THE URBAN LOAFER.
The vagrant is only one type of social parasite, however, and in
some respects he is not the most obnoxious. When we leave the casual
wards and enter the workhouses themselves, a further loafing element
confronts us, adding to the difficulty of our problem. For though these
institutions nominally exist for the reception of people who are not
only destitute but are unable to prevent their destitution, we find
that the able-bodied pauper is to a large extent in possession.
It is interesting to recall the fact that when workhouses were
established, the tendency which the Poor Law authorities fought against
was, that the aged and infirm of the labouring class regarded them as
infirmaries for their permanent maintenance. A Report of the Poor Law
Commissioners of 1840 protested against the idea that workhouses should
be placed on the same footing as almshouses.
"If the condition of the inmates of a workhouse," they wrote, "were
to be so regulated as to invite the aged and infirm of the labouring
classes to take refuge in it, it would immediately be useless as a test
between indigence and indolence or fraud--it would no longer operate
as an inducement to the young and healthy to provide support for their
later years, or as a stimulus to them, whilst they have the means, to
support their aged parents and relatives. The frugality and forethought
of a young labourer would be useless if he foresaw the certainty of a
better asylum for his old age than he could possibly provide by his own
exertions...."
Nowadays, the difficulty of Poor Law Guardians is to prevent, not the
aged and infirm, but the middle-aged and able-bodied from making the
workhouse their permanent home.
"Once admitted into the workhouse in England," says the Majority Report
of the Poor Law Commission, "the pauper is usually left undisturbed,
the Guardians seldom exercising their power of discharge." This
generalisation is unjust, yet what is said certainly holds good of a
large number of workhouses. While, however, Boards of Guardians are
mainly to blame, the laws which they have to administer are also, in
part, responsible. In the absence of institutions for the detention of
loafers such as exist in Continental countries, these loafers are able
to abuse the Poor Law at will, and snap their fingers at the police.
Within the workhouse they are a cause of perpetual annoyance, and
their presence and example are a fruitful source of demoralisation and
disorder.
Speaking of this class of able-bodied paupers in relation to the
Sheffield Union, Mr. P. H. Bagenal, Poor Law Inspector for the West
Riding, reports:--
"The master states that this class gives infinite trouble. They have
no fear of prison; in fact many of them prefer it, and state that the
work is not so hard and the food better. Many of them have got good
trades, such as fitters, plumbers, builders, iron workers, etc., and
could earn from £3 to £4 a week if they chose. They prefer to go to
the workhouse, where, however, they only work under compulsion, and
give all the trouble they can to the officers."
Commenting upon the fact that of the persons relieved in England and
Wales during the year ending September 30, 1907, 26,179 had been
relieved five times or more, the Poor Law Commission state:
"The number of persons ascertained to have been relieved five times or
oftener during the year shows the existence of a troublesome class who
make a convenience of the workhouse, and whose improvidence is born of
the knowledge that that institution is always at hand."[31]
[Footnote 31: Report, Vol I., p. 42.]
The Poor Law Inspector for the Metropolis relates that, as a result of
a call-over of the 900 inmates of a London workhouse in 1907, it was
found that fifty able-bodied men and fifty-three able-bodied women were
among them. The Committee reported:--
"In a large number of these cases there did not seem to be any
tangible reason why they were in the workhouse at all.... Many
admitted that they had done no work for years; in fact could not give
the date or place where they had last worked. Many of this class were
so reduced in physique on admission that they could not be classed as
able-bodied, but with the regular diet and absence of intoxicating
liquors they rapidly recovered; but unfortunately for the worst
classes the conditions of the house appear to be conducive to their
disinclination to shift for themselves.
"Upon such cases again coming before the committee, it was found that
several inmates, who appeared to be quietly settling down for the
remainder of their lives, had awoke to the fact that the guardians
were making investigations, and had taken their discharge."
