DETENTION COLONIES AND LABOUR HOUSES.
In whatever direction we look, misguided indulgence is seen to be
shown to classes amongst the least deserving in the community. But our
systematic playing with this question cannot relieve us from the duty
of facing it in all its seriousness, and of adopting whatever measures
a due consideration of public policy may suggest.
I come, then, to the question of remedies. What can, what should, be
done? Shall we, in despair, settle down to the conviction that the
loafer is not to be extinguished, but must be regarded as filling an
inevitable, though not, of course, a desirable, place in society? Or
shall we try to exterminate him by the expedient of compelling him
to perform the social functions which alone establish for him or for
anyone a right to any place in the commonwealth? I take the latter
view, and I base my contentions upon the maxim of Stuart Mill--no
unreasoning advocate of interference with personal freedom:--
"Whenever there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage,
either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the
province of liberty and placed in that of morality or law."[42]
[Footnote 42: "Liberty," Chapter IV.]
To the proposals originally put forward so many years ago, I return
with increased conviction, not only of their practicableness, but of
their urgency; with the assurance, moreover, that public opinion now
fully recognises their reasonableness and necessity. Proceeding from
the presupposition that the maintenance of vagrants at the public
expense is contrary to sound economic law, to the common interest,
and to commonsense, I contend that the status of vagrancy should be
made in reality, what it is already in theory, illegal. That principle
admitted, the task which remains will be less to do away with the
vagrant than to make the vagrant do away with himself. To do this will
entail no revolutionary change of the law; on the contrary, it will
only be necessary to put into operation, seriously and systematically,
the law as it exists at the present time.
And first I would lay down as a foundation principle, as the
starting point from which all reformative measures must proceed, the
transference from the Poor Law to the Penal Law of the entire tribe
of loafers who systematically abuse public relief--the vagrant of the
casual ward; the shirker of domestic responsibilities, who throws his
family upon the Union and absconds, or who sneaks into the workhouse on
every possible pretext, dragging wife and children with him; the drone
who makes periodical visits to the labour yard; and the able-bodied
pauper whose destitution is due to intemperance or an otherwise
irregular life.
To the Poor Law and to Poor Law institutions people of these classes
emphatically do not belong, and all past failure to make the slightest
impression upon them is in my opinion primarily due to the persistent
mistake of treating their case as coming under the law of public
charity--a mistake which is also a wrong so long as the idle poor are
maintained, in any degree whatsoever, at the expense of the industrious
poor.
The practical measures which would be needful are these.
(1) In the first place, let loafing of every kind, and not merely the
loafing of the casual pauper, be made a misdemeanour. For if we begin
to exterminate the idler of the highway, we must, in fairness, deal
with his kinsman of the street and of the workhouse.
(2) In sympathy with this measure, restrict the right of free migration
in the case of the destitute unemployed to the extent of making it
dependent on permission to travel in search of work. (The man with
money in his pocket is his own master all the world over.)
(3) Further, and particularly, abolish the casual ward, as we
logically must do. This may seem a strong measure, but so far as the
tramp is concerned, it is really the fulcrum on which the lever of
reformation must rest. "The why is plain as way to parish church." If
vagabondage is to be regarded as an offence to be punished instead
of an innocent weakness (which it never was and never can be) to be
humoured, then the vagrant's free lodging-house must disappear.
It is obvious that so long as we maintain wayside shelters for the
special reception of tramps, it will be hopeless to repress vagrancy.
The casual ward invites vagrants and creates them. Moreover, it is
entirely incompatible with the laws which already exist for the nominal
repression of vagrancy. It is illegal to beg, it is illegal to wander
about without means of subsistence, but there is no habitual vagrant
living who is not guilty of this compound fracture of the law, and
few who have not been punished for it. Nevertheless, we wink at these
misdemeanours, and in housing some 10,000 vagrants every night in the
casual wards, we offer direct encouragement to known law-breakers to
persist in illegality.
