DESTITUTION AND CRIME.
Under this heading I shall discuss some of the more important social
factors which either directly or indirectly tend to produce crime. It
will be impossible to discuss them all. The action of society upon the
individual is so complex, its effects are so varied, in many instances
so impalpable, that we must content ourselves with a survey of those
social phenomena which are most generally credited with leading up to
acts of delinquency.
It is very commonly believed that destitution is a powerful factor in
the production of crime; we shall therefore start upon this inquiry by
considering the extent to which destitution is responsible for
offences against person and property. A definition of what is meant by
destitution will assist in clearing the ground. It is a definition
which is not at all difficult to formulate; one destitute person is
remarkably like another, and what applies to one applies with a
considerable degree of accuracy to all. We shall, therefore, define a
destitute person as a person who is without house or home, who has no
work, who is able and willing to work but can get none, and has
nothing but starvation staring him in the face. Is any serious amount
of crime due to the desperation of people in a position such as this?
In order to answer this question it is necessary, in the first place,
to ask what kind of crime such persons will be most likely to commit.
It is most improbable that they will be crimes against the person,
such as homicide or assault; it will not be drunkenness, because, on
the assumption of their destitution, they will possess no money to
spend. In short, the offences a person in a state of destitution is
most likely to commit are begging and theft. What proportion of the
total volume of crime is due to these two offense? This is the first
question we shall have to answer. The second is, to what extent are
begging and theft the results of destitution? An adequate elucidation
of these two points will supply a satisfactory explanation of the part
played by destitution in the production of crime.
The total number of cases tried in England and Wales either summarily
or on indictment during the year 1887-88 amounted to 726,698. Out of
this total eight per cent. were cases of offences against property
excluding cases of malicious damage, and seven per cent. consisted of
offences against the Vagrancy Acts. Putting these two classes of
offences together we arrive at the result that out of a total number
of crimes of all kinds committed in England and Wales, 15 per cent.
may conceivably be due to destitution. This is a very serious
percentage, and if it actually represented the number of persons who
commit crime from sheer want of the elementary necessaries of life,
the confession would have to be made that the economic condition of
the country was deplorable. But is it a fact that destitution in the
sense we have been using the word is the cause of all these offences?
This is the next question we have to solve, and the answer springing
from it will reveal the true position of the case.
Let us deal first with offences against property. As has just been
pointed out these constitute eight per cent. of the annual amount of
crime. But according to inquiries which I have made, one half of the
annual number of offenders against property, so far from being in a
state of destitution, were actually at work, and earning wages at the
time of their arrest. Nor in this surprising. The daily newspapers
have only to be consulted to confirm it. In a very great number of
instances the records of criminal proceedings testify to the fact that
the person charged is in some way or other defrauding his employer,
and when these cases are deducted from the total of offences against
property, it considerably lessons the percentage of persons driven by
destitution into the ranks of crime. Add to these the great bulk of
juvenile offenders convicted of theft, and that peculiar class of
people who steal, not because they are in distress, but merely from a
thievish disposition, and it will he manifest that half the cases of
theft in England and Wales are not due to the pressure of absolute
want.
But what shall be said of the other half which still represents four
per cent. of the annual amount of crime. According to the calculations
just referred to, the offenders constituting this percentage were not
in work when the crimes charged against them were committed. Was it
destitution arising from want of employment which led them to break
the law? At first sight one may easily be inclined to say that it is.
These people, it will be argued, have no work and no money. What are
they to do but beg or steal? Before jumping at this conclusion it must
not be forgotten that there is such a person as the habitual criminal.
The habitual criminal, as he will very soon tell you if you possess
his confidence absolutely, declines to work. He never has worked, he
does not want work; he prefers living by his wits. With the
recollection of imprisonment fresh upon him an offender of this
description may in rare instances take employment for a short period,
but the regularity of life which work entails is more than he can
bear, and the old occupation of thieving is again resorted to. To live
by plundering the community is the trade of the habitual criminal; it
is the only business he truly cares for, and it is wonderful how long
and how often he will succeed in eluding the suspicion and vigilance
of the police. Of course, offenders of this class, when arrested, say
they are out of work, and will very readily make an unwary person
believe that it is destitution which drives them to desperation. But
as was truly remarked a short time ago by a judge in one of the London
courts, nearly all of these very men are able to pay high fees to
experienced counsel to defend them. After these observations, it will
be seen that the habitual criminal, the man who lives by burglary,
housebreaking, shoplifting, and theft of every description, is not to
be classed among the destitute. Criminals of this character constitute
at least two per cent. of the delinquents annually brought before the
courts.
Respecting the two per cent. of offenders which remain to be accounted
for, it will not be far from the mark to say that destitution is the
immediate cause of their wrong-doing. These offenders are composed of
homeless boys, of old men unable to work, of habitual drunkards who
cannot got a steady job, or keep it when they get it, of vagrants who
divide their time between begging and petty theft, and of workmen on
the tramp, who have become terribly reduced, and will rather steal
than enter a workhouse. The percentage of these offenders varies in
different parts of the country. In the north of England, for instance,
there are comparatively few homeless boys who find their way before
the magistrates on charges of theft; in London, on the other hand, the
number is considerable, and ranges according to the season of the
year, or the state of trade, to between 1 and 3 per cent. of the
criminal population. Why does London enjoy such an evil pre-eminence
in this matter? In my opinion it often arises from the fact that
house-accommodation is so expensive in the metropolis. In London, it
is a habit with many parents, owing to the want of room at home, to
make growing lads shift for themselves at a very early age. These boys
earn just enough to enable them to secure a bare existence; out of
their scanty wages it is impossible to hire a room for themselves;
they have to be contented with the common lodging-house. In such
places these boys have to associate with all sorts of broken-down,
worthless characters, and in numbers of instances they come by degrees
to adopt the habits and modes of life of the class among which their
lot is cast. At the very time parental control is most required it is
almost entirely withdrawn; the lad is left to his own devices; and, in
too many cases, descends into the ranks of crime. The first step in
his downward career begins with the loss of employment; this sometimes
happens through no fault of his own, and is simply the result of a
temporary slackness of trade; but in most instances a job is lost for
want of punctuality or some other boyish irregularity which can only
be properly corrected at home. To lose work is to be deprived of the
means of subsistence; the only openings left are the workhouse or
crime. It is the latter alternative which is generally chosen, and
thus, the lad is launched on the troubled sea of crime.
