Down and Out in Paris and London (29 page)

tools. He kept a little aloof from the other tramps, and held

himself more like a free man than a casual. He had literary

tastes, too, and carried a copy of QUENTIN DURWARD in

his pocket. He told me that he never went into a spike unless

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driven there by hunger, sleeping under hedges and behind

ricks in preference. Along the south coast he had begged by

day and slept in bathing-huts for weeks at a time.

We talked of life on the road. 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 work-

house 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 severe-

ly. ‘They have to do it,’ he said. ‘If they made these plac-

es 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 disas-

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sociated 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 com-

mon 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 hunk of bread and cheese for our mid-

day 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 imbe-

cile (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

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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.

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XXXVI

I want to set down some general remarks about tramps.

When one comes to think of it, tramps are a queer prod-

uct 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 re-

pulsive, 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

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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 va-

grancy 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 desti-

tute 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 ex-

perience, 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 hun-

dred tramps in one night, and these are handled by a staff of

at most three porters. A hundred ruffians could not be con-

trolled by three unarmed 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

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many tramps would drink if they got the chance, but in the

nature of things they cannot get the chance. At this mo-

ment 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 para-

sites (’sturdy beggars’) is not absolutely unfounded, but it

is only true in a few per cent of the cases. Deliberate, cyni-

cal 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 nation-

al 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 say-

ing, 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’ at-

titude 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,

0

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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 beg-

ging—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, be-

cause 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 en-

tirely 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 wom-

en:

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,

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1

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 dis-

cussing, but there is no doubt that women never, or hardly

ever, condescend to men who are much poorer than them-

selves. 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: homosex-

uality, 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 demoraliz-

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ing 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 starva-

tion 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