(4) But at these negative and repressive measures it will be impossible
to stop. Their very operation would compel us to go further, for the
tramp and the loafer having been hustled from their wonted haunts, and
the casual ward having been shut in their faces, they would either have
to betake themselves to honest work, or they would fall into the hands
of the police, either as mendicants or homeless wanderers.
Here is seen the need for a new departure in our penal system. At
present no correctional institutions exist suited to offenders whose
radical fault is constitutional idleness. Discipline, enforced by
all necessary use of compulsion, is their principal need, and this
discipline can only be given in special institutions.
The ordinary prison has proved its uselessness for the treatment of
the vagrant and loafer, for not only has it failed as a reformative
agency, but its life has no terrors for him. By the testimony of
prison governors and magistrates, the tramp, on the whole, prefers the
prison to the present workhouse; an institution that would exercise a
deterrent influence must, therefore, offer a severer discipline than
either.
Complaint was made by the Standing Joint Committee of the Lincolnshire
magistrates some time ago that mendicancy had increased 100 per cent.
on account of the superiority of the prison dietary. "The professional
tramp," said one magistrate, "was no fool, and he very much preferred
in many instances to go to prison than to enter the casual wards of the
workhouse." The Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee appointed in 1903 to
consider the question of vagrancy reported :--
"Frequent cases have come to the knowledge of the Committee in which
tramps in the casual wards, when threatened with prosecution before
the magistrates as a consequence of a refusal to work, have openly
avowed their preference for prison life, and cases are also noted
where, after sentence, the prisoners have made a similar statement as
to their having no dislike for prison. This failure, they believe,
is also partly due to the changes in the form of the 'hard labour'
enforced, due to the abolition of tread wheel, crank, etc. Owing to
the difficulty of arranging suitable work, and to requirements of the
prison for chapel, meal hours, marching to and from work, etc., the
hours of actual labour, as well as the severity of the work available,
bear no comparison with those of many kinds of free labour outside.
Prison conditions, indeed, to many persons with so low a standard of
physical comfort as the average vagrant, must be extremely comfortable
and even attractive."
Evidence to the same effect might be cited in abundance from other
quarters. The point is one to which the Departmental Committee on
Vagrancy gave special attention. Asked by the Committee "Do you not
find that the seven days' sentence given to these tramps induces many
of them to commit some small offence to get imprisonment, with a view
to being helped along by rail to their destination?" Lieut.-Col. J.
Curtis Hayward, Chairman of the Gloucestershire Vagrancy Committee,
replied:--
"I do not think the prison has any terror. For instance, in one union
they have had a great number of cases of refractory tramps, and they
have always stated, when they have been had up, that they would rather
do the hard work in prison than break stones in the workhouse, because
it is easier work. I have been told by the governor of a gaol that
some of the prisoners said that they liked the fare better than they
did that of the workhouse."
Another witness, before the same Committee (Mr. A. C. Mitchell),
speaking for Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, said:--
"I think that under present conditions the sending of vagrants to gaol
is utterly useless. They want to go to gaol; the conditions in gaol
are better than those in casual wards, and particularly in bad weather
they prefer going to gaol. Over and over again it has come before us:
a man commits some petty offence in order to go to gaol for a short
period."[43]
[Footnote 43: I take the following from a newspaper (January 1,
1904):--"At the Grantham Borough Police Court two vagrants, were sent
to gaol for twenty-one days, with hard labour, for refusing to work
whilst inmates of the casual ward at the Grantham Workhouse. One of
the magistrates said this appeared to be the only way to deal with
the question, but the Chief Constable remarked that such men were too
comfortable in prison, and that was the reason why they liked going
there so much. The master at the workhouse said he heard two others
wish they were going with them to gaol."]
What are needed in this country are the Detention Colonies and Labour
Houses[44] which have long been provided in Continental countries for
this type of offender. To these institutions, differentiated according
as they were intended for hopeful or for incorrigible cases, all
vagrants and loafers should, after due warning, be committed for a
period sufficiently long for disciplinary purposes.