It must not be understood that all London boys drift into crime after
the manner I have just described. In some instances these unfortunates
have lived all their life in criminal neighbourhoods, and merely
follow the footsteps of the people around them. What, for instance, is
to be expected from children living in streets such as Mr. Charles
Booth describes in his work on "Life and Labour in East London?" One
of these streets, which he calls St. Hubert Street, swarms with
children, and in hardly any case does the family occupy more than one
room. The general character of the street is thus depicted. "An awful
place; the worst street in the district. The inhabitants are mostly of
the lowest class, and seem to lack all idea of cleanliness or decency
.... The children are rarely brought up to any kind of work, but loaf
about, and, no doubt, form the nucleus for future generations of
thieves and other bad characters." In this street alone there are
between 160 and 170 children; these children do not require to go to
lodging-houses to be contaminated; they breathe a polluted moral
atmosphere from birth upwards, and it is more than probable that a
considerable proportion of them will help to recruit the army of
crime. It is not destitution which will force them into this course,
but their up-bringing and surroundings.
In addition to homeless boys who steal from destitution, there are, as
I have said, a number of decrepit old men who do the same. There is a
period in a workman's life when he becomes too feeble to do an average
day's work. When this period arrives employers of labour often
discharge him in order to make way for younger and more vigorous men.
If his home, as sometimes happens, is broken up by the death of his
wife, his existence becomes a very lonely and precarious one. An odd
job now and again is all he can get to do, and even these jobs are
often hard to find. His sons and daughters are too heavily encumbered
with large families to be capable of rendering any effective
assistance, and the Union looms gloomily in the distance as the only
prospect before the worn-out worker. But it sometimes happens that he
will not face that prospect. He will rather steal and run the risk of
imprisonment. And so it comes to pass that for a year or two before
finally reconciling himself to the Union, the aged workman will lead a
wandering, criminal life on a petty scale; he becomes an item in the
statistics of offenders against property.
Habitual drunkards form another class who sometimes steal from
destitution. The well-known irregularity of these men's habits
prevents them, in a multitude of cases, from getting work, and
unfortunately, they cannot keep it when they do get it. Employers
cannot depend on them; as soon as they earn a few shillings they
disappear from the workshop till the money is spent on drink. It is at
such times that they are arrested for being drunk and disorderly. As
they can never pay a fine they have to go to prison, but long before
their sentence has expired they have lost their job, and must look out
for something else. If such men do not find work many of them are not
ashamed to steal, and it is only when trade is at flood-tide that they
can be sure of employment, no matter how irregular their habits may
be. At other times they are the first to be discharged and the last to
be engaged. It is not really destitution, but intemperance which turns
them into thieves. That they are destitute when arrested is perfectly
true, but we must go behind the immediate fact of their destitution in
order to arrive at the true causes of their crimes. When this is done
it is found that the stress of economic conditions has very little to
do with making these unhappy beings what they are; on the contrary, it
is in periods of prosperity that they sink to the lowest depths.
Summing up the results of this inquiry into the relations between
destitution and offences against property, we arrive as nearly as
possible at the following figures, so far as England and Wales are
concerned:--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Proportion of offences against property to total
offences: 8. p. cent.
---
Thus divided:
Proportion of offenders in work when arrested: 4. p. cent.
Proportion of offenders, habitual thieves: 2. p. cent.
Proportion of offenders, homeless lads and old men: 1. p. cent.
Proportion of offenders, drunkards, tramps: 1. p. cent.
---
8. p. cent.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
We shall now proceed to an examination of offences against the
Vagrancy Acts presumably arising from destitution. It has already
been pointed out that seven per cent. of the annual amount of crime
committed in England and Wales consists of offences against the
Vagrancy Acts, and it now remains for us to inquire whether these
offences are the result of destitution, or what part destitution plays
in producing them.
Out of the 52,136 offenders against the Vagrancy Acts in the year
1888, less than one half (45 per cent.) were charged with begging; the
other offences consisted principally in prostitution, in having
implements of housebreaking, in frequenting places of public resort to
commit felony, in being found on enclosed premises for unlawful
purposes. In all these cases, with the exception of prostitution, it
is not probable that destitution had much, if anything, to do with
inducing the offenders to violate the law. Men who live the life of
incorrigible rogues, who prowl about enclosed premises, who lead a
mysterious existence, without doing any work, are not to be classed
among the destitute; as a general rule, such persons are habitual
thieves and vagabonds, who persist in the life they have adopted
merely because it suits them best. One of the great difficulties in
dealing with persons of this stamp is their hatred of a well-ordered
existence; in a vast number of cases the life they live is the only
kind of life they thoroughly enjoy; it is a profound mistake to
imagine that they are pining for what are usually regarded as the
decencies and comforts of human beings. Nothing is further from their
thoughts. Let us alone and mind your own business is the secret
sentiment and often the open avowal of most of these people. "We
should be miserable living according to your ideas; let us live
according to our own." It is very common for benevolent people to
assume that the objects of their compassion and solicitude are, in
reality, as wretched as they imagine them to be. Living themselves in
ease, and it may be affluence, and surrounded by all the amenities of
existence, it is difficult for them to realise that multitudes can
enjoy a rude kind of happiness in the absence of all this. Such,
however, is the fact. The vagabond class is not more miserable than
any other; it is, of course, not without its sorrows, vicissitudes,
and troubles, but what section of the community is free from these
ills? This class has even a philosophy adapted to its circumstances,
the fundamental articles of which have been once for all summed up in
the lines of Burns:--
"Life is all a variorum;
We regard not how it goes,
Let them cant about decorum
Who have characters to lose."
What has just been said respecting the loafing, thieving vagabond
applies in a very great measure to the ordinary beggar. The habitual
beggar is a person who will not work. He hates anything in the shape
of regular occupation, and will rather put up with severe hardships
than settle down to the ordinary life of a working-man. It would be
easy to adduce instances to demonstrate the accuracy of what is here
stated. It would be easy to mention cases by the hundred, in which men
addicted to begging have been thoroughly fitted out and started in
life, but all to no purpose. Once a man fairly takes to begging, as a
means of livelihood, it is almost hopeless attempting to cure him.
