The Coffin, at
fourpence
a night.
Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
He criticized the system that makes a tramp spend fourteen
hours a day in the spike, and the other ten in walking and dodging the police. He spoke of
his own case — six months at the public charge for want of a few pounds’ worth of tools.
It was idiotic, he said.
Then I told him about the wastage of food in the workhouse kitchen, and what I thought
of it. And at that he changed his tone instantly. I saw that I had awakened the pew-renter
who sleeps in every English workman. Though he had been famished along with the
others, he at once saw reasons why the food should have been thrown away rather that
given to the tramps. He admonished me quite severely.
‘They have to do it,’ he said. ‘If they made these places too comfortable, you’d have all
the scum of the country flocking into them. It’s only the bad food as keeps all that scum
away. These here tramps are too lazy to work, that’s all that’s wrong with them. You
don’t want to go encouraging of them. They’re scum. ’
I produced arguments to prove him wrong, but he would not listen. He kept repeating:
‘You don’t want to have any pity on these here tramps — scum, they are. You don’t want
to judge them by the same standards as men like you and me. They’re scum, just scum. ’
It was interesting to see the subtle way in which he disassociated himself from ‘these here
tramps’. He had been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply,
he was not a tramp. I imagine there are quite a lot of tramps who thank God they are not
tramps. They are like the trippers who say such cutting things about trippers.
Three hours dragged by. At six supper arrived, and turned out to be quite uneatable; the
bread, tough enough in the morning (it had been cut into slices on Saturday night), was
now as hard as ship’s biscuit. Luckily it was spread with dripping, and we scraped the
dripping off and ate that alone, which was better than nothing. At a quarter past six we
were sent to bed. New tramps were arriving, and in order not to mix the tramps of
different days (for fear of infectious diseases) the new men were put in the cells and we
in dormitories. Our dormitory was a barn-like room with thirty beds close together, and a
tub to serve as a common chamber-pot. It stank abominably, and the older men coughed
and got up all night. But being so many together kept the room warm, and we had some
sleep.
We dispersed at ten in the morning, after a fresh medical inspection, with a hu nk of bread
and cheese for our midday dinner. William and Fred, strong in the possession of a
shilling, impaled their bread on the spike railings — as a protest, they said. This was the
second spike in Kent that they had made too hot to hold them, and they thought it a great
joke. They were cheerful souls, for tramps. The imbecile (there is an imbecile in every
collection of tramps) said that he was too tired to walk and clung to the railings, until the
Tramp Major had to dislodge him and start him with a kick. Paddy and I turned north, for
London. Most of the others were going on to Ide Hill, said to be about the worst spike in
England.
[* I have been in it since, and it is not so bad]
Once again it was jolly autumn weather, and the road was quiet, with few cars passing.
The air was like sweet-briar after the spike’s mingled stenches of sweat, soap, and drains.
We two seemed the only tramps on the road. Then I heard a hurried step behind us, and
someone calling. It was little Scotty, the Glasgow tramp, who had run after us panting.
He produced a rusty tin from his pocket. He wore a friendly smile, like someone repaying
an obligation.
‘Here y’are, mate,’ he said cordially. ‘I owe you some fag ends. You stood me a smoke
yesterday. The Tramp Major give me back my box of fag ends when we come out this
morning. One good turn deserves another — here y’are. ’
And he put four sodden, debauched, loathly cigarette ends into my hand.
CHAPTER XXXVI
I want to set down some general remarks about tramps. When one comes to think of it,
tramps are a queer product and worth thinking over. It is queer that a tribe of men, tens of
thousands in number, should be marching up and down England like so many Wandering
Jews. But though the case obviously wants considering, one cannot even start to consider
it until one has got rid of certain prejudices. These prejudices are rooted in the idea that
every tramp, IPSO FACTO, is a blackguard. In childhood we have been taught that
tramps are blackguards, and consequently there exists in our minds a sort of ideal or
typical tramp — a repulsive, rather dangerous creature, who would die rather than work or
wash, and wants nothing but to beg, drink, and rob hen-houses. This tramp-monster is no
truer to life than the sinister Chinaman of the magazine stories, but he is very hard to get
rid of. The very word ‘tramp’ evokes his image. And the belief in him obscures the real
questions of vagrancy.
To take a fundamental question about vagrancy: Why do tramps exist at all? It is a
curious thing, but very few people know what makes a tramp take to the road. And,
because of the belief in the tramp-monster, the most fantastic reasons are suggested. It is
said, for instance, that tramps tramp to avoid work, to beg more easily, to seek
opportunities for crime, even — least probable of reasons — because they like tramping. I
have even read in a book of criminology that the tramp is an atavism, a throw-back to the
nomadic stage of humanity. And meanwhile the quite obvious cause of vagrancy is
staring one in the face. Of course a tramp is not a nomadic atavism — one might as well
say that a commercial traveller is an atavism. A tramp tramps, not because he likes it, but
for the same reason as a car keeps to the left; because there happens to be a law
compelling him to do so. A destitute man, if he is not supported by the parish, can only
get relief at the casual wards, and as each casual ward will only admit him for one night,
he is automatically kept moving. He is a vagrant because, in the state of the law, it is that
or starve. But people have been brought up to believe in the tramp-monster, and so they
prefer to think that there must be some more or less villainous motive for tramping.