The Committee were also impressed by the number of men who
"When their wives refused to keep them longer, and as some of them
openly expressed it 'the wife turned me out,' came to settle down in
the house--in many cases drink and desertion were found to be the
causes of the wives' action."[32]
[Footnote 32: Annual Report of Local Government Board, 1907; report of
Mr. J. S. Oxley, Inspector for the Metropolis, etc.]
Mr. Lockwood, another Poor Law Inspector, stated before the Poor Law
Commission:--
"Probably, if it is an overcrowded workhouse, it is impossible to
prevent the able-bodied class from sharing in the comfort, and I may
say the luxuries of the older ones.... You cannot prevent that class
finding the conditions of life in a mixed workhouse such as they are
not entitled to, and ought not to share in."
Another witness, speaking of the Marylebone Workhouse, said:--
"The association in large numbers in the able-bodied blocks becomes
an attraction; and it appears to me that some method of breaking up
such associations, accompanied by systematic training under healthy
conditions, would be advantageous.... The master feels very strongly
that what the men require is to be given continuous work, which they
are able to do, and to be separated the one from the other. They
regard the workhouse as a kind of club house in which they put
up with a certain amount of inconvenience, but have very pleasant
evenings."[33]
[Footnote 33: Evidence before Poor Law Commission, Q. 16,686.]
It was stated that the Marylebone workhouse deals with 300 of these men
every week.
The master of the Bethnal Green workhouse confirmed what has been said.
"This class of man," he said, "is well known to the master of every
London workhouse as the able-bodied loafer. As a rule he is a strong,
healthy fellow, knowing no trade, having a great dislike to work, and
possessing all the attributes of the soft-shelled crab, willing to
live upon the fruits of the labour of the worker, so long as he can
avoid the sharing of responsibility himself. There is no doubt that
the moment this man becomes an inmate, so surely does he deteriorate
into a worse character still. Unless rigorously dealt with and made to
work under strict supervision, he has a fairly good time in the house,
and after a month or so he has mastered every trick of the trade, and
becomes a confirmed in-and-outer, taking his day's pleasure by giving
the necessary notice, and returning the same evening more contented
than ever with his lot in the house. Something for nothing is degrading
the man, until all of the manhood has left him, and there remains for
the ratepayers to keep an idle, dissolute remnant."
To quote another witness, who referred specially to the Poplar Union:--
"The pauper in the workhouse intends to be there; he is either going
to be there or in some other institution all the days of his life.
My experience is, that the average have been in from ten to twelve
years, and some of them nineteen years, and they are young men now.
The workhouse is no deterrent to any man. It simply harbours them, and
as long as the workhouses exist, these men will exist."
Similarly, the report of the Stepney Guardians for 1908 states:-
"There are too many opportunities in a general workhouse for
the vicious of both sexes to meet. The dining hall and other
parts of the workhouse common to all classes afford means of
communication--generally of an evil character. It is no uncommon event
for a man and woman to strike up an acquaintance in a workhouse,
which ultimately results in increased burdens on the ratepayers.
Messages are conveyed, _billets doux_, ill spelt but tender, are
exchanged; an assignation is made, resulting in the amorous couple
leaving the workhouse together when, dispensing with the blessing
of the Church on their union, they tramp the countryside as man and
wife during the summer months. At the approach of winter the man
returns, with a sigh of relief, to his old bachelor quarters in the
workhouse, where the gleeful account of his exploits is listened to
with open-mouthed admiration by the youthful male pauper, and with
envy by the hoary sinner. In this manner, a feeble-minded woman and a
physically enfeebled man--both chronic paupers and chargeable to this
union--begat five children, all of whom were born in the workhouse,
and were reared at the expense of the ratepayers."
The same testimony comes from rural districts. "It is certain," Mr. B.
Fleming, the Poor Law Inspector for Dorset, writes, "that the tendency
has been to induce the loafer class to think that they would have
provision made for them, and that therefore they need not trouble much
about it for themselves."[34]
[Footnote 34: Report of Local Government Board for 1907, p. 312.]