After a time he loses the capacity for labour; his faculties, for want
of exercise, become blunted and powerless, and he remains a beggar to
the end of his days. It sometimes happens that the beggar who has
taken to mendicancy as a profession is obliged to go to the workhouse
as a kind of temporary refuge. This is not so frequent considering the
sort of life a vagrant has to lead; but when it does occur, the
labour-master of the Union very often finds it next to impossible to
got him to perform the task every able-bodied person is expected to
complete when taking shelter in a Casual Ward. As a result the
habitual beggar has sometimes to appear before the magistrates as a
refractory pauper, but a short sentence of imprisonment, which usually
follows, has lost all its terrors for him; he prefers enduring it to
doing the task allotted to him at the workhouse.
From this it will be seen that habits of indolence, and not the stress
of destitution, are responsible for a great deal of the begging which
goes on in England; but these habits are not answerable for the whole
of it. When times are bad begging has a decided tendency to increase,
and this arises from the fact that a considerable proportion of the
community possess wonderfully few resources within themselves. Even in
depressed times it is astonishing how well men who can turn their
hand, as it is called, can manage to live. Men of this stamp are not
beaten and rendered helpless by the misfortune of losing their usual
employment; they are capable of devising fresh methods of earning a
livelihood; they are persistent, persevering, energetic; they are not
content to stand by with their hands in their pockets and their back
at the wall; at times they even create an occupation, and devise new
wants for the community. Such men exist in large numbers among the
working population, and are able to tide over periods of slackness and
depression in a truly admirable way. But there are others who are
utterly lost the moment trade ceases to flourish. As soon as they lose
the job they have been accustomed to work at they at once sink into a
condition of complete helplessness; knowing not which way to move or
what steps to take; in a very short time they are to be found
soliciting alms in the streets. It is a very serious matter when such
persons are reduced to these straits. With the advent of better times
it is often very difficult to enrol them once again in the ranks of
industry. Bad habits have been acquired, self-respect has broken down,
the mind has become accustomed to a lower plane of existence; the
danger has arisen that persons who were to begin with only beggars by
accident may end by becoming beggars from choice. This is what
actually does happen in some instances, and especially where the level
of life and comfort has at all times been low. The transition from the
one state to the other is not a very pronounced one, and the step into
the position of a habitual beggar is not hard to take after a certain
number of lessons in the mendicant's art have once been learnt. In one
sense it is the pressure of want which has made these people beggars,
in another sense it is their own apathy and feebleness of resource.
It is not easy to estimate the number of persons who become habitual
mendicants in consequence of slackness of work and the temporary loss
of employment. As a matter of fact the whole body of statistical
information bearing upon vagrancy is rather unreliable in character,
and it is difficult to see how it can be anything else. In almost all
cases of begging the initiative is taken by the police; it very seldom
happens that a private citizen gives a beggar in charge. The regular
and systematic enforcement of the Vagrancy Acts by the public
authorities is impeded by a variety of causes, each of which makes it
difficult to grasp accurately the proportions of the begging
population. In the first place no two policemen enforce the law with
the same stringency; one is inclined to be lax and lenient, while
another will not allow a single case to escape. In some districts
chief constables do not care to bring too many begging cases before
the local magistrates; in other districts chief constables are zealous
for the rooting out of vagrancy. In some counties the magistrates
themselves are not so anxious to convict for vagrancy as they are in
others; where the latter tendency prevails, the police take their cue
from the magistrates and comparatively few offences against the
Vagrancy Acts are brought up for trial. Again, there are times when
the public have fits of indulgence towards beggars, which are
counterbalanced at other periods by a corresponding access of
severity; these oscillations of public sentiment are immediately felt
by the executive authorities. The conduct of policemen and magistrates
towards the begging fraternity is largely shaped by the dominant
public mood, and the statistics of vagrancy move up and down in
sympathy with it. Thus it comes to pass that the variations which take
place in the annual statistics of vagrancy do not necessarily
correspond with the growth or diminution of the number of persons
following this mode of life; the actual number of such persons in the
population may in reality be varying very little or, perhaps,
remaining stationary, whilst official statistics are pointing to the
conclusion that important changes are going on. In short, the
statistics of vagrancy are more useful as affording a clue to the
state of public sentiment with respect to this offence than as
offering an accurate test of the extent to which vagrancy prevails.
After this explanation it will be seen how difficult it is, in the
first place, to estimate the exact numbers of the vagrant population;
and, in the next place, the exact proportion of beggars who have been
driven into the ranks of vagrancy, as a result of bad trade and
inability to obtain work. My own impression is, that the number of
persons who are forced to beg for want of work is not large, and they
consist, for the most part, of men beyond middle life or verging upon
old age. There are two causes at present in operation in England which
often press hard upon such men. The first of these causes is one which
was felt more severely twenty or thirty years ago than at the present
moment--I moan the introduction of machinery into industries formerly
carried on to a large extent by hand. One of the most conspicuous
characteristics of the present century is the ever-increasing extent
to which inventions of all kinds have invaded almost every department
of industry. As far as the young are concerned, those inventions have
been on the whole a benefit, and what used to be hard work has become,
as Professor Alfred Marshall recently said, merely looking on. But the
case stands differently with workmen who are surprised by some new
invention at a period of life when the power of adaptability to a
fresh set of industrial circumstances is almost entirely gone. One of
the first consequences of a new invention may be, and often is, that
work which had hitherto been performed by men can now be done by women
and boys; or an occupation which had formerly taken years to learn can
now be mastered in a few weeks. In other cases the new machine is able
to do the work of twenty, fifty, or a hundred men; the article
produced is so immensely cheapened that the old handicraftsman is
driven out of the field; if he is a man entering into years, and
therefore unable to turn his hand to something else, the bread is
practically taken out of his mouth, and the machine, which is
undoubtedly a benefit to the community as a whole, means starvation to
him as an individual. When such circumstances occur, and positive
proof in abundance can be adduced to show that they do take place, the
position of the aged worker becomes a very hard and embarrassing one.