As a matter of fact, very little of the tramp-monster will survive inquiry. Take the
generally accepted idea that tramps are dangerous characters. Quite apart from
experience, one can say A PRIORI that very few tramps are dangerous, because if they
were dangerous they would be treated accordingly. A casual ward will often admit a
hundred tramps in one night, and these are handled by a staff of at most three porters. A
hundred ruffians could not be controlled by three unanned men. Indeed, when one sees
how tramps let themselves be bullied by the workhouse officials, it is obvious that they
are the most docile, broken-spirited creatures imaginable. Or take the idea that all tramps
are drunkards — an idea ridiculous on the face of it. No doubt many tramps would drink if
they got the chance, but in the nature of things they cannot get the chance. At this
moment a pale watery stuff called beer is sevenpence a pint in England. To be drunk on it
would cost at least half a crown, and a man who can command half a crown at all often is
not a tramp. The idea that tramps are impudent social parasites (‘sturdy beggars’) is not
absolutely unfounded, but it is only true in a few per cent of the cases. Deliberate, cynical
parasitism, such as one reads of in Jack London’s books on American tramping, is not in
the English character. The English are a conscience-ridden race, with a strong sense of
the sinfulness of poverty. One cannot imagine the average Englishman deliberately
turning parasite, and this national character does not necessarily change because a man is
thrown out of work. Indeed, if one remembers that a tramp is only an Englishman out of
work, forced by law to live as a vagabond, then the tramp-monster vanishes. I am not
saying, of course, that most tramps are ideal characters; I am only saying that they are
ordinary human beings, and that if they are worse than other people it is the result and not
the cause of their way of life.
It follows that the ‘Serve them damned well right’ attitude that is normally taken towards
tramps is no fairer than it would be towards cripples or invalids. When one has realized
that, one begins to put oneself in a tramp’s place and understand what his life is like. It is
an extraordinarily futile, acutely unpleasant life. I have described the casual ward — the
routine of a tramp’s day — but there are three especial evils that need insisting upon. The
first is hunger, which is the almost general fate of tramps. The casual ward gives them a
ration which is probably not even meant to be sufficient, and anything beyond this must
be got by begging — that is, by breaking the law. The result is that nearly every tramp is
rotted by malnutrition; for proof of which one need only look at the men lining up outside
any casual ward. The second great evil of a tramp’s life — it seems much smaller at first
sight, but it is a good second — is that he is entirely cut off from contact with women. This
point needs elaborating.
Tramps are cut off from women, in the first place, because there are very few women at
their level of society. One might imagine that among destitute people the sexes would be
as equally balanced as elsewhere. But it is not so; in fact, one can almost say that below a
certain level society is entirely male. The following figures, published by the L. C. C. from
a night census taken on February 13th, 1931, will show the relative numbers of destitute
men and destitute women:
Spending the night in the streets, 60 men, 18 women. In shelters and homes not licensed
as common lodging-houses, 1,057 men, 137 women. In the crypt of St Martin’ s-in-the-
Fields Church, 88 men, 12 women. In L. C. C. casual wards and hostels, 674 men, 15
women.
[* This must be an underestimate. Still, the proportions probably hold good. ]
It will be seen from these figures that at the charity level men outnumber women by
something like ten to one. The cause is presumably that unemployment affects women
less than men; also that any presentable woman can, in the last resort, attach herself to
some man. The result, for a tramp, is that he is condemned to perpetual celibacy. For of
course it goes without saying that if a tramp finds no women at his own level, those
above — even a very little above — are as far out of his reach as the moon. The reasons are
not worth discussing, but there is no doubt that women never, or hardly ever, condescend
to men who are much poorer than themselves. A tramp, therefore, is a celibate from the
moment when he takes to the road. He is absolutely without hope of getting a wife, a
mistress, or any kind of woman except — very rarely, when he can raise a few shillings — a
prostitute.
It is obvious what the results of this must be: homosexuality, for instance, and occasional
rape cases. But deeper than these there is the degradation worked in a man who knows
that he is not even considered fit for marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any
higher, is a fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as demoralizing as
physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it
rots him physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that sexual starvation
contributes to this rotting process. Cut off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels
himself degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No humiliation could do more
damage to a man’s self-respect.
The other great evil of a tramp’s life is enforced idleness. By our vagrancy laws things
are so arranged that when he is not walking the road he is sitting in a cell; or, in the
intervals, lying on the ground waiting for the casual ward to open. It is obvious that this is
a dismal, demoralizing way of life, especially for an uneducated man.
Besides these one could enumerate scores of minor evils — to name only one, discomfort,
which is inseparable from life on the road; it is worth remembering that the average
tramp has no clothes but what he stands up in, wears boots that are ill-fitting, and does
not sit in a chair for months together. But the important point is that a tramp’s sufferings
are entirely useless. He lives a fantastically disagreeable life, and lives it to no purpose
whatever. One could not, in fact, invent a more futile routine than walking from prison to
prison, spending perhaps eighteen hours a day in the cell and on the road. There must be
at the least several tens of thousands of tramps in England. Each day they expend
innumerable foot-pounds of energy — enough to plough thousands of acres, build miles of
road, put up dozens of houses — in mere, useless walking. Each day they waste between
them possibly ten years of time in staring at cell walls. They cost the country at least a
pound a week a man, and give nothing in return for it. They go round and round, on an
endless boring game of general post, which is of no use, and is not even meant to be of
any use to any person whatever. The law keeps this process going, and we have got so
accustomed to it that We are not surprised. But it is very silly.
