘small-gang,’ an Irish beggar in the darkness of the casual wards, while some of the other boys rifled the Irishman’s pockets. The labourers and mechanics are generally the only parties to be found in the casual wards who are driven there through destitution. I have known many an honest, industrious, working man, however, made a regular beggar and vagrant by continued use of the casual wards. They are driven there first by necessity, and then they learn that they can live in such places throughout the year without working for their livelihood. Many a hard-working man, I am convinced, is made idle and dishonest by such means: yes, that is the case. There are some that I know now, who have been going the round of the different refuges for not less than seven—ay, you may say for nine years. They were originally labouring men, or mechanics, and had given over all thoughts of working, finding that there was no necessity to do so in order to live.
“The regular vagrant leaves town every year about April, or the beginning of May. A very large portion of the wandering beggars and thieves would remain in town if they were allowed to remain longer in their nightly haunts; but after the closing of the refuges, the system of not permitting them more than one night in the same union forces them to be continually on the move: so they set off immediately they have made themselves known at all the workhouses. The boys will mostly go in small gangs of twos and threes. Before they start, they generally pick up from some other gang whom they meet in the London wards, the kind of treatment and relief they will receive at the country unions, and they regulate their journey accordingly; and they will very often go one or two days’ march out of their way, in order to avoid some union that has a bad character among them, or to get to some other union where the accommodation is good, and the work required of them very slight. Often they will go miles round to get to some gentleman’s seat or hall where provisions are known to be distributed. I have heard boys not twelve years of age tell every union between London and Newcastle. The majority of them seldom go further than there; some will go on to Edinburgh, but not many. They would know what kind of treatment and provision would be obtained at each union, and what form of application was necessary in order to gain admittance. Very many of them will go from London, first into Essex (the unions are good there, and the stages not long); then perhaps through Suffolk, keeping tolerably near the coast, because the shipping is attractive to most boys of their age; thence they will proceed, by long or short stages, according to the distance of the unions, through Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Few of the vagrants miss Leeds, there being a Mendicity Asylum in the town, where a good night’s lodging is given to them, and threepence or fourpence, and in some cases sixpence (according to the apparent worthiness of the applicant) is bestowed upon each. I believe the habitual vagrants will go three or four stages out of the direct road to make Leeds in their way. From here they will go in different directions towards Durham and Northumberland, or, perhaps, to Manchester, where there is a society of the same kind as at Leeds, supported by the Quakers, where similar relief is afforded. At Northumberland, the body of vagrants generally turn back and begin to steer southwards. Some, indeed, will go as far as Berwick; but as the relief afforded in Scotland is not obtained so readily as in England, they seldom, as I have said, proceed northward beyond that point. The Scotch are ‘too far north’ for the regular English tramps. It is true they sometimes give them a little barley-cake, but, from all I have heard, the vagrants fare very poorly beyond Berwick. From Northumberland, they turn off towards Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire; and then many will go off through Cheshire into North Wales, and thence come round again into Shropshire. Others will wander through Staffordshire and Derbyshire, but most of them centre in Birmingham; that is a favourite meeting-place for the young vagrants. Here they make a point of tearing up their clothes, because for this offence they are committed to Warwick gaol for a month, and have a shilling on being discharged from the prison. It is not the diet of Warwick gaol that induces them to do this, but the shilling. Frequently they tear up their clothes in order to get a fresh supply. You see, sir, from continually sleeping in their clothes, and never washing their bodies, or changing their shirts—even if they have such things to change—they get to swarm with vermin, to such an extent that they cannot bear them upon their bodies. Oh! I have seen such sights sometimes—such sights as any decent, cleanly person would not credit. I have seen the lice on their clothes in the sunshine, as thick as blight on the leaves of trees. When their garments, from this cause, get very uncomfortable to them, they will tear them up, for the purpose of forcing the parish officers to give them some fresh ones. From Birmingham they will come up, generally through Northampton and Hertford, to London; for by this time either the refuges will be about opening, or the lads will have been forgotten at the unions