He finds it a very uphill task to change the whole course of his
industrial activities at a period of life when nature has lost much of
her elasticity; the new means he has had to adopt in order to earn a
livelihood are irksome to him; the diminished sum he is now able to
earn per week depresses his spirits and deprives him of certain little
comforts he had long been accustomed to enjoy; but in spite of these
unforeseen and unexpected hardships it is marvellous to see how nobly
working-men, as a rule, struggle on to the end, like a bird with a
broken wing. There are, however, cases in which the struggle is given
up. It would be impossible to enumerate all the causes which lead to
such a deplorable result; sometimes these causes are personal,
sometimes they are social, while in many instances they are a
combination of both. But, whatever such circumstances may be in
origin, the effects of them are generally the same; the worker who is
incapable of adjusting himself to his new industrial surroundings has
few alternatives before him. These alternatives, unless he is
supported by his family or relations, resolve themselves into the
Union, beggary, or theft. Many choose the Union and, with all its
drawbacks, it is undoubtedly the wisest choice; but others have such a
horror of the restraints imposed upon the inmates of a workhouse that
they enter upon the perilous and precarious career of the beggar or
petty thief. The men who make such a choice as this are not, as may
easily be surmised, the pick of their class. They consist, to a good
extent, of persons who have been somewhat unsteady in their habits;
they are not downright drunkards, and they have never allowed drink to
interfere with their regular occupation; but it has been their
immemorial custom to go in for a good deal of drinking on Saturday
nights; on Bank holidays, and other festive occasions. Sensible
workmen do not care to amuse themselves after this fashion; it is
rather too like a savage orgie for most tastes; at the same time it is
the only form of amusement which certain sections of the populace
truly and heartily enjoy, and, on the whole, it is perhaps better that
this rude form of merry-making should remain, than that the multitude
should be deprived of every outlet for the pent-up exuberance of their
spirits. My own impression is, that the rough and boisterous element
which shows itself so conspicuously when the labouring population is
at play will never be eradicated so long as men and women have to
spend so much of their time within the four walls of workshops and
factories, where so much restraint and suppression of the individual
is imperative, if the industrial machine is to go on. It is not at all
unnatural that the severe regularity and monotony of an existence
chiefly spent in this manner should be occasionally interspersed with
outbursts of somewhat boisterous revelry, and the persons who indulge
in it are not to be set down off-hand as worthless characters, because
they sometimes step beyond due and proper bounds. At the same time it
must be admitted that it is generally from the ranks of this class
that the supreme aversion to the workhouse proceeds, and that the
disposition to live by begging, rather than enter it, most largely
prevails. If it happens, therefore, that a man who has lived the life
we have just described is thrown out of employment, by the
introduction of machinery, at a period when he is too old to turn his
hand to something else, he not unfrequently ends by becoming a beggar,
and this continues to be his occupation to the last.
The second cause which leads a certain number of elderly men to adopt
a life of vagrancy is to be attributed to the action of Trades-Unions.
After a workman reaches a certain period of life he is no longer able
to do a full day's work. As soon as this period of life arrives, and
sometimes even before it does arrive, the artisan finds it becoming
increasingly difficult to obtain employment. The rate of wages in his
trade is fixed by Trades-Union rules; every man, no matter what his
qualifications may be, has to receive so much an hour, or the full
Trade-Union wage for the district; no one is allowed to take a job at
a lower figure. No doubt Trades-Unionists find that this regulation
works well an far as it relates to the young and the able-bodied, and
as these always compose the great majority in every trade society, it
is a regulation which is not likely to be rescinded or modified.
Nevertheless, it is a rule which often operates very unjustly in the
case of men who are getting old. These men may have been steady and
industrious workmen all their lives, they may still be able to do a
fair amount of honest work; but, as soon as that amount of work falls
below the daily average of the trade, such men have to go; they are
henceforth practically debarred from earning an honest livelihood at
what has hitherto been the occupation of their working life. Work may
be abundant in the district, but it is useless for grey-haired men to
apply; they cannot do the amount required, and as they are not
permitted to work at a lower rate of wages than their fellows, the
means of getting a living are arbitrarily taken out of their hands. As
a consequence of these Trades-Union enactments, cases are not
infrequent in which workmen who have just passed middle life, or have
sustained injuries, drift insensibly into vagrant habits. These habits
are acquired almost without their knowing it. In the vague hope of
perhaps finding something to do a man will wander from town to town
existing as best he can; after the hope of employment has died away he
still continues to wander, and thus forms an additional unit in the
permanent army of beggars and vagrants. Trade-Unionists would
undoubtedly remedy a great wrong if some effective means were devised
by them to meet cases of this character. It should be remembered by
those most opposed to any modifications of the present system that
they may one day be its victims. The hindrances in the way of putting
an end to the injustice inherent in the present arrangements are not
incapable of being overcome. It is surely possible to devise a rule
which, while leaving intact the essential features of the present
system, will render it more flexible--a rule to enable the maimed and
the aged who cannot do a full day's work to make, through the Union if
need be, some special arrangement with the employers. Such a rule, if
properly safe-guarded to prevent abuse, would be of inestimable
benefit to many a working man.
If the step here suggested were adopted by the Trade Societies, it
would, according to calculations which I have made, reduce the begging
population by about two per cent. This percentage, in my opinion,
represents the number of vagrants who are able and willing to do a
certain amount of work, but cannot get it to do. It is a percentage
which at any rate does not err on the side of being too low; when
trade is at its ordinary level it is perhaps a little too high. In any
case this proportion may be taken as a tolerably accurate estimate of
the numbers of the vagrant class which will not enter the Unions when
out of employment, and are consequently forced by the pressure of want
to resort to a life of beggary.
The proportion here indicated of the number of vagrants who are
willing to work coincides in a remarkable manner with certain
statistics recently collected by H. Monod of the Ministry of the
Interior in France.[19] According to M. Monod a benevolently disposed
French citizen wished to know the amount of truth contained in the
complaints of sturdy beggars, that they were willing to work if they
could get anything to do or anyone to employ them. This gentleman
entered into negotiations with some merchants and manufacturers, and
induced them to offer work at the rate of four francs a day to every
person presenting himself furnished with a letter of recommendation
from him. In eight months 727 sturdy beggars came under his notice,
all complaining that they had no work. Each of them was asked to come
the following day to receive a letter which would enable him to get
employment at four francs a day in an industrial establishment. More
than one half (415) never came for the letter; a good many others
(138) returned for the letter but never presented it. Others who did
present their letter worked half a day, demanded two francs and were
seen no more. A few worked a whole day and then disappeared. In short,
out of the whole 727 only 18 were found at work at the end of the
third day. As a result of this experiment M. Monod concludes that not
more than one able-bodied beggar in 40 is inclined to work even if he
is offered a fair remuneration for his services.