[Footnote 44: The terms Detention Colony and Labour House are here,
for convenience, used synonymously, though strictly speaking, a colony
is an establishment in the country to which land for farming and for
improvement is attached, while the Labour House may be located in a
town.]
Besides being penal in character, these institutions might also offer,
under suitable conditions, a temporary home to unemployed persons
of all kinds. It might be objected that this would be a practical
admission of the principle of the Right to Work. For myself I do not
care much for phrases, but even if this should be the case, I would
reply that the Right to Work is an infinitely better and wiser and
safer principle to concede to the masses than the Right to be Idle.
And yet the admission of the Right to Work would be no new thing in
this country. It was enacted as early as the fourteenth century, in a
Poor Law of 12 Richard II. That law drew a distinction between "beggars
impotent to serve" and "beggars able to labour." The former were
"continually to abide during their lives" in their native towns, or
wherever else the enactment of the statute happened to find them, and
the latter were to be given work suited to their strength and capacity.
It may be recalled, too, how this same principle was carried further by
the Poor Laws of Elizabeth's reign.
It follows that the Detention Colonies and Labour Houses, by offering
admission to unemployed persons willing to enter voluntarily, would
allow Poor Law authorities to abolish the labour yards for test work.
Few Poor Law workers defend these yards, which under the existing law
are flagrantly abused by local able-bodied loafers.
Forced labour for the loafer is still more an English tradition,
though, like the Right-to-Work principle, long disregarded. The Act of
27 Henry VIII. (1535) enjoined local authorities, besides maintaining
the impotent and aged poor:--
"To cause and to compel all and every the said sturdy vagabonds and
valiant beggars to be set and kept to continual labour, in such wise
as by their said labours they, and every one of them, may get their
own living with the continual labour of their own hands."
The cost of these institutions was to be defrayed by alms collected by
the churchwardens and others, but any parish which neglected to carry
out the Act was liable to a fine of 20s. for every month of omission.
The Act of I Edward VI. (1548) contained similar provisions. Early
in the reign of Elizabeth a proposal was laid before the Government
by a Somerset justice of the peace for the erection of houses of
correction, adjacent to gaols, for the reception of convicted vagrants,
who should be there "kept in work, except some person would take them
into service," and, added the memorialist, "I dare presume the tenth
felony will not be committed that now is." An Act of 14 Elizabeth
(1572) empowered the local justices to use surplus monies collected
for the relief of the impotent poor in putting rogues and vagabonds
to work in "convenient places," under the control of the overseers. A
more systematic plan was that proposed by the Act of 1575, requiring
Quarter Sessions to establish "abiding houses or places convenient in
some market town or corporate town or other place," to be called houses
of correction, and to be stocked with wool, hemp, flax, iron, or "such
other stuff as was best suited to the country" (_i.e._, the locality),
with implements for the manufacture thereof, and in these houses were
to be "straitly kept, as well in diet as work, and also punished from
time to time," vagrants and beggars, and other people of questionable
utility to the commonwealth. The Act threatened with a fine of £5 every
justice who left Quarter Sessions "before conference had touching
the execution of this statute," the fines to go towards the cost of
establishing and furnishing the houses of correction. Similarly, an
Act of 1597 required the justices to provide houses of correction for
vagrants to be used in addition to the county gaols. In 1609 an Act
was passed exposing to a penalty of £5 every justice of a county in
which a house of correction was not provided within two years. These
institutions were established on a considerable scale, but in course
of time their reformative purpose gave place to a penal one. As the
Vagrancy Committee point out:--
"In 1630 a Royal Commission, issued for the purpose of enforcing the
vagrancy laws, directed that the houses of correction should be made
adjacent to the common gaols and the gaoler made governor of them,
so that the prisoners in the gaols might be taught to work as well
as those committed to the houses of correction. After this date the
houses of correction seem to have been regarded more and more as
places of punishment, to which persons were committed for definite
terms to do hard labour, rather than to be taught to work; and in
many counties the common gaols were used as houses of correction. It
is from an amalgamation of the two that the modern local prison has
sprung."[45]
[Footnote 45: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., p. 67.]