Writing of the "in-and-out" class of workhouse inmates, the Poor Law
Commissioners say:--
"It is not too much to say that this class has been created by our
administration of the Poor Law, while the law itself affords no means
of checking it now that it has come into existence. These are the men
and women who frequent the workhouse for short periods, often taking
their families with them, and are constantly taking their discharge.
They go out when they want more licence, and return when they need to
recruit themselves after a debauch."[35]
[Footnote 35: Report, Vol. II., p. 278.]
Moreover, the married urban loafer, like the married vagrant, inflicts
incalculable injury upon others. While it has been made a misdemeanour
to drag children round the country, the pauper of the "in-and-out"
type can still with impunity commit a crime no less outrageous
upon the offspring for whose decent maintenance he is legally and
morally responsible. For the children of such intermittent paupers
are introduced to workhouse life and breathe the atmosphere of
pauperisation from their earliest consciousness. When the father enters
the house, the children go with him, and for them, as for him, life is
an alternation of abject dependence and equally abject liberty.
"Through these children," says the Report of the Poor Law Commission
truly, "the evil (of pauperisation) is being perpetuated to another
generation, for they get no chance of education, while they become
habituated to constant appeals to the Poor Law, and lack the
advantages of either home or school life."[36]
[Footnote 36: Report, Vol. II., p. 279.]
As a Poor Law Guardian, I had to do, on one occasion, with an
able-bodied pauper of this kind, who, on the ground of destitution,
obtained admittance to the workhouse with his large family. Once
in, he was so satisfied with his new surroundings and freedom from
responsibility, that for many months it proved impossible to dislodge
him. Under the master's eye he was willing to do the work required of
him, but he had no wish to find employment outside, and did not leave
the house until he was literally ejected.
It is true that the Poor Law Act of 1899 gives power to Boards of
Guardians to appropriate neglected children, and so preserve them from
the ill effects of their vicious training.[37] That is undoubtedly
kind to the child, and in the end it is bound to be advantageous to
the public. But here comes in an absurd anomaly: Whatever the theory
of the law may be, we practically leave it to the option of the
parents to evade responsibility or not as they will. All they have to
do is to make themselves scarce, and the Poor Law officials and the
police may find them or they may not. I know of one Union in whose
workhouse there are, at the moment of writing, six children of one
father, and he an able-bodied man, who has fled from the district
once, and only refrains from doing so again because he knows that he
is under strict police supervision. Rousseau deposited his offspring
on the steps of the Foundling Hospital at dead of night, and went
away, thinking noble thoughts, for this was a part of the harmonious
"Social Contract," and everybody else could do the same. The English
loafer yields his children to workhouse care with but the gentlest
pretence of unwillingness, and betakes himself to liberty, lightened
of a disagreeable burden, and reflecting that of all strange devices
for relieving him and his kind of parental responsibility and of
encouraging the multiplication of paupers, the Poor Law is the
strangest.
[Footnote 37: The Poor Law Act of 1899, amending an Act of 1889,
provides that a child maintained by a Board of Guardians may be taken
into the guardians' control until it reaches the age of eighteen years,
the guardians acquiring all rights over it meanwhile, if the child has
been deserted by its parent, if the guardians think that the parent,
by reason of mental deficiency or vicious habits or mode of life, is
unfit to have control of the child, if the parent is unable to perform
his or her parental duties by reason of being under sentence of penal
servitude or of being detained under the Inebriates Act, 1898, or the
parent has been sentenced to imprisonment in respect of any offence
against any of his or her children, or the parent is permanently
bed-ridden or disabled and is an inmate of the workhouse and consents
to the guardians so acting, and if both the parents (or in the case of
an illegitimate child the mother of the child), are dead.]
