(1) VAGRANCY: (2) INEBRIETY
(1) Vagrancy:—
Out of a curious medley of Tudor legislation has grown up the English idea of Vagrancy. It is a survival of a long series of penal enactments dating from the 14th century, which were directed against the desertion of labourers from their respective districts when serfdom was breaking down. Parliament interposed to prevent the rise of wages, resulting in the free exchange of labour, and, at the same time, to check the acts of disorder which followed in the train of Vagrancy and Mendicancy. Further penalties against Vagrancy followed from the Elizabethan law of Settlement. The wandering or vagrant man became, from the operation of these causes, a suspected or criminal person, and, in the course of time, vagrancy and crime became almost synonymous terms. It was not till the beginning of the last century that steps were taken to repeal and consolidate the numerous enactments—some fifty in number—relating to the law of Vagrancy, which four centuries had accumulated. The present law dates back as far as 1824, and bears the impress of the old Tudor legislation. It is repressive in character, and its object is to punish the offences such as wanderers are likely to commit. The offences dealt with by the Act are numerous, and can be divided roughly into three classes:—
(1) offences committed by persons of a disreputable mode of life, such as begging, trading as a pedlar without a licence, telling fortunes, or sleeping in outhouses, unoccupied buildings, &c., without visible means of subsistence:
(2) offences against the Poor Law, such as leaving a wife and family chargeable to the poor rate, returning to and becoming chargeable to a parish after being removed therefrom by an order of the justices, refusing or neglecting to perform the task of work in a workhouse, or damaging clothes or other property belonging to the guardians; and
(3) offences committed by professional criminals, such as being found in possession of housebreaking implements or a gun or other offensive weapon with a felonious intent, or being found on any enclosed premises for an unlawful purpose, or frequenting public places for the purpose of felony.
The offences specially characteristic of the vagrant class are "begging" and "sleeping-out," and it is with vagrancy used in this sense that the Prison Authorities are chiefly concerned. Under the Act any person begging in any public place is an idle and disorderly person liable to imprisonment on conviction under the common law for one month or a fine not exceeding £5: a person wandering abroad without visible means of subsistence, or not giving a good account of himself is styled a "rogue and vagabond" and may be punished with imprisonment up to three months, or a fine not exceeding £25. There is a third category of Vagrant, known as the Incorrigible Rogue, i.e., a person who has been more than once convicted of any offence under the Act. Such a person is convicted at a Court of Petty Sessions and committed till the next Court of Quarter Sessions to receive sentence, which may be to a year's further imprisonment or to corporal punishment.
There is another class known as Vagrant, which does not come within the jurisdiction of the Prison Authority, and who is known as the destitute wayfarer or casual pauper. This class presents a curious history of quasi-penal legislation. No special provision was made for his case when the whole question of the Poor Law was comprehensively dealt with by the celebrated Act of 1834. During the years following that Act, there was an alarming increase of non-criminal vagrancy, and the principle of relieving the casually destitute in "special" wards of the Workhouse was established, and, with it, the principle of a prescribed task of labour in return for food and lodging. There was, however, no power to detain for more than four hours after breakfast on the morning after admission. It was not till 1871 that the period of detention was prolonged to the third day after admission, on proof that there had been more than two admissions during the month; it then became necessary to frame regulations for the detention of the casual vagrant on lines analogous to those under which the prisoner is detained:—labour, dietary, task, &c., and the casual ward became in many respects a sort of miniature Prison for very short sentences. These provisions, however, of which the purpose was to render detention in Casual Wards unattractive, especially to the habitual Vagrant, did not succeed in diminishing the number of the class of destitute wayfarer, who have for so long been a puzzle and a problem to the Poor Law reformer. The average numbers received into Casual Wards on a given day, for the five years ended 1876, had risen from 2,945 to 8,012 for a similar period ended 1913.
The Casual Wards, moreover, furnish a considerable contingent each year to the Prison population in the shape of persons who misbehave as paupers, i.e., refuse to perform the allotted task, or destroy workhouse clothes. There was at the beginning of the century a remarkable increase in the number of persons committed for offences against Workhouse regulations. For twenty years previously the numbers had oscillated between two thousand and four thousand: in 1901 they increased to over five thousand. The cry that the pauper prefers Prison to Workhouse was again raised with the object of showing that the conditions of Prison life were unduly attractive.