Throughout the following century the tendency to regard vagrancy
less from the standpoint of public safety and policy than from that
of public expense gained the upper hand. Vagrants, as such, had
ceased to be obnoxious; what was disliked was their propensity for
throwing themselves upon the charity of parishes in which they had no
settlement. Hence the policy of whipping these offenders, whether women
or men, and restoring them to their legal parishes, was consistently
followed in the eighteenth century. It was an irrational and costly
policy, though in keeping with the particularist spirit of the times.
In 1821 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to
consider the abuses which had arisen out of this system of "passing"
vagrants, and, as a result, the existing legislation on the subject was
repealed in 1822. It was stated in the House of Commons at that time
that in Wiltshire and an adjoining county £2,587 had been expended from
the county funds in one year in "passing" vagrants and that in 1821,
£100,000 had, in the aggregate, been spent in this way.
Nevertheless, that the idea of curing the loafer by forced labour
was not entirely forgotten, is proved by the fact that in 1848, when
the Poor Law Board took the place of the Poor Law Commissioners
appointed under the Poor Law Act of 1834, a proposal to return to the
old disciplinary method was put forward by one of the first Poor Law
Inspectors, Mr. Aneurin Owen, who recommended the establishment of
pauper depots on islands off the coast, at which local stone might be
broken for road use.
I confess to attaching more importance to the disciplinary influence of
rigorous restraint, coupled with active exertion, than to any number of
periodical months in county gaols. Punishment may do good or may not:
but punishment is not enough. It is not--in the main, at any rate--a
dangerous criminal class with which we have to do, but for the most
part the weak and aimless characters whose great need is the moral
tonic of discipline and compulsion. Lodged in such institutions as will
be described in later chapters, these evaders of all social obligations
would learn, or at least would be taught, both how to work and the
duty of industry. As I shall show, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and
Switzerland have all found it advantageous to establish Labour Houses,
true to their name, for the special treatment of social parasites of
this kind, and while imitation in details may be neither possible nor
desirable, their experience throws valuable light upon both sides of
the problem--on the one hand, the case of those hardened offenders upon
whom indulgence is thrown away and, on the other hand, the case of the
budding loafers who have not irrevocably chosen between the life of
diligence and that of sloth.
The possibilities of the philanthropic Labour Colonies of the
Continental pattern, to be conducted by Boards of Guardians, have
impressed many Poor Law reformers who have begun to occupy themselves
with the tramp. I may claim to know well the work of the best voluntary
Labour Colonies of the Continent, having visited some of them, and
while agreeing that institutions of this kind--albeit with the
addition of compulsory powers of detention, which the Continental
colonies do not possess--might do for young and first offenders, I am
confident that a _régime_ many degrees stricter and more methodical
would be necessary before they could hope to make any impression upon
the habitual loafer. Here, however, we see the idea of coddling the
tramp, even while we are trying to reform him, creeping in already in
a new guise. These good people readily admit that discipline of some
kind is necessary; but while they would restrain the tramp henceforth,
it would be with cords of love. The poor fellow has been taught by the
rude buffeting of the workhouse to hate labour. Who would love work
after he had, for years, been passing through the mill of the casual
ward, which grinds the instinct of diligence and self-respect slowly,
indeed, but exceeding small? This has been the hard experience of the
tramp. The continual sight of heaps of stones and oakum, which he was
expected to disintegrate according to their kind, by way of paying
for his humble bed and board, has created in him a distaste for even
more dignified kinds of labour, so that the very sight of a spade,
a pick-axe, or a dirty apron gives him quite a turn. So the tramp's
tender-hearted, ever-faithful sympathisers are arguing; he shall not be
passed under draconian laws if they can help it.