[19] Cf. _L'Etat Moderne et ses Functions par Paul Leroy Beaulieu_,
p. 300. See also Mr. J.C. Sherrard's letter to the _Times_ of
January 8th, 1891, on "Tramps."
If further proof were wanted that vagrancy, as far, at least, as
England and Wales are concerned, is very seldom produced by
destitution, it will be found in the following facts. A comparison
between the number of male and female vagrants arrested in 1888 under
the provisions of the Vagrancy Acts shows that there were nearly four
times more male vagrants proceeded against before the magistrates than
female. The exact numbers are males, 40,672; females, 11,464. Although
the numbers charged vary from year to year, the proportion between
males and females always remains very much the same, and it may
therefore be considered as established that men are from three to four
times more addicted to vagrancy than women. If the charges of
prostitution were excluded (they amounted to 6,486 in 1888), it will
be found that the proportion of male vagrants to female is as eight to
one. Looking at this matter _à priori_, we should expect these figures
to be reversed. In the first place women form a considerably larger
proportion of the community than men, and in the second place there
are not nearly so many openings for females in our present industrial
system. Forming a judgment upon these two sets of facts alone, one
would almost inevitably come to the conclusion that women would be
found in much larger numbers among the vagrant class than men. There
are fewer careers open to them in the industrial world; they are less
fitted to move about from place to place in search of work; the pay
they receive in manufacturing and other establishments is, as a rule,
very poor; but in spite of all these economic disadvantages only one
woman becomes a beggar to every four men, or, if we exclude fallen
women, to every eight men. What does this condition of things serve to
show? It is an incontestable proof that at least three-fourths or,
perhaps, seven-eighths of the begging carried on by men is without
economic excuse. If women who are so heavily handicapped in the race
of life can run it to such a large extent without resorting to
vagrancy, so can men. That men fall so far behind women in this
respect is to be attributed, as we have seen, not to their want of
power, but to their want of will. They possess far more opportunities
of earning a livelihood than their sisters, but, notwithstanding this
advantage, they figure far more prominently in the vagrant list. The
only possible explanation of this state of things is that vagrancy is,
to a very large extent, entirely unconnected with economic conditions;
the position of trade either for good or evil is a very secondary
factor in producing this disease in the body politic; its extirpation
would not he effected by the advent of an economic millennium; its
roots are, as a rule, in the disposition of the individual, and not to
any serious degree in the industrial constitution of society; hence,
the only way to stamp it out is by adopting vigorous and effective
methods of repression.
The British Isles are in a position to adopt these measures with
boldness and confidence, for the Poor Law system provides for all
genuine cases of destitution, and in striking at begging with a heavy
hand, the authorities are at the same time doing much to suppress
other kinds of crime. It has to be remembered that the vagrant is a
dangerous person in more ways that one. The life he leads, his habit
of going from house to house, affords him ample opportunities of
noticing where a robbery may he successfully committed. If he does not
make use of the opportunities himself, he is not at all unwilling to
let others who will into his secret for a small consideration. In low
lodging-houses and public-houses of a similar type beggars and thieves
are accustomed to meet, to fraternise, to exchange notes; the beggar
is able to give the burglar a hint, and many a case of house-breaking
is the outcome of these sinister confabulations. Little do many people
imagine when they are doing a good deed, as they believe, to some
worthless, wandering reprobate, that he is at the same moment looking
around, so as to be able to tell a companion how best the house may be
robbed. It is very seldom thieves break into houses without having
received information beforehand respecting them, and the source of
that information is in many instances the vagrant, who has been
knocking at the door for alms a short time before.
One of the principal reasons which makes beggary such a profitable
occupation, and renders it so hard to repress, is the persistent
belief among great numbers of people that beggars are working men in
distress. That, of course, is the beggar's tale, but it is a baseless
fabrication. It is no more the practice of working-men to go about
begging than it is the practice of the middle-class, but until this
elementary fact can be laid hold of by the public all statutory
enactments for the suppression of mendicity will be but partial in
their operation. Speaking from considerable personal experience, as
well as from statistical facts, one is able to affirm that the great
mass of the working population of these islands have nothing whatever
in common with the indolent vagrant; and it is a libel on the
working-classes to assume that a man is a workman to-day and a beggar
to-morrow. As a matter of fact, beggars are recruited from all ranks
of the community, when they are not actually born to the trade. Of
course, the greatest number is drawn from the working population; it
is they who form the immense bulk of the nation, and it is only
reasonable to suppose that they will contribute to the begging
fraternity in proportion to their numbers. But, just as the proportion
of thieves drawn from the working-classes is not greater than the
proportion drawn from the well-to-do classes, so is it likewise with
beggars. The other classes, in proportion to their numbers, contribute
just about as many beggars to the community as the working population,
and such beggars are generally the most hardened and villainous
specimens of their tribe. With the beggar sprung from the working
population one is sometimes able to do something, but a beggar who has
descended from the higher walks of life is one of the most hopeless,
as well as one of the most corrupt creatures it is possible to
conceive. If the public would only allow themselves to realise that
these are the facts respecting vagrancy, and if they would exercise
their knowledge in consistently refusing help to professional
wanderers, the plague of beggars would soon disappear, to the immense
relief and benefit of everybody, not excluding the beggars themselves.
A persistent refusal to assist beggars, while perfectly justifiable in
these islands, is a method which can hardly be adopted in countries
where there is no efficient and comprehensive Poor Law. In such
countries, for instance, an Austria and Germany, where there is no
proper provision on the part of the State for the feeble, the
helpless, the aged, the maimed, begging, on the part of these
unfortunates, becomes, in many cases, an absolute necessity. Recent
statistics,[20] respecting the working of additions to the Austrian
vagrancy laws passed in 1885, would seem to show that numbers of the
genuine labouring population have been in the habit of resorting to
begging when going from place to place in search of employment. To
meet these cases the Austrian Government, in the year just mentioned,
secured the passing of a law for the establishment of what are called
Naturalverpflegstationen, or refuges for workmen on the tramp. These
shelters or refuges are strictly confined to the use of genuine
labourers; the poor of the surrounding neighbourhood are not allowed
to enter them; nor is any one afforded shelter who cannot show that he
has been at work within the previous three months, or who applies
twice for admission in the course of that time. A man must also
produce his papers and be willing to perform a certain amount of work;
in return for this he is allowed to remain at the shelter for eighteen
hours, but not more, and is informed on his departure where the next
station is situated. He is also told if there is any probability of
getting employment in the district and is given the names of employers
in want of men. These institutions are a combination, of the casual
ward and the labour bureau, differing, however, from the casual ward
in rejecting all mere wanderers and accepting genuine workmen alone.