Granting the futility of a tramp’s life, the question is whether anything could be done to
improve it. Obviously it would be possible, for instance, to make the casual wards a little
more habitable, and this is actually being done in some cases. During the last year some
of the casual wards have been improved — beyond recognition, if the accounts are true —
and there is talk of doing the same to all of them. But this does not go to the heart of the
problem. The problem is how to turn the tramp from a bored, half alive vagrant into a
self-respecting human being. A mere increase of comfort cannot do this. Even if the
casual wards became positively luxurious (they never will)* a tramp’s life would still be
wasted. He would still be a pauper, cut off from marriage and home life, and a dead loss
to the community. What is needed is to depauperize him, and this can only be done by
finding him work — not work for the sake of working, but work of which he can enjoy the
benefit. At present, in the great majority of casual wards, tramps do no work whatever. At
one time they were made to break stones for their food, but this was stopped when they
had broken enough stone for years ahead and put the stone-breakers out of work.
Nowadays they are kept idle, because there is seemingly nothing for them to do. Yet
there is a fairly obvious way of making them useful, namely this: Each workhouse could
run a small farm, or at least a kitchen garden, and every able-bodied tramp who presented
himself could be made to do a sound day’s work. The produce of the farm or garden
could be used for feeding the tramps, and at the worst it would be better than the filthy
diet of bread and margarine and tea. Of course, the casual wards could never be quite
self-supporting, but they could go a long way towards it, and the rates would probably
benefit in the long run. It must be remembered that under the present system tramps are
as dead a loss to the country as they could possibly be, for they do not only do no work,
but they live on a diet that is bound to undermine their health; the system, therefore, loses
lives as well as money. A scheme which fed them decently, and made them produce at
least a part of their own food, would be worth trying.
[* In fairness, it must be added that a few of the casual wards have been improved
recently, at least from the point of view of sleeping accommodation. But most of them
are the same as ever, and there has been no real improvement in the food. ]
It may be objected that a farm or even a garden could not be run with casual labour. But
there is no real reason why tramps should only stay a day at each casual ward; they might
stay a month or even a year, if there were work for them to do. The constant circulation
of tramps is something quite artificial. At present a tramp is an expense to the rates, and
the object of each workhouse is therefore to push him on to the next; hence the rule that
he can stay only one night. If he returns within a month he is penalized by being confined
for a week, and, as this is much the same as being in prison, naturally he keeps moving.
But if he represented labour to the workhouse, and the workhouse represented sound food
to him, it would be another matter. The workhouses would develop into partially self-
supporting institutions, and the tramps, settling down here or there according as they
were needed, would cease to be tramps. They would be doing something comparatively
useful, getting decent food, and living a settled life. By degrees, if the scheme worked
well, they might even cease to be regarded as paupers, and be able to marry and take a
respectable place in society.
This is only a rough idea, and there are some obvious objections to it. Nevertheless, it
does suggest a way of improving the status of tramps without piling new burdens on the
rates. And the solution must, in any case, be something of this kind. For the question is,
what to do with men who are underfed and idle; and the answer — to make them grow
their own food — imposes itself automatically.
CHAPTER XXXVII
A word about the sleeping accommodation open to a homeless person in London. At
present it is impossible to get a BED in any non-charitable institution in London for less
than sevenpence a night. If you cannot afford seven-pence for a bed, you must put up
with one of the following substitutes:
1. The Embankment. Here is the account that Paddy gave me of sleeping on the
Embankment:
‘De whole t’ing wid de Embankment is gettin’ to sleep early. You got to be on your
bench by eight o’clock, because dere ain’t too many benches and sometimes dey’re all
taken. And you got to try to get to sleep at once. ‘Tis too cold to sleep much after twelve
o’clock, an’ de police turns you off at four in de momin’. It ain’t easy to sleep, dough,
wid dem bloody trams flyin’ past your head all de time, an’ dem sky-signs across de river
flickin’ on an’ off in your eyes. De cold’s cruel. Dem as sleeps dere generally wraps
demselves up in newspaper, but it don’t do much good. You’d be bloody lucky if you got
free hours’ sleep. ’
I have slept on the Embankment and found that it corresponded to Paddy’s description. It
is, however, much better than not sleeping at all, which is the alternative if you spend the
night in the streets, elsewhere than on the Embankment. According to the law in London,
you may sit down for the night, but the police must move you on if they see you asleep;
the Embankment and one or two odd corners (there is one behind the Lyceum Theatre)
are special exceptions. This law is evidently a piece of wilful offensive-ness. Its object,
so it is said, is to prevent people from dying of exposure; but clearly if a man has no
home and is going to die of exposure, die he will, asleep or awake. In Paris there is no
such law. There, people sleep by the score under the Seine bridges, and in doorways, and
on benches in the squares, and round the ventilating shafts of the Metro, and even inside
the Metro stations. It does no apparent harm. No one will spend a night in the street if he
can possibly help it, and if he is going to stay out of doors he might as well be allowed to
sleep, if he can.
2. The Twopenny Hangover. This comes a little higher than the Embankment. At the
Twopenny Hangover, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope in front of them,
and they lean on this as though leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet,
cuts the rope at five in the morning. I have never been there myself, but Bozo had been
there often. I asked him whether anyone could possibly sleep in such an attitude, and he
said that it was more comfortable than it sounded — at any rate, better than bare floor.
There are similar shelters in Paris, but the charge there is only twenty-five centimes (a
halfpenny) instead of twopence.
3.
The Coffin, at fourpence a night. At the Coffin you sleep in a wooden box, with a
tarpaulin for covering. It is cold, and the worst thing about it are the bugs, which, being
enclosed in a box, you cannot escape.