There can be no hope of advance on the right lines until this
mischievous appeal to sentiment is abandoned. It has been the bane of
the Vagrancy Laws for generations, and more than anything else is
responsible for the present difficulties of the tramp problem in its
several phases. Short of compulsion, the tramp will not work, and the
hope of inducing him to take to a life of industry, by placing him in
an atmosphere of art and poetry, perfumes and texts, is to go counter
to all the lessons of experience, and to utterly misunderstand the
instincts of the tramp nature. Else how explain the notorious fact
that wherever a workhouse adopts a fairly severe labour test there
the tramp cannot be persuaded to go; while, conversely, the easier
the terms of admission--or, more truly, of exit--the fuller is the
casual ward. I read in the newspapers, at the moment of writing, that
"The new labour tests adopted by the Sleaford Guardians are answering
very satisfactorily, and at the fortnightly meeting, the master
reported that during the past six months there had been a decrease of
250 vagrants at the Union." The fact that this official had also to
complain of "dissatisfied vagrants," and "the breaking of windows and
other Union property" by these irreconcilable visitors, only confirms
the truth that vagrancy and hatred of work are convertible terms. But,
if so, it follows that it is only by curing this unsocial aversion
to exertion that the unsocial practice of vagabondage will cease to
perplex and scandalise society, and to do that, coercive measures of
a very definite kind will have to be employed, let the repository
of power be as it may. The treatment of the tramp must, of course,
be humane--that it should be other is inconceivable in these days,
when even the inmates of our prisons are assured a standard of life
far beyond the reach and hope of thousands of the poor who help to
maintain the prisons and the prisoners--but it must, none the less,
be distinctly punitive and deterrent. It must not be desirable to be
sent to a disciplinary establishment of this kind; a man must rather be
willing to work voluntarily outside than to work compulsorily inside.
In addition to those sentenced to detention for vagrancy, the forced
Labour Houses would meet the case of several other classes of notorious
delinquents. They include the following:--
(1) Husbands who desert their families, and against whom legal redress
cannot be obtained.
(2) Paupers of the "in-and-out" class who use the workhouse as a means
of evading their parental responsibilities.
(3) Able-bodied paupers whose destitution is due to idleness and
unwillingness to maintain themselves.
(4) Dissolute persons whose life is an alternation of more or less
regular work and spells of indulgence from which the workhouse is their
only hope of recovery.
(5) Certain classes of confirmed inebriates.
(6) Unmarried women of inferior mental and moral capacity, dependent on
the rates, who have had more than one illegitimate child.
Some of these offenders would be committed by the magistrates owing
to the action of the police in the ordinary way. In Poor Law cases it
would be justifiable to dispense with open judicial proceedings, and to
empower the Poor Law Authority to commit, on a certificate signed by
one or more magistrates, giving the offender (as in Hamburg)[46] the
right of appeal, first to the authority itself against the execution of
its resolution to proceed, and before the execution of a magisterial
certificate to Petty Sessions.
[Footnote 46: _See_ pp. 195-197.]
There remains another class of persons who constitute a serious social
burden and inconvenience, the criminals, loafers, and paupers of
alien origin, who probably are more numerous, and certainly are more
indulgently treated, in England than in any Continental country. At
present a small minority of the criminal aliens convicted are deported
after the completion of their sentences. The number of aliens (the
Colonies and India not counted), convicted and committed to the local
prisons in 1907 was 2,799, or 4.3 per cent. of the total number. The
aliens recommended for deportation in that year numbered 289.[47]
It is conceivable that deportation will be resorted to upon a very
much more extensive scale, and eventually that the duty and expense
of punishment, where the alien is detained, will be undertaken by
the country of nationality; there is obviously little reason or
satisfaction in maintaining criminal aliens in prison when banishment
awaits them immediately on release.[48] As for the alien vagabond
and loafer we have the example of Continental States to guide us.
The laws of Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland expressly
enjoin expulsion as the treatment of such persons; they are simply
taken across the nearest frontier, and are warned against returning.