[20] Cf. Conrad's _Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften_,
i. 928.
It in only in some parts of the Austrian Empire that this system has
as yet been put into operation, for the act is of a permissive
character and is mainly worked by the local authorities. In those
districts of lower Austria where it has been tried, it has so far
produced most satisfactory results; begging has decreased according to
the statistics for 1888, more than 60 per cent. in the course of three
years, while in other parts of Austria, where these institutions are
not yet adopted, it has only decreased 25 per cent. The system has as
yet been in operation for too short a period to enable an opinion to
be formed of its eventual success, but so far it promises well and is
an interesting experiment which deserves to be watched. In any case
the experience derived from the working of this law shows that in
Austria, at least, the workman in search of employment has up till
recently been too often confounded with the habitual beggar, a
confusion highly detrimental to the real interests of the State. One
of the main objects of every well ordered Poor Law system should be to
create as wide a gulf as possible between the begging class and the
working-class; it should do everything possible to prevent anything
like a solidarity of interests between these two sections of the
community; it should dissociate the worker from the vagrant in every
conceivable manner, so that the working population cannot possibly
fail to see that the State draws a sharp line of distinction between
them and the refuse of the land. It was a wise remark of Goethe's
that, if you want to improve men you must begin by assuming that they
are a little better than what they seem; and it is a principle which
is applicable to communities and classes as well as to individuals.
Before dismissing the question of the relations between vagrancy and
destitution there is one more point which still requires to be
considered. According to English law, prostitution is set down as a
form of vagrancy, and the number of persons convicted of this offence
is to be found included in the statistics of vagrancy. We shall,
therefore, consider prostitution in this connection as a form of
vagrancy, and proceed to examine the extent to which it is produced by
destitution. If this grave social disorder were entirely due to a want
of the elementary needs of life on the part of the unhappy creatures
who practice it, we should find an utter absence of it in America and
Australia. In these two important portions of the globe, woman's work
is at a premium; it is one of the easiest things imaginable for
females to get employment; no one willing to work need remain idle a
single day, and the bitter cry of householders, in those quarters of
the world, is that domestic servants are not to be had. But, in spite
of the favourable position in which women stand, as far as work is
concerned in America and Australia, what do we find? Do we find that
there is no such thing as a fallen class in Melbourne and New York? On
the contrary, it is often a subject of bitter complaint by American
and Australian citizens that their large towns are just as bad, as far
as sexual morality goes, as the cities of the old world. The higher
economic position of women does not seem to touch the evil either in
the Antipodes or beyond the Atlantic. It exists among communities
where destitution is an almost unmeaning word; it exists in lands
where no woman need be idle, and where she is highly paid for her
services. In the face of such facts it is impossible to believe that
destitution is the only motive which impels a certain class of women
to wander the streets.
What is true with respect to destitution is that it compels women to
remain in the deplorable life they have adopted, but it seldom or
never drives them to take to it. Almost all the best authorities are
agreed upon this point. No one has examined this social sin in all its
bearings with such patience and exhaustiveness as Parent Duchatelet,
and his deliberate opinion, after years of investigation, is that its
origin lies in the character of the individual, in vanity, in
slothfulness, in sex. It does not, however, follow that a person
possessing these characteristics in an abnormal degree is bound to
fall. If such a person is protected by parental care, no evil results
need necessarily ensue. It is when low instincts are combined with a
bad home that the worst is to be feared. This fact was clearly and
emphatically brought to light by the parliamentary inquiry which took
place in France a few years ago. M. Th. Roussel, one of the highest
authorities on the committee, the man, in fact, from whom the inquiry
derived its name, thus sums up some of its results: "However large a
part in the production of prostitution must be allowed to the love of
pleasure and of finery, to a dislike of work and to debased instincts,
the cause which, according to the facts cited, appears everywhere as
the most powerful and the most general, is the want of a home, the
want of maternal care." Here are some of the facts on which M. Roussel
bases his general statement. "At Bordeaux, out of 600 'filles
inscrites' 98 were minors. Of the latter, 44 appear to have fallen
through their own fault alone. The remaining 54 grew up under
abnormal, domestic conditions; 14 were orphans, without father or
mother, 7 had only one parent, 32 had been abandoned or perverted by
their parents."
In England it would be impossible to conduct a parliamentary inquiry
on the lines of the "Enquête Roussel," but it is very probable if such
an inquiry were instituted it would reveal a condition of things very
similar to what exists in France. The scattered and fragmentary
information we do possess points to that conclusion, and the
conclusion, it must be admitted, is not at all a hopeful or comforting
one. Supposing that all the homeless and deserted female children we
have now in our midst were immediately placed under the protection of
the State (as a matter of fact, most of them are), it does not follow
that they will grow up to lead regular lives. According to the
thirty-second report of the Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial
Schools, the authorities are unable to account satisfactorily for the
character of more than four fifths of the inmates of girls' industrial
schools who have left these institutions on an average for two or
three years. That is to say, it is probable that about twenty out of
every hundred girls go to the bad within two or three years of leaving
an industrial school. The proportion of girls discharged from
reformatory schools, whose character is bad within two years of their
discharge, is still larger than in the case of industrial schools.