Above this come the common lodging-houses, with charges varying between sevenpence
and one and a penny a night. The best are the Rowton Houses, where the charge is a
shilling, for which you get a cubicle to yourself, and the use of excellent bathrooms. You
can also pay half a crown for a ‘special’, which is practically hotel accommodation. The
Rowton Houses are splendid buildings, and the only objection to them is the strict
discipline, with rules against cooking, card-playing, etc. Perhaps the best advertisement
for the Rowton Houses is the fact that they are always full to overflowing. The Bruce
Houses, at one and a penny, are also excellent.
Next best, in point of cleanliness, are the Salvation Anny hostels, at sevenpence or
eightpence. They vary (I have been in one or two that were not very unlike common
lodging-houses), but most of them are clean, and they have good bathrooms; you have to
pay extra for a bath, however. You can get a cubicle for a shilling. In the eightpenny
dormitories the beds are comfortable, but there are so many of them (as a rule at least
forty to a room), and so close together, that it is impossible to get a quiet night. The
numerous restrictions stink of prison and charity. The Salvation Army hostels would only
appeal to people who put cleanliness before anything else.
Beyond this there are the ordinary common lodging-houses. Whether you pay sevenpence
or a shilling, they are all stuffy and noisy, and the beds are unifonnly dirty and
uncomfortable. What redeems them are their LAISSEZ-FAIRE atmosphere and the warm
home-like kitchens where one can lounge at all hours of the day or night. They are
squalid dens, but some kind of social life is possible in them. The women’s lodging-
houses are said to be generally worse than the men’s, and there are very few houses with
accommodation for married couples. In fact, it is nothing out of the common for a
homeless man to sleep in one lodging-house and his wife in another.
At this moment at least fifteen thousand people in London are living in common lodging-
houses. For an unattached man earning two pounds a week, or less, a lodging-house is a
great convenience. He could hardly get a furnished room so cheaply, and the lodging-
house gives him free firing, a bathroom of sorts, and plenty of society. As for the dirt, it is
a minor evil. The really bad fault of lodging-houses is that they are places in which one
pays to sleep, and in which sound sleep is impossible. All one gets for one’s money is a
bed measuring five feet six by two feet six, with a hard convex mattress and a pillow like
a block of wood, covered by one cotton counterpane and two grey, stinking sheets. In
winter there are blankets, but never enough. And this bed is in a room where there are
never less than five, and sometimes fifty or sixty beds, a yard or two apart. Of course, no
one can sleep soundly in such circumstances. The only other places where people are
herded like this are barracks and hospitals. In the public wards of a hospital no one even
hopes to sleep well. In barracks the soldiers are crowded, but they have good beds, and
they are healthy; in a common lodging-house nearly all the lodgers have chronic coughs,
and a large number have bladder diseases which make them get up at all the hours of the
night. The result is a perpetual racket, making sleep impossible. So far as my observation
goes, no one in a lodging-house sleeps more than five hours a night — a damnable swindle
when one has paid sevenpence or more.
Here legislation could accomplish something. At present there is all manner of legislation
by the L. C. C. about lodging-houses, but it is not done in the interests of the lodgers. The
L. C. C. only exert themselves to forbid drinking, gambling, fighting, etc. etc. There is no
law to say that the beds in a lodging-house must be comfortable. This would be quite an
easy thing to enforce — much easier, for instance, than restrictions upon gambling. The
lodging-house keepers should be compelled to provide adequate bedclothes and better
mattresses, and above all to divide their donnitories into cubicles. It does not matter how
small a cubicle is, the important thing is that a man should be alone when he sleeps.
These few changes, strictly enforced, would make an enormous difference. It is not
impossible to make a lodging-house reasonably comfortable at the usual rates of
payment. In the Groydon municipal lodging-house, where the charge is only ninepence,
there are cubicles, good beds, chairs (a very rare luxury in lodging-houses), and kitchens
above ground instead of in a cellar. There is no reason why every ninepenny lodging-
house should not come up to this standard.
Of course, the owners of lodging-houses would be opposed EN BLOC to any
improvement, for their present business is an immensely profitable one. The average
house takes five or ten pounds a night, with no bad debts (credit being strictly forbidden),
and except for rent the expenses are small. Any improvement would mean less crowding,
and hence less profit. Still, the excellent municipal lodging-house at Croydon shows how
well one CAN be served for ninepence. A few well-directed laws could make these
conditions general. If the authorities are going to concern themselves with lodging-houses
at all, they ought to start by making them more comfortable, not by silly restrictions that
would never be tolerated in a hotel.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
After we left the spike at Lower Binficld, Paddy and I earned half a crown at weeding
and sweeping in somebodys garden, stayed the night at Cromley, and walked back to
London. I parted from Paddy a day or two later. B. lent me a final two pounds, and, as I
had only another eight days to hold out, that was the end of my troubles. My tame
imbecile turned out worse than I had expected, but not bad enough to make me wish
myself back in the spike or the Auberge de Jehan Cottard.
Paddy set out for Portsmouth, where he had a. friend who might conceivably find work
for him, and I have never seen him since. A short time ago I was told that he had been run
over and killed, but perhaps my informant was mixing him up with someone else. I had
news of Bozo only three days ago. He is in Wandsworth — fourteen days for begging. I do
not suppose prison worries him very much.
My story ends here. It is a fairly trivial story, and I can only hope that it has been
interesting in the same way as a travel diary is interesting. I can at least say, Here is the
world that awaits you if you are ever penniless. Some days I want to explore that world
more thoroughly. I should like to know people like Mario and Paddy and Bill the
moocher, not from casual encounters, but intimately; I should like to understand what
really goes on in the souls of PLONGEURS and tramps and Embankment sleepers. At
present I do not feel that I have seen more than the fringe of poverty.