This agitation, combined with the fact that the number of persons convicted of "Begging" and "Sleeping-Out" had risen, in the four years from 1900 to 1903, from 12,631 to 20,729 led to some uneasiness in the public mind, and a special Inquiry was ordered by the President of the Local Government Board as to the law applicable to persons of the Vagrant class, and as to the administration of that law. Previously to this, the Prison Commissioners had reported to the Secretary of State—"that they are not prepared to admit that the increase of the vagrant class sent to prison is due to the fact that the conditions of prison life are unduly attractive. Casual paupers as soon as they become prisoners are subject to ordinary prison rules, not specially devised for dealing with this class, but to meet the average human needs of thousands of prisoners of different classes, characters, professions, and physique; and being, as a rule, under very short sentences, they receive the dietary and employment which practice and experience has designed as being, on the whole, the best and the most salutary for the early stages of a sentence of imprisonment. This dietary is not, like that of a casual ward, for one night or two nights, but part of a systematically graduated dietary table, intended to embrace both short and long sentences. The dietary and task are uniform throughout the country, varying only on medical certificate, all prisoners on reception being subject to a careful medical examination, and if they deviate from the normal standard of health and fitness, a full task of labour is not imposed; and the medical officer also has power to make additions to the dietary. In workhouses, however, our inquiries show that there is no uniform scale of diet or of task, and, so far as we are aware, these are not regulated by medical certificate as is done in prison. Hence, two results follow: Firstly, vagrants to whom the prison dietary and task and medical practice are well known, from a probable acquaintance with many prisons, openly profess a preference for the prison in those localities where the workhouse conditions are more severe; and, secondly, it may happen that on reception in prison the medical officer will not certify the prisoner as fit for the labour, the refusal to perform which, at a workhouse, has resulted in imprisonment."
"Again, the prison dietary is based on the opinion of experts, is framed on scientific principles, so as to represent a sufficiency, and not more than a sufficiency, of food for an average man doing an average day's work. The scale of tasks is based on the experience extending over many years of what can reasonably be expected from a man working his hardest during a given number of hours per diem. They believe that both the dietary and the tasks strike a fair average, so as not to err on the side of severity or leniency. As before stated, they can be varied on medical advice. The large and almost preponderating rôle played by medical officers of prisons is a factor that should be taken into account by anyone who attempts to compare prison with workhouse life. Public opinion properly exacts the most scrupulous care in all matters affecting the treatment of prisoners, and medical officers are always liable to criticism from outside persons for having failed to diagnose this or that malady, to have ordered this or that dietary, or to have prescribed this or that task. They dwell on this matter at some length, because they feel it necessary to guard against the impression which might be formed from the fact that a small section of the criminal community openly prefer prison to the workhouse, that therefore prison life is unduly attractive, that its conditions are not sufficiently rigorous, and that the whole edifice should be reconstructed to meet the special case of a few ne'er-do-wells who have lost all sense of self-respect, and to whom it is a matter of indifference whether they spend a few nights in a workhouse, a prison, or a barn. The diminution of this class is not, in our opinion, likely to follow from any alteration of prison régime; it might be modified if, as we venture to suggest, a more uniform system were established in workhouses, and a greater discrimination shown in the treatment of each case; it can only be effected gradually by a general improvement of social conditions, pending which the prison can only play a very insignificant part as a remedy for this evil; for no one can seriously contend that vagrancy is going to be cured by a succession of short sentences in the various local prisons of the country. So generally is this felt to be the case that strong expressions of opinion from responsible persons have been expressed in favour of some specific remedies being provided by the State for dealing with the admitted evil of professional vagrancy. It has been suggested that labour colonies should be established on the Belgian model, where the professional vagrant who now tramps from prison to prison could be detained for a long period of time. This system it is believed has worked well in some foreign countries. A necessary condition of its application would be some system of identification, so that a vagrant, after undergoing a sentence in one locality, should not, as now, be able with impunity to commit another offence in another locality, again become subject to a light penalty, and so on ad infinitum. If such vagrants could be identified by finger prints or otherwise, and systematically dealt with on indictment and sentenced to a long term, something at least more effective than the present system might result. We do not see how any system can be effective without an elaborate method of identification."