This is only what might be expected, for it is the worst cases that
are now sent to reformatory schools. "Since the passing of the
Elementary Education Act," said Miss Nicoll of the Girls' Reformatory,
Hampstead, at the Fourth Conference of the National Association of
certified Reformatory and Industrial Schools, "a great change has
gradually been made in the character and age of the inmates of our
reformatories on admission. The School Boards in the country, and more
especially the School Board of London, by enforcing compulsory
attendance of all the children of the poor between the ages of five
and thirteen, have swept into what are termed Truant Schools all the
neglected and uncontrollable children who were formerly sent to
certified industrial schools--these latter being now retained in a
great measure for children who, besides being neglected and beyond the
control of their parents, have either taken their first steps in a
course of crime, or have, by association with vicious companions,
become familiar with it. The industrial schools have thus intercepted
the very class from which our numbers were usually drawn, leaving, as
a rule, for reformatories, girls about fifteen, who, though nominally
under fifteen, are sometimes a good deal older when admitted. Young
persons, as these are termed in the Summary Jurisdiction Acts of 1879,
are of a much more hardened character than before, and in addition to
having been guilty of acts of petty larceny, have frequently been
prostitutes for some time anterior to their admission. This being so,
it can hardly be wondered at if the success of reformatories is not so
marked as it was when they were first instituted."
Seeing that reformatories for girls, on account of the more hardened
character of their inmates on admission, are not so successful as
industrial schools, it is certainly within the mark to say that at
least one-fourth of the cases discharged from these institutions
become failures in the space of two years. If the proportion is so
high at the end of two years, what will it amount to at the end of
five? It is then that the young person enters upon what is _par
excellence_ the criminal age, and when that age is reached, I fear
that the proportion of failures increases considerably. In any case we
have sufficient data to show that the protection of the State, when
extended, as it is in the United Kingdom, to helpless and homeless
girls, does not in many instances suffice to keep them on the road of
virtue. Deep-seated instincts manage to assert themselves in spite of
the most careful training, the most vigilant precautions, and until
the moral development of the population, as a whole, reaches a higher
level, it will be vain to hope too much from the labours of State
institutions, however excellent these institutions may be.
It has, however, to be remembered that the fallen class is not by any
means recruited exclusively from the ranks of the helpless and the
homeless. On the contrary, according to the evidence of the Roussel
commission, nearly one half of the minors (44 out of 98) found in the
"maisons de tolerance" of Bordeaux had no domestic or economic
impediments to encounter. External circumstances, as far as could be
seen, had nothing to do with the unhappy position in which they stood,
and the life they adopted appears to have been entirely of their own
choosing. It is true the Bordeaux statistics only cover a small area,
and are not to be looked upon as in themselves exhaustive, but when
these statistics confirm, as they do, the careful observations of all
unbiassed investigators, we cannot be far wrong in coming to the
conclusion that in France, at least, fifty per cent. of the cases of
prostitution are not originally due to the pressure of want. Since the
introduction of Truant and Industrial Schools in this country for
homeless and neglected girls, it is certain that the proportion of
those who fall from sheer destitution must be extremely small. On the
Continent, where such institutions do not exist on such an extensive
scale, the proportion may be somewhat larger, but in the United
Kingdom it cannot, according to the most liberal computation, exceed
ten per cent. of the cases brought before the magistrates. Many
experienced observers will not allow that it reaches such a high
percentage.
We are now in a position to tabulate the results of our inquiries as
to the part played by destitution in producing prostitution and
vagrancy. The following table represents the proportion of persons
charged under the provisions of the Vagrancy Acts in the year 1888:--
Percentage of beggars, 45 per cent.
Percentage of prostitutes, 12 "
Percentage of other offenders, 43 "
---
100 per cent.
Percentage of beggars destitute from misadventure, 2 per cent.
Percentage of prostitutes, do. do. 10 "
Percentage of other offenders, do. do. 2 "
---
14 per cent.
It has already been pointed out that persons charged with offences
against the Vagrancy Acts constitute on an average 7 per cent. of the
total annual criminal population. According to the statistics we have
just tabulated, 5 per cent. of these offences are not due to the
pressure of destitution, and only 2 per cent. are to be attributed
to that cause.
Let us now collect the whole of the figures set forth in this chapter,
so that we may be in a position to give an answer to the question with
which we set out, namely, to what extent are theft and vagrancy the
product of destitution?
Proportion of offences against Property and the Vagrancy Acts
to total number of offences tried in 1888, 15 per cent.
Proportion of offenders against property destitute, 2 "
Proportion of offenders against Vagrancy Acts destitute, 2 "
Adding together the two classes of offenders against Property and the
Vagrancy Acts who, according to our calculations, are destitute when
arrested, we arrive at the fact that they form four per cent. of the
total criminal population. As has already been pointed out, beggars
and thieves are almost the only two sections of the criminal community
likely to be driven to the commission of lawless acts by the pressure
of absolute want. It very seldom happens that murders, for instance,
are perpetrated from this cause; in fact, not one murder in ten is
even committed for the purpose of theft. The vast majority of the
remaining offences against the criminal law are only connected in a
remote degree with the economic condition of the population, and in
hardly any instance can it be said of them, that they are the outcome
of destitution. In order, however, to err on the safe side, let us
assume that one per cent. of offenders, other than vagrants and
thieves, are to be ranked among the destitute. What is the final
result at which we then arrive with respect to the percentage of
persons forced by the action of destitution into the army of crime? In
the case of vagrants and thieves it has just been seen that the
proportion amounted to four per cent.; adding one per cent. to this
proportion, brings up the total of offenders who probably fall into
crime through the pressure of absolute want to five per cent. of the
annual criminal population tried before the courts.
These figures are important; they demonstrate the fact that although
there was not a single destitute person in the whole of England and
Wales, the annual amount of crime would not be thereby appreciably
diminished. At the present day it is a very common practice to pick
out a case of undoubted hardship here and there, and to assume that
such a case is typical of the whole criminal population. It is, of
course, well to point out such cases, and to emphasise them as much as
possible till we reach such a pitch of excellence in our administration
of the law as will render all unmerited hardship exceedingly rare. As
it is, such cases are becoming less frequent year by year, and it is
an entire mistake to suppose, as is too often done, that a serious
amount of the crime perpetrated in England is committed by men and
women who are willing to work but cannot get it to do. An opinion of
that kind has an alarming tendency to encourage crime; it creates a
false sentiment of compassion for the utterly worthless; it prevents
them from being dealt with according to their deserts, and worst of
all, it is apt to make the working population imagine that there is a
community of interest between them and the criminal classes which does
not in reality exist. From the point of view of public policy nothing
can be more pernicious than to propagate such an idea; and no artisan
who values his own dignity should ever allow any man, whether on
platforms or in newspapers, to identify him in any way whatever with
the common criminal.