Still I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall
never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be
grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor
subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a
meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.
hours a day in the spike, and the other ten in walking and dodging the police. He spoke of
his own case — six months at the public charge for want of a few pounds’ worth of tools.
It was idiotic, he said.
Then I told him about the wastage of food in the workhouse kitchen, and what I thought
of it. And at that he changed his tone instantly. I saw that I had awakened the pew-renter
who sleeps in every English workman. Though he had been famished along with the
others, he at once saw reasons why the food should have been thrown away rather that
given to the tramps. He admonished me quite severely.
‘They have to do it,’ he said. ‘If they made these places too comfortable, you’d have all
the scum of the country flocking into them. It’s only the bad food as keeps all that scum
away. These here tramps are too lazy to work, that’s all that’s wrong with them. You
don’t want to go encouraging of them. They’re scum. ’
I produced arguments to prove him wrong, but he would not listen. He kept repeating:
‘You don’t want to have any pity on these here tramps — scum, they are. You don’t want
to judge them by the same standards as men like you and me. They’re scum, just scum. ’
It was interesting to see the subtle way in which he disassociated himself from ‘these here
tramps’. He had been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply,
he was not a tramp. I imagine there are quite a lot of tramps who thank God they are not
tramps. They are like the trippers who say such cutting things about trippers.
Three hours dragged by. At six supper arrived, and turned out to be quite uneatable; the
bread, tough enough in the morning (it had been cut into slices on Saturday night), was
now as hard as ship’s biscuit. Luckily it was spread with dripping, and we scraped the
dripping off and ate that alone, which was better than nothing. At a quarter past six we
were sent to bed. New tramps were arriving, and in order not to mix the tramps of
different days (for fear of infectious diseases) the new men were put in the cells and we
in dormitories. Our dormitory was a barn-like room with thirty beds close together, and a
tub to serve as a common chamber-pot. It stank abominably, and the older men coughed
and got up all night. But being so many together kept the room warm, and we had some
sleep.
We dispersed at ten in the morning, after a fresh medical inspection, with a hu nk of bread
and cheese for our midday dinner. William and Fred, strong in the possession of a
shilling, impaled their bread on the spike railings — as a protest, they said. This was the
second spike in Kent that they had made too hot to hold them, and they thought it a great
joke. They were cheerful souls, for tramps. The imbecile (there is an imbecile in every
collection of tramps) said that he was too tired to walk and clung to the railings, until the
Tramp Major had to dislodge him and start him with a kick. Paddy and I turned north, for
London. Most of the others were going on to Ide Hill, said to be about the worst spike in
England.
[* I have been in it since, and it is not so bad]
Once again it was jolly autumn weather, and the road was quiet, with few cars passing.
The air was like sweet-briar after the spike’s mingled stenches of sweat, soap, and drains.
We two seemed the only tramps on the road. Then I heard a hurried step behind us, and
someone calling. It was little Scotty, the Glasgow tramp, who had run after us panting.
He produced a rusty tin from his pocket. He wore a friendly smile, like someone repaying
an obligation.
‘Here y’are, mate,’ he said cordially. ‘I owe you some fag ends. You stood me a smoke
yesterday. The Tramp Major give me back my box of fag ends when we come out this
morning. One good turn deserves another — here y’are. ’
And he put four sodden, debauched, loathly cigarette ends into my hand.
CHAPTER XXXVI
I want to set down some general remarks about tramps. When one comes to think of it,
tramps are a queer product and worth thinking over. It is queer that a tribe of men, tens of
thousands in number, should be marching up and down England like so many Wandering
Jews. But though the case obviously wants considering, one cannot even start to consider
it until one has got rid of certain prejudices. These prejudices are rooted in the idea that
every tramp, IPSO FACTO, is a blackguard. In childhood we have been taught that
tramps are blackguards, and consequently there exists in our minds a sort of ideal or
typical tramp — a repulsive, rather dangerous creature, who would die rather than work or
wash, and wants nothing but to beg, drink, and rob hen-houses. This tramp-monster is no
truer to life than the sinister Chinaman of the magazine stories, but he is very hard to get
rid of. The very word ‘tramp’ evokes his image. And the belief in him obscures the real
questions of vagrancy.
To take a fundamental question about vagrancy: Why do tramps exist at all? It is a
curious thing, but very few people know what makes a tramp take to the road. And,
because of the belief in the tramp-monster, the most fantastic reasons are suggested. It is
said, for instance, that tramps tramp to avoid work, to beg more easily, to seek
opportunities for crime, even — least probable of reasons — because they like tramping. I
have even read in a book of criminology that the tramp is an atavism, a throw-back to the
nomadic stage of humanity. And meanwhile the quite obvious cause of vagrancy is
staring one in the face. Of course a tramp is not a nomadic atavism — one might as well
say that a commercial traveller is an atavism. A tramp tramps, not because he likes it, but
for the same reason as a car keeps to the left; because there happens to be a law
compelling him to do so. A destitute man, if he is not supported by the parish, can only
get relief at the casual wards, and as each casual ward will only admit him for one night,
he is automatically kept moving. He is a vagrant because, in the state of the law, it is that
or starve. But people have been brought up to believe in the tramp-monster, and so they
prefer to think that there must be some more or less villainous motive for tramping.