Prosecution for maintenance, if the offender can be found, and a short
imprisonment if he refuses to pay, are the corrective measures already
available against the parents who culpably transfer their parental
liabilities to the public, and over 3,000 convictions are registered
yearly by the courts for neglect to maintain family.[38] It is
notorious, however, that proceedings of this kind are taken by Poor
Law authorities reluctantly, since the magistrates in many districts
habitually stretch the law in favour of defaulting parents. What we
should do, and shall have to do, in such a case, is to take the loafer,
too, and after disciplining the idleness out of his nature, give him
back his family obligations, and see that he discharges them.
[Footnote 38: The figures for six years are as follows:--1902, 2,832;
1903, 3,187; 1904, 3,235; 1905, 3,266; 1906, 3,095; 1907, 3,041.]
Furthermore, in all large towns a considerable proportion of the
frequenters of the casual wards are not even _bona-fide_ vagrants, but
simply idlers of the locality, who, so long as these refuges exist,
feel no disposition to work and establish homes for themselves. Of the
men admitted to the casual wards of the Manchester and Chorlton Unions
in a certain year, no fewer than 4,000 were found on analysis to belong
to the neighbourhood. The experience of Birmingham is to the same
effect. Of the London casual it has been said:--
"He is in most cases a loafer who simply migrates from one
ward to another. He is in Whitechapel to-night, and in St.
George's-in-the-East to-morrow night, and he will go across to
Kensington the next night, but he does not leave London.... They have
their times for excursions, when they go either to the seaside or
hop-picking or fruit-picking, but for the greater part of the year
they are in London, and they circulate round about the casual wards."
The number of admissions to the Metropolitan casual wards in 1907 was
196,470; the number of separate individuals was not known, but 18,009
persons were identified as having been admitted more than once during
a month. The Report of the Vagrancy Committee states, indeed, that 98
per cent. of the persons admitted to the casual wards of London are
loafers. A witness stated before that Committee:--
"They are not working men. If you give them a job for a day or two
days perhaps they might do that, but you must not expect them to work
longer; they do not like working longer than a day or two.... A lot
of them are young fellows. If you could get hold of them when first
they come into the casual ward and get them away, something might be
done."[39]
[Footnote 39: Qs. 3281, 3347, 3358-9.]
By way of substantiating the foregoing statement, it may be recalled
that of 689 casual paupers prosecuted at the Metropolitan police courts
by the Poor Law authorities in 1907, 538 or 78 per cent. were charged
with refusing or neglecting to work.
The indulgent spirit in which the urban loafer is regarded in
this country is well illustrated by the free hand given in London
to the army of work-shirkers and unemployables, irrespective of
nationality, to take possession of the public streets for the purpose
of demonstrations in every time of acute unemployment. A large number
of the men who paraded the streets on the latest occasion of the kind
were unquestionably deserving men, who would have accepted any work
offered to them, but the vast majority were notoriously only unemployed
because they had neither desire nor intention to be otherwise. "Those
who are not loafers are worse," was the verdict of a police inspector
who had scrutinised one of the processions; "there are very few genuine
unemployed among them; most of them never did a day's work in their
lives," and another police officer, who analysed a procession at my
request, assured me that he knew every man, and not one in fifty would
ever do a day's work if he could help it. It was even worse with the
London "unemployed" processions of the early months of 1903. When these
were in full progress, the Chairman of the Wandsworth and Clapham Board
of Guardians wrote to _The Times_:--
"The superintendent of the casual wards at our workhouse has had
opportunities this week of seeing the processions of the so-called
'unemployed.' He assures me that he detected amongst the number
several hundreds who habitually came before him as vagrants, and it is
his opinion, after consultation with others holding similar positions
to his own under the Poor Law authorities, that 80 per cent. of those
who are allowed to parade the streets belong to the casual class."