Before finally leaving the question of the relations between
destitution and crime, we shall now briefly inquire whether anything
further can be accomplished in the matter of raising our legal and
poor law administration to such a pitch of excellence, that not even
five per cent. of our incriminated population can, with justice, bring
forward any economic pretext whatever for violating the law. As far as
legal administration is concerned, it must be remembered that mistakes
will sometimes occur, no matter how numerous the precautions may be
with which justice is surrounded.
To be certain of justice in all circumstances you must have not only
an infallible law, but also an infallible judge and an infallible
method of criminal administration. It is a truism to say that this is
an impossibility, and every now and again society will have to submit
to be shocked by the revelation of a palpable miscarriage of justice.
At the same time it is important to take every possible precaution
against the occurrence of such distressing accidents. This can only
be effected by placing the administration of the law in all its
departments, from the policeman to the Home Secretary, in the hands of
thoroughly competent officials who have not only their heart, but what
is equally important, their head in the work. When this is done, and
if these officials are not embarrassed by public clamour in the
performance of their duties (honest criticism will do them good), all
will have been accomplished which it is possible to get in the way of
effective and enlightened administration of the law.
In the next place it may be possible to mitigate the operation of our
present poor law system in all cases of destitution through
misadventure. Some prominent politicians--and I believe among them Mr.
Morley--appear to be in favour of this course; and at a recent meeting
of the British Association, Professor Alfred Marshall was inclined to
the belief that a much larger discrimination might be allowed than now
exists in the administration of out-door relief in cases of actual
want; and also that separate and graduated workhouses might be
established for the deserving poor. It will be admitted on all hands
that proposals of this character land us on very delicate ground, and
require the most mature consideration. Even now the inmate of a
workhouse is often better supplied with food, clothing, and shelter
than the poor labourer, who has to pay taxes to support him. If the
condition of that inmate is made still more comfortable, will it be
possible to prevent hundreds and thousands of the very poor, who now
keep outside these institutions, from immediately crowding into them
as soon as the slightest economic difficulties arise? Almost all
philanthropic schemes, and especially all such schemes when supported
by the public purse, have a tendency to be administered with more and
more laxity as time goes on; and a scheme of this kind, if carried
into law, would require to be managed with the utmost circumspection
in order to avoid pauperising great masses of the community.
A scheme of this character will, however, have to be tried if the
manifesto of the Executive Council of the Dockers' Union, issued in
September last, is to be acted upon by Trade-Unionists in general.
According to the doctrine laid down in this manifesto, the idea of a
Trade-Union, as a free and open combination, which every workman may
enter, provided he pays his subscription and conforms to the rules, is
an idea which must for the future be abandoned. Henceforth, a
Trade-Union is to be a close corporation to be worked for the benefit
of persons who have succeeded in getting inside it. The Dockers'
Union, to do them justice, see that this policy is bound to increase
the numbers of the destitute, but they propose to remedy this
condition of things by establishing "in each municipality factories
and workshops where all those who cannot get work under ordinary
conditions shall have an opportunity afforded them by the community."
If these State establishments are to be started for the unemployed,
the workers in them must work at something, and it will have to be
something which the unskilled labourer will not require a great deal
of time to learn. What would the dockers say if one of these
establishments was instituted by the municipality for the loading and
unloading of ships? Hardly a Trade-Union Congress meets in which the
complaint is not made that prison labour interferes with free labour;
but what sort of outcry would there be if State labour, on an
extensive scale, were to enter into serious competition with the
individual workman?
These schemes for the establishment of State institutions offering
work to the indigent will never solve the problem of want, and all
attempts that have hitherto been made in that direction have either
ended in failure or met with small success.
The latest of these schemes is a village settlement, which the
authorities in New Zealand started some time ago to meet the case of
the unemployed. The Government, in the first place, spent £16,000 in
making roads and other conveniences for the settlers, and afterwards
advanced £21,000 for building houses, buying implements, and so on.
According to recent advices from New Zealand, only £2000 of this
advance has been paid back, and it is the general feeling of the
colony that the project has proved a failure. These, and other
experiments of a similar character, compel us to recognise the
disagreeable fact that a certain proportion of people who are in the
habit of falling out of work are, as a class, extremely difficult to
put properly on their legs. Failure, for some reason or another,
always dogs their steps, and the more Society does for them, the less
they will be disposed to do anything for themselves.
When such persons are sent to prison on charges of begging, or petty
theft, it very often happens that they are assisted on their release
by a Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society. Tools are given them, work is
found for them, yet they do not thrive. Not infrequently the job is
given up on some frivolous pretext; or if it is a temporary one,
little or no effort is made till it actually comes to an end to look
out for another. It is little wonder that men who live in such a
fashion should occasionally be destitute; the only wonder is that they
manage to pass through life at all. Those men hang upon the skirts of
labour and seek shelter under its banner, but it is only for short and
irregular intervals that they march in the ranks of the actual
workers. The real working man knows such people well, and heartily
despises them.
Would it be a right thing to increase the burdens of the taxpayer by
opening State workshops, even if such a plan were feasible, for men of
the stamp we have just been describing? Decidedly it would not. Yet
these men form a fair proportion of the persons whom we have classed
as driven to crime by economic distress. As far, then, as the criminal
population is concerned, no necessity exists for the organisation of
State factories; and so far as destitution is a factor in the
production of crime, it can be grappled with by other agencies. In
fact, if a graduated system of Unions, with a kind of casual ward,
somewhat after the German Naturalverpflegstationen, could be worked
and if Trade Societies adopted, under proper precautions, the
principle of allowing debilitated members of their trade the
opportunity of doing something at a somewhat reduced rate, it would be
impossible for any well-intentioned man to say that he was driven to
crime from sheer want. It is worth while, on the part of the nation,
to make some small sacrifice to attain an object so supremely
important as this. It is very probable that hardly any sacrifice will
be needed. In any case it would get rid of the uncomfortable feeling
entertained by many that there are occasions when human beings are
punished who ought to be fed. It would completely alienate all
sympathy from crime; it would then be known that criminal offenders
deserved the punishment they received, and justice would be able to
deal with them with a firm and even hand.