As a matter of fact, very little of the tramp-monster will survive inquiry. Take the
generally accepted idea that tramps are dangerous characters. Quite apart from
experience, one can say A PRIORI that very few tramps are dangerous, because if they
were dangerous they would be treated accordingly. A casual ward will often admit a
hundred tramps in one night, and these are handled by a staff of at most three porters. A
hundred ruffians could not be controlled by three unanned men. Indeed, when one sees
how tramps let themselves be bullied by the workhouse officials, it is obvious that they
are the most docile, broken-spirited creatures imaginable. Or take the idea that all tramps
are drunkards — an idea ridiculous on the face of it. No doubt many tramps would drink if
they got the chance, but in the nature of things they cannot get the chance. At this
moment a pale watery stuff called beer is sevenpence a pint in England. To be drunk on it
would cost at least half a crown, and a man who can command half a crown at all often is
not a tramp. The idea that tramps are impudent social parasites (‘sturdy beggars’) is not
absolutely unfounded, but it is only true in a few per cent of the cases. Deliberate, cynical
parasitism, such as one reads of in Jack London’s books on American tramping, is not in
the English character. The English are a conscience-ridden race, with a strong sense of
the sinfulness of poverty. One cannot imagine the average Englishman deliberately
turning parasite, and this national character does not necessarily change because a man is
thrown out of work. Indeed, if one remembers that a tramp is only an Englishman out of
work, forced by law to live as a vagabond, then the tramp-monster vanishes. I am not
saying, of course, that most tramps are ideal characters; I am only saying that they are
ordinary human beings, and that if they are worse than other people it is the result and not
the cause of their way of life.
It follows that the ‘Serve them damned well right’ attitude that is normally taken towards
tramps is no fairer than it would be towards cripples or invalids. When one has realized
that, one begins to put oneself in a tramp’s place and understand what his life is like. It is
an extraordinarily futile, acutely unpleasant life. I have described the casual ward — the
routine of a tramp’s day — but there are three especial evils that need insisting upon. The
first is hunger, which is the almost general fate of tramps. The casual ward gives them a
ration which is probably not even meant to be sufficient, and anything beyond this must
be got by begging — that is, by breaking the law. The result is that nearly every tramp is
rotted by malnutrition; for proof of which one need only look at the men lining up outside
any casual ward. The second great evil of a tramp’s life — it seems much smaller at first
sight, but it is a good second — is that he is entirely cut off from contact with women. This
point needs elaborating.
Tramps are cut off from women, in the first place, because there are very few women at
their level of society. One might imagine that among destitute people the sexes would be
as equally balanced as elsewhere. But it is not so; in fact, one can almost say that below a
certain level society is entirely male. The following figures, published by the L. C. C. from
a night census taken on February 13th, 1931, will show the relative numbers of destitute
men and destitute women:
Spending the night in the streets, 60 men, 18 women. In shelters and homes not licensed
as common lodging-houses, 1,057 men, 137 women. In the crypt of St Martin’ s-in-the-
Fields Church, 88 men, 12 women. In L. C. C. casual wards and hostels, 674 men, 15
women.
[* This must be an underestimate. Still, the proportions probably hold good. ]
It will be seen from these figures that at the charity level men outnumber women by
something like ten to one. The cause is presumably that unemployment affects women
less than men; also that any presentable woman can, in the last resort, attach herself to
some man. The result, for a tramp, is that he is condemned to perpetual celibacy. For of
course it goes without saying that if a tramp finds no women at his own level, those
above — even a very little above — are as far out of his reach as the moon. The reasons are
not worth discussing, but there is no doubt that women never, or hardly ever, condescend
to men who are much poorer than themselves. A tramp, therefore, is a celibate from the
moment when he takes to the road. He is absolutely without hope of getting a wife, a
mistress, or any kind of woman except — very rarely, when he can raise a few shillings — a
prostitute.
It is obvious what the results of this must be: homosexuality, for instance, and occasional
rape cases. But deeper than these there is the degradation worked in a man who knows
that he is not even considered fit for marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any
higher, is a fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as demoralizing as
physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it
rots him physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that sexual starvation
contributes to this rotting process. Cut off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels
himself degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No humiliation could do more
damage to a man’s self-respect.
The other great evil of a tramp’s life is enforced idleness. By our vagrancy laws things
are so arranged that when he is not walking the road he is sitting in a cell; or, in the
intervals, lying on the ground waiting for the casual ward to open. It is obvious that this is
a dismal, demoralizing way of life, especially for an uneducated man.
Besides these one could enumerate scores of minor evils — to name only one, discomfort,
which is inseparable from life on the road; it is worth remembering that the average
tramp has no clothes but what he stands up in, wears boots that are ill-fitting, and does
not sit in a chair for months together. But the important point is that a tramp’s sufferings
are entirely useless. He lives a fantastically disagreeable life, and lives it to no purpose
whatever. One could not, in fact, invent a more futile routine than walking from prison to
prison, spending perhaps eighteen hours a day in the cell and on the road. There must be
at the least several tens of thousands of tramps in England. Each day they expend
innumerable foot-pounds of energy — enough to plough thousands of acres, build miles of
road, put up dozens of houses — in mere, useless walking. Each day they waste between
them possibly ten years of time in staring at cell walls. They cost the country at least a
pound a week a man, and give nothing in return for it. They go round and round, on an
endless boring game of general post, which is of no use, and is not even meant to be of
any use to any person whatever. The law keeps this process going, and we have got so
accustomed to it that We are not surprised. But it is very silly.