It would not be unreasonable to apply to alien loafers the summary
treatment which their own Governments do not hesitate to enforce. As
to the destitute who fall upon the Poor Law, it should be possible to
conclude with Continental Governments treaties applying internationally
the principle of "relief settlement," under which each State would
either receive its own citizens who became chargeable to the public
funds of another country, or at least would refund the costs of their
maintenance to the Poor Law Authority which discharged this duty for it.
[Footnote 47: The principal offences committed by these guests were:
Larceny, frauds, and receiving stolen property, 97; begging and
sleeping out, 18; burglary, housebreaking, etc., 25; frequenting
public places with intent to commit felony, etc., 11; sexual offences,
indecency, etc., 8; brothel-keeping, 50; prostitution, 19; living on
prostitutes' earnings, 25; and wounding, assaults, drunkenness, etc.,
18.]
[Footnote 48: The Prison Commissioners (Report for 1903, p. 119),
estimate that the annual net cost per head, after deducting the
value of work done, is £22 11s. in local and £29 in convict prisons,
exclusive of all charge for buildings.]
The latest complete return of alien paupers in England and Wales
relates to July 1, 1903, when their number was 1,753, of whom 897 were
relieved in London, and 856 in the provinces. They included 587 indoor
paupers, 694 outdoor paupers, and 472 insane in asylums. Exclusive of
the insane, they consisted of 117 men relieved with wives or children,
95 wives of men relieved, 95 women relieved with children, but not with
husbands, 362 other men, 193 other women, 359 children of men and women
relieved, and 60 other children. Of the total of 1,753 alien paupers
of all classes, 715 or 41 per cent. were from Russia and Poland, 502
or 30 per cent. from Germany, 110 or 6 per cent. from France, 106 or
6 per cent. from Italy, 70 or 4 per cent. from Norway and Sweden,
and the remaining 250 represented twenty-three other countries. In
London the aliens represented 0.74 per cent. of the total pauperism,
in the provinces they represented 0.33 per cent. The support of these
outsiders constitutes a public burden for which there seems no moral
justification. The question of their treatment is one which should
not be approached in a captious, much less a bigoted, spirit, but if
it is inequitable--as the law declares it to be--that one English
Poor Law Union should support the paupers of another, it is doubly
inequitable that the nation should show to other countries an unequally
reciprocated generosity in the care of so many of their citizens, and
these amongst the least desirable.
It would be essential to success that detention should, in all but the
most hopeful cases, be for a long period. This is not only the practice
of all Continental Labour Houses, but the past prison treatment of
vagrants in this country proves the uselessness of short sentences.
In Germany the term of commitment may extend to two years; in Belgium
it must fall within two and seven years. At the same time discretion
should be given to the authorities to curtail the sentence, within
fixed limits, where the detainee gives proof of reformation and a
desire to follow a regular mode of life. In such a case, release would
be on parole, and in the event of a repetition of the offence which
entailed commitment, the man would be reapprehended and sent back
to the Labour House to complete his sentence without further legal
procedure.
There are strong reasons why Detention Colonies and Labour Houses
should be county institutions, just as they are provincial institutions
in Prussia. The fact that many of their inmates, under the organisation
proposed, would be defaulters committed on the application of the
Poor Law Authorities, is a strong argument for such a local basis.
There is reason to fear that if the Colonies and Labour Houses were
formally incorporated in the prison system of the country, they would
imbibe too much the prison atmosphere and spirit, and would tend to
become identical with existing houses of correction, just as the houses
of correction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ultimately
lost their special character as reformatory institutions. It might be
desirable that offenders sentenced should be removed for detention to
the county in which they had legal settlement, in preference to being
punished in the county in which the offence was committed, but failing
that course, the county or parish of settlement would be liable for all
costs of maintenance as in the case of non-settled paupers.