in and around the metropolis. They say that London is fresh to them, when, owing either to long absence, or some alteration in their appearance, they are looked upon as strangers by the masters or porters of the workhouses. London, on the other hand, they say, is dead to them, when they have become too well known at such places. Some will make only a short turn out of London, going across the country through Sussex, Hampshire, or Wiltshire. Hampshire they are attracted to in large numbers, in consequence of the charity distributed at Winchester.” [It will be seen by the table above given, that Southampton stands very high among the places upon the vagrant list.] “In these parts the vagrants keep crossing the country to various ‘reliefs,’ as they call it, and so manage to spin out nearly two months in the autumn. The vagrants mostly go down with the fashionables to the sea-side in the latter part of the year—the practised beggars in particular. In the spring they generally make for the north of England. I believe there are more beggars and tramps in Durham, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire, than in half of the other parts of England put together.”... “Begging is more profitable there than in any other quarter of the kingdom. A man may pick up more provisions in the day-time in those counties than anywhere else. The farmers are more liberal in those parts, which are great places for pudding, pies, and cakes; and of these the young tramps are remarkably fond. Round about these parts the tramps pass the summer. If the weather is fine and mild, they prefer ‘skippering it,’ that is, sleeping in an outhouse or hay-field, to going to a union. They have no trouble in getting ‘scran,’ or provisions there, and they object to the work connected with the casual wards. In the autumn, they are mostly in Sussex or Kent; for they like the hop-picking. It is not hard work, and there are a great many loose girls to be found there. I believe many a boy and man goes hop-picking who never does anything else during the year but beg. The female tramps mostly go down to Kent to pick up their ‘young chaps,’ as they call them; and with them they travel through the country as long as they can agree, or until either party meets with some one they are better pleased with, and then they leave the other, or bury them, as they term it.
“The Irish vagrants are mostly to be found on the roads from Liverpool or from Bristol to London. I should think that at the end of June the roads must be literally covered with the Irish families tramping to London. They come over in boatsful, without a penny in their pockets, to get a little work during the harvesting and hop-picking. Such of them as make up their minds to return to their country after the autumn, contrive, by some means, to send their money to Ireland, and then they apply to the English parishes to send them home. It is very rare indeed that the low Irish go to the expense of paying for their lodging, even when they have money. They make a point of going to the unions, where they not only get a nightly shelter, but a pound of bread for nothing. Whatever money they have, they generally give to some countryman, who is their banker, and he sleeps in another place, for fear he should be searched or robbed at the casual wards. The Irish are mostly very filthy and diseased. They live upon little or nothing, and upon the worst kind of provision that can be bought, even though it be not fit for human food. They will eat anything. The Irish tramp lives solely by begging. It has often astonished me, sir, that there are scarcely any Welsh tramps. I suppose this comes from the industry of the people. The English tramp lives by begging and stealing,—I think, mostly by stealing; a thorough tramp gets more that way than the other. If he goes to the back-door of a house on the pretence of begging, and sees any linen, or brushes, or shoes, or, indeed, even a bit of soap, he will be off with it, and sell it, mostly to the keeper of some low lodging-house where he may put up for the night. They seldom commit highway robberies, and are generally the very lowest and meanest of thieves. No one can imagine, but those who have gone through it, the horror of a casual ward of a union; what with the filth, the vermin, the stench, the heat, and the noise of the place, it is intolerable. The usual conversation is upon the adventures of the day. One recounts how he stole this thing, and another that. Some tell what police are stationed in the different towns; others, what places to go to either to beg, rob, or sleep; and others, what places to beware of. I have passed seven years of my life in this way, and I have been so used to tramping about, that when the spring comes round I must be on the move. In the winter there is more food to be picked up in London than in the country, and the beggars seldom fail to make a good thing of it in the cold weather. I have met with beggars in Carnarvon who had come all the way from London for the express purpose of begging from the visitors to the Snowdon mountains. There are very few houses round about, but a good deal is picked up from the company coming to the hotels.”
I shall now conclude this account of the numbers, cost, and character of the country and the metropolis, with the narratives of two female tramps.