At a meeting of the Strand Board of Guardians it was reported that
"hundreds of the processionists were tramps and workhouse inmates, who
had asked leave to look for work and took part in the march so that
they might spend their share of the collection in beer." From first to
last these demonstrations were organised and engineered by socialistic
agents, who called the tunes and paid the pipers generously so long
as the public provided the necessary funds. Beginning with a couple
of men and a collecting box, they expanded on the snowball principle
day by day, until they numbered hundreds of men and scores of
collecting boxes, and at last created a street scandal which was daily
anticipated with mixed curiosity, disgust, and alarm. There was never
any spontaneity about the processions; agitators fixed the rendezvous,
marshalled their hosts, conducted the tours, and paid the demonstrators
so much per head for the walk round, according to the proceeds of the
collecting boxes. So far did the farce go, that police constables were
at last told off to assist the loafers to perform their perambulations
with due convenience and order. And these bands of "demonstrators,"
composed of such elements, had the audacity to go through the solemn
farce of passing deliberately drawn-up resolutions day after day,
protesting that owing to the selfishness of the propertied classes
they were doomed to lives of "compulsory idleness," and calling on the
Government to adopt measures to remove the "state of famine in time of
peace" from which they suffered!
It was quite in keeping with the absurdity of the whole proceedings
that a strike of the processionists, caused by a deduction from the
day's pay by way of contribution towards the expenses of the show,
should have threatened the collapse of the parades long before the
philanthropy of the spectators was exhausted. And yet while this
wholesale begging was condoned by the police authorities, and carried
on with their help, isolated mendicants were all the time pursued with
the customary rigours of the law. "At the North London Police Court,"
ran a newspaper record, while the processions were at their height,
"a costermonger was sent to twenty-one days' hard labour for begging
as one of the unemployed. He admitted that he had hitherto been in
organised processions, but thought he would do better by begging alone.
A gaoler stated that he had known the prisoner for many years, and he
seldom, if ever, did any work."
Happily, although public convenience suffered, public security was not
seriously threatened during those eventful days, when, out of sheer
jealousy lest the sacred principle of the "liberty of the subject" to
do what he likes should be infringed, the authorities, day after day,
handed over the principal thoroughfares of the Metropolis to a mob,
whose will to create anarchy was probably only checked by its physical
inability. Under the same favourable circumstances, a well-fed mob
might have placed London, for a time, under a reign of terror.
What the intelligent foreign observer thinks about English town
loafers, and the indulgent way in which we humour their weaknesses, may
be judged from the following reflections of a recent German visitor to
London:--
"When the Londoners say, 'These are our unemployed,[40] they do not
see what strikes a foreigner at once--that all these dirty, ragged
figures do not give the impression of out-of-works at all--that they
look rather like people who endeavour to keep miles away from work. No
man who really wants work looks like the average London unemployed.
He has no time to lounge at street corners or patrol the principal
streets--which are certainly not places where work is to be found.
Doubtless there are thousands of genuine out-of-works in London, but
these are not the people whom the foreigner sees.
[Footnote 40: "Berliner Lokalanzeiger," July, 1909.]
"The foreigner naturally asks: How do these people live? And the
answer makes him acquainted with an English institution which is
probably unique of its kind in the whole world--which is certainly
unknown to the German: it is the 'workhouse.' The name recalls our
own house of correction, but the 'workhouse' is in fact the opposite
of that. As a rule, it is a fine building--in Lambeth we might almost
call it a palace--to which every man who is out of work has access.
There he receives supper, bed, and breakfast, after which he is able
to go in search of work again. If he finds none he may return to the
workhouse in the evening, and, as one might expect, this is what he
generally does.
"The workhouses are maintained at enormous cost, and it is
characteristic of the good heartedness of the Englishman--for the
Englishman is good hearted--that he pays this cost, out of local
taxes, without grumbling. That the institution is a wise one, however,
I doubt. The man who says to himself that he must have sixpence or he
will have nothing to eat to-morrow will go to far more trouble to get
these coppers together than the one who says: "At the worst I can go
into the workhouse.'"[41]
[Footnote 41: "Berliner Lokalanzeiger," July, 1909.]