While primarily the cost of these institutions would be a county
charge, Poor Law Authorities would be required to pay on a fixed scale
for the maintenance of all persons detained at their instigation, and
it might be expedient to require in respect of every detainee a certain
contribution from the parish in which he had legal settlement, as is
the case in some of the Swiss cantons. The liability of the detainees
themselves would be compounded by their labour, which it would be
the business of the Colonies and Labour Houses to employ to the best
possible advantage. Although, on this plan, the institutions would be
under county management, it would be necessary that the State should
exercise far-going powers of control, either through the Home Office,
the Local Government Board, or the Prison Board, and that all schemes
of organisation, regulations, the more important appointments, and
also expenditure of certain kinds, should receive the approval of the
Central Authority.
It should not be required, nor would it be necessary, that every county
should have its own Detention Colony or Labour House. For reasons
both of economy and efficiency counties would be allowed to combine.
Only in this way would it be possible to secure variety of type in
the establishment of these institutions. Not much experience would be
needed to show that the same treatment would not suit every class of
offender; most of the Colonies, no doubt, would be fairly uniform, but
one or more would be required for the more rigorous discipline which
would have to be meted to old offenders. Possibly, a single Colony
of this kind, organised after the pattern of the Beggars' Depot of
Merxplas, in Belgium,[49] would serve for the whole country. If the
existing Poor Law is, in the elegant phrase now current, to be "broken
up", it might be found that some of the existing rural workhouses would
serve as the nuclei of Detention Colonies of the milder type.
[Footnote 49: For a description of Merxplas, _see_ pp. 104-132.]
It would be a condition of establishing Detention Colonies and
Labour Houses, that they should exist for the purpose of hard work,
for the art of labour is only acquired by labour. Of such work the
average loafer is quite capable, if only the necessary pressure
could be applied. As to vagrants, official statistics show that the
majority of them are in the able-bodied period of life: of 5,579
casual paupers relieved on January 1, 1900, about 70 per cent. were
between thirty-five and sixty-five years of age; 23 per cent. were
between sixteen and thirty-five years, and only 5 per cent. were above
sixty-five. If the vagrant can, every day, walk the almost incredible
distances which he tells us, there is in him immense store of energy
which is going to waste. A Detention Colony, properly organised, and
infused with an atmosphere of industry, would use this energy for the
good of society and of the loafer himself.
It would be judicious, as well as equitable, to pay the detained worker
wages, or a bonus on output, by way of encouraging him to diligence and
exertion, and of providing him with decent clothing, tools, and a small
sum of money wherewith to begin life again on regaining his liberty.
Even the most conscientious of free workmen is spurred by the thought
of the wages which will reward his efforts, and there is nothing
ignoble in such a stimulus. The natural atmosphere of a Detention
Colony is that of the outside labour market, to which, by right, the
detained workers belong, and the existence of a money nexus between
the man and his work will be a set-off against the chafing thought
of bondage, a constant reminder that the man, in doing well for the
colony, is also doing something good for himself, and an incentive to
those habits of honesty and application which will alone enable him to
regain, and permanently retain, control over his own life. Moreover,
the wages or bonus should be held before the worker in the clearest
and most definite manner--not as an act of charity, but as a "business
proposition," not as largess, but as a right. If the man can be incited
to a healthy egoism, so much the better; he will be the less likely
to fall back when he has to fight his way outside. In short, payment
should be an essential part of Detention Colony policy, and the moral
value of the habit of money earning should not be spoiled by too much
talk of privileges and favours. The character of the Colonies and of
their inmates, the unfavourable conditions under which much of the work
would have to be done, and the limited market that would be available
for its produce, would necessarily restrict the wages to a very small
sum; the essential thing is that they should be paid, and that the
workers should be able to estimate the amount of their possible gains
beforehand.
It would seem expedient that every Colony or Labour House should follow
a mixed economy of agriculture and industry. Wherever possible, a farm
should be an essential part of it, in order that all such primary
necessaries of life as milk, butter, meat, roots, and vegetables, might
be produced, as far as practicable, by the aid of the inmates' labour.