Granting the futility of a tramp’s life, the question is whether anything could be done to
improve it. Obviously it would be possible, for instance, to make the casual wards a little
more habitable, and this is actually being done in some cases. During the last year some
of the casual wards have been improved — beyond recognition, if the accounts are true —
and there is talk of doing the same to all of them. But this does not go to the heart of the
problem. The problem is how to turn the tramp from a bored, half alive vagrant into a
self-respecting human being. A mere increase of comfort cannot do this. Even if the
casual wards became positively luxurious (they never will)* a tramp’s life would still be
wasted. He would still be a pauper, cut off from marriage and home life, and a dead loss
to the community. What is needed is to depauperize him, and this can only be done by
finding him work — not work for the sake of working, but work of which he can enjoy the
benefit. At present, in the great majority of casual wards, tramps do no work whatever. At
one time they were made to break stones for their food, but this was stopped when they
had broken enough stone for years ahead and put the stone-breakers out of work.
Nowadays they are kept idle, because there is seemingly nothing for them to do. Yet
there is a fairly obvious way of making them useful, namely this: Each workhouse could
run a small farm, or at least a kitchen garden, and every able-bodied tramp who presented
himself could be made to do a sound day’s work. The produce of the farm or garden
could be used for feeding the tramps, and at the worst it would be better than the filthy
diet of bread and margarine and tea. Of course, the casual wards could never be quite
self-supporting, but they could go a long way towards it, and the rates would probably
benefit in the long run. It must be remembered that under the present system tramps are
as dead a loss to the country as they could possibly be, for they do not only do no work,
but they live on a diet that is bound to undermine their health; the system, therefore, loses
lives as well as money. A scheme which fed them decently, and made them produce at
least a part of their own food, would be worth trying.
[* In fairness, it must be added that a few of the casual wards have been improved
recently, at least from the point of view of sleeping accommodation. But most of them
are the same as ever, and there has been no real improvement in the food. ]
It may be objected that a farm or even a garden could not be run with casual labour. But
there is no real reason why tramps should only stay a day at each casual ward; they might
stay a month or even a year, if there were work for them to do. The constant circulation
of tramps is something quite artificial. At present a tramp is an expense to the rates, and
the object of each workhouse is therefore to push him on to the next; hence the rule that
he can stay only one night. If he returns within a month he is penalized by being confined
for a week, and, as this is much the same as being in prison, naturally he keeps moving.
But if he represented labour to the workhouse, and the workhouse represented sound food
to him, it would be another matter. The workhouses would develop into partially self-
supporting institutions, and the tramps, settling down here or there according as they
were needed, would cease to be tramps. They would be doing something comparatively
useful, getting decent food, and living a settled life. By degrees, if the scheme worked
well, they might even cease to be regarded as paupers, and be able to marry and take a
respectable place in society.
This is only a rough idea, and there are some obvious objections to it. Nevertheless, it
does suggest a way of improving the status of tramps without piling new burdens on the
rates. And the solution must, in any case, be something of this kind. For the question is,
what to do with men who are underfed and idle; and the answer — to make them grow
their own food — imposes itself automatically.
CHAPTER XXXVII
A word about the sleeping accommodation open to a homeless person in London. At
present it is impossible to get a BED in any non-charitable institution in London for less
than sevenpence a night. If you cannot afford seven-pence for a bed, you must put up
with one of the following substitutes:
1. The Embankment. Here is the account that Paddy gave me of sleeping on the
Embankment:
‘De whole t’ing wid de Embankment is gettin’ to sleep early. You got to be on your
bench by eight o’clock, because dere ain’t too many benches and sometimes dey’re all
taken. And you got to try to get to sleep at once. ‘Tis too cold to sleep much after twelve
o’clock, an’ de police turns you off at four in de momin’. It ain’t easy to sleep, dough,
wid dem bloody trams flyin’ past your head all de time, an’ dem sky-signs across de river
flickin’ on an’ off in your eyes. De cold’s cruel. Dem as sleeps dere generally wraps
demselves up in newspaper, but it don’t do much good. You’d be bloody lucky if you got
free hours’ sleep. ’
I have slept on the Embankment and found that it corresponded to Paddy’s description. It
is, however, much better than not sleeping at all, which is the alternative if you spend the
night in the streets, elsewhere than on the Embankment. According to the law in London,
you may sit down for the night, but the police must move you on if they see you asleep;
the Embankment and one or two odd corners (there is one behind the Lyceum Theatre)
are special exceptions. This law is evidently a piece of wilful offensive-ness. Its object,
so it is said, is to prevent people from dying of exposure; but clearly if a man has no
home and is going to die of exposure, die he will, asleep or awake. In Paris there is no
such law. There, people sleep by the score under the Seine bridges, and in doorways, and
on benches in the squares, and round the ventilating shafts of the Metro, and even inside
the Metro stations. It does no apparent harm. No one will spend a night in the street if he
can possibly help it, and if he is going to stay out of doors he might as well be allowed to
sleep, if he can.
2. The Twopenny Hangover. This comes a little higher than the Embankment. At the
Twopenny Hangover, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope in front of them,
and they lean on this as though leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet,
cuts the rope at five in the morning. I have never been there myself, but Bozo had been
there often. I asked him whether anyone could possibly sleep in such an attitude, and he
said that it was more comfortable than it sounded — at any rate, better than bare floor.
There are similar shelters in Paris, but the charge there is only twenty-five centimes (a
halfpenny) instead of twopence.
3.
The Coffin, at fourpence a night. At the Coffin you sleep in a wooden box, with a
tarpaulin for covering. It is cold, and the worst thing about it are the bugs, which, being
enclosed in a box, you cannot escape.
Above this come the common lodging-houses, with charges varying between sevenpence
and one and a penny a night. The best are the Rowton Houses, where the charge is a
shilling, for which you get a cubicle to yourself, and the use of excellent bathrooms. You
can also pay half a crown for a ‘special’, which is practically hotel accommodation. The
Rowton Houses are splendid buildings, and the only objection to them is the strict
discipline, with rules against cooking, card-playing, etc. Perhaps the best advertisement
for the Rowton Houses is the fact that they are always full to overflowing. The Bruce
Houses, at one and a penny, are also excellent.
Next best, in point of cleanliness, are the Salvation Anny hostels, at sevenpence or
eightpence. They vary (I have been in one or two that were not very unlike common
lodging-houses), but most of them are clean, and they have good bathrooms; you have to
pay extra for a bath, however. You can get a cubicle for a shilling. In the eightpenny
dormitories the beds are comfortable, but there are so many of them (as a rule at least
forty to a room), and so close together, that it is impossible to get a quiet night. The
numerous restrictions stink of prison and charity. The Salvation Army hostels would only
appeal to people who put cleanliness before anything else.
Beyond this there are the ordinary common lodging-houses. Whether you pay sevenpence
or a shilling, they are all stuffy and noisy, and the beds are unifonnly dirty and
uncomfortable. What redeems them are their LAISSEZ-FAIRE atmosphere and the warm
home-like kitchens where one can lounge at all hours of the day or night. They are
squalid dens, but some kind of social life is possible in them. The women’s lodging-
houses are said to be generally worse than the men’s, and there are very few houses with
accommodation for married couples. In fact, it is nothing out of the common for a
homeless man to sleep in one lodging-house and his wife in another.
At this moment at least fifteen thousand people in London are living in common lodging-
houses. For an unattached man earning two pounds a week, or less, a lodging-house is a
great convenience. He could hardly get a furnished room so cheaply, and the lodging-
house gives him free firing, a bathroom of sorts, and plenty of society. As for the dirt, it is
a minor evil. The really bad fault of lodging-houses is that they are places in which one
pays to sleep, and in which sound sleep is impossible. All one gets for one’s money is a
bed measuring five feet six by two feet six, with a hard convex mattress and a pillow like
a block of wood, covered by one cotton counterpane and two grey, stinking sheets. In
winter there are blankets, but never enough. And this bed is in a room where there are
never less than five, and sometimes fifty or sixty beds, a yard or two apart. Of course, no
one can sleep soundly in such circumstances. The only other places where people are
herded like this are barracks and hospitals. In the public wards of a hospital no one even
hopes to sleep well. In barracks the soldiers are crowded, but they have good beds, and
they are healthy; in a common lodging-house nearly all the lodgers have chronic coughs,
and a large number have bladder diseases which make them get up at all the hours of the
night. The result is a perpetual racket, making sleep impossible. So far as my observation
goes, no one in a lodging-house sleeps more than five hours a night — a damnable swindle
when one has paid sevenpence or more.
Here legislation could accomplish something. At present there is all manner of legislation
by the L. C. C. about lodging-houses, but it is not done in the interests of the lodgers. The
L. C. C. only exert themselves to forbid drinking, gambling, fighting, etc. etc. There is no
law to say that the beds in a lodging-house must be comfortable. This would be quite an
easy thing to enforce — much easier, for instance, than restrictions upon gambling. The
lodging-house keepers should be compelled to provide adequate bedclothes and better
mattresses, and above all to divide their donnitories into cubicles. It does not matter how
small a cubicle is, the important thing is that a man should be alone when he sleeps.
These few changes, strictly enforced, would make an enormous difference. It is not
impossible to make a lodging-house reasonably comfortable at the usual rates of
payment. In the Groydon municipal lodging-house, where the charge is only ninepence,
there are cubicles, good beds, chairs (a very rare luxury in lodging-houses), and kitchens
above ground instead of in a cellar. There is no reason why every ninepenny lodging-
house should not come up to this standard.
Of course, the owners of lodging-houses would be opposed EN BLOC to any
improvement, for their present business is an immensely profitable one. The average
house takes five or ten pounds a night, with no bad debts (credit being strictly forbidden),
and except for rent the expenses are small. Any improvement would mean less crowding,
and hence less profit. Still, the excellent municipal lodging-house at Croydon shows how
well one CAN be served for ninepence. A few well-directed laws could make these
conditions general. If the authorities are going to concern themselves with lodging-houses
at all, they ought to start by making them more comfortable, not by silly restrictions that
would never be tolerated in a hotel.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
After we left the spike at Lower Binficld, Paddy and I earned half a crown at weeding
and sweeping in somebodys garden, stayed the night at Cromley, and walked back to
London. I parted from Paddy a day or two later. B. lent me a final two pounds, and, as I
had only another eight days to hold out, that was the end of my troubles. My tame
imbecile turned out worse than I had expected, but not bad enough to make me wish
myself back in the spike or the Auberge de Jehan Cottard.
Paddy set out for Portsmouth, where he had a. friend who might conceivably find work
for him, and I have never seen him since. A short time ago I was told that he had been run
over and killed, but perhaps my informant was mixing him up with someone else. I had
news of Bozo only three days ago. He is in Wandsworth — fourteen days for begging. I do
not suppose prison worries him very much.
My story ends here. It is a fairly trivial story, and I can only hope that it has been
interesting in the same way as a travel diary is interesting. I can at least say, Here is the
world that awaits you if you are ever penniless. Some days I want to explore that world
more thoroughly. I should like to know people like Mario and Paddy and Bill the
moocher, not from casual encounters, but intimately; I should like to understand what
really goes on in the souls of PLONGEURS and tramps and Embankment sleepers. At
present I do not feel that I have seen more than the fringe of poverty.
Still I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall
never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be
grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor
subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a
meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.