It would also be advantageous, following the example of the Voluntary
Colonies which have been established in this and other countries,
to begin each settlement on a tract of land, a considerable part of
which, at least, is undeveloped, with a view to the provision of an
abundance of rough outdoor labour by means of works of reclamation, and
to securing to the Colony the increased value which such works would
create. It is also desirable that the Colonies, while lying away from
towns, should have good means of communication.
On this subject some words may be quoted from a letter recently written
to me by Monsieur Louis Stroobant, the energetic director of the
Belgian State Beggars' Depot at Merxplas:--
"It is expedient to create establishments like Merxplas in districts
but little populated and situated at some distance from towns. It is
also indispensable that a colony of this kind should be near a small
railway station or a canal, in a healthy country, should be well
provided with drinking water, and should be in a locality in which the
inmates would be able to make the bricks needed for buildings."
While, however, farm and land labour would form an essential source
of employment and of gain in the Detention Colonies, the broad basis
would need to be industrial. This is proved by the experience of all
the forced Labour Colonies of the Continent of which I have knowledge,
with the one exception of the Rummelsburg Labour House, near Berlin,
and in this exceptional case the labour of the inmates is largely used
in working the extensive sewage farms of the Berlin municipality.
For obvious reasons, it would be necessary to choose such trades as
could be carried on economically. In the first place, comparatively
few men of the type suited to a Vagrant Colony are fit for ordinary
farm work, which needs far more skill and intelligence than most urban
advocates of Labour Colony schemes seem to imagine. After allowing for
the relatively small number of inmates whose labour would be needed on
the farm all the year round, the remainder, the great majority, would
have to be employed on works of improvement, and in the workshops.
The former work would necessarily be of an intermittent character,
and even so would, in time, be reduced to very limited proportions.
Unless outdoor employment altogether outside the establishment, such as
road-making, draining, levelling, gardening, and forestry, were to be
resorted to, as in some of the German forced Labour Colonies, it would
be necessary to fall back on industrial work. Probably it would also be
found that training in such work would offer most men the best chance
of reinstating themselves in society when they obtained their release,
and from the financial standpoint it would undoubtedly yield the best
results for the Colony.
The question of allowing the products of Detention Colonies to compete
with the products of free labour would inevitably arise, and not
improbably the bare possibility of such competition occurring would
be used as an argument against the establishment of these Colonies.
It is obvious, however, that if the object of Detention Colonies is
to assist their inmates to go back into the world able to earn an
honest livelihood by industry, there must be some slight sacrifice
of private interest to public advantage. Clearly, a policy of give
and take would have to be adopted. There are products which forced
Labour Colonies might legitimately be allowed to send into the open
market without injury to the most sensitive outside industry--farm
produce, for example, if a superfluity were available--but, as far as
possible, the goods produced should be for home consumption and for the
public services, as is the case in other countries. The interchange of
products between the various Colonies should be encouraged, as it would
not only lighten the common burden of maintenance, but would facilitate
trade specialisation and the classification and grading of the inmates.
It would be unwise to hope, however, that any Labour Colony would
be made self-supporting, in spite of some confident opinions to the
contrary which were put before the Vagrancy Committee. The very fact
that the Colonies would have to be worked with an inefficient class of
labour, and the inevitably high costs of administration and oversight,
make it impossible to regard them as profit-earning institutions.
Nevertheless, if a Colony were well organised, well managed, and not
too tightly restricted in the character of its industries and the
extent of its market, the costs of maintenance should not be heavy. In
this respect the experience of the Belgian and some of the Prussian and
Swiss Labour Houses, dealt with later, is very encouraging.
More important than any consideration of immediate financial results,
however, is the permanent influence of Colony discipline upon the
inmates; if that were assured, financial success would also be certain,
if not to the Colony itself, then to the community outside, which is
practically the same thing. It is imperatively necessary, however, that
we should at the outset be perfectly clear, not only as to the object
aimed at in setting up Detention Colonies, but as to the practical
possibilities of these Colonies. The object must not and cannot be
to make perfect men out of most imperfect material; it will be the
far more modest one of correcting tendencies of character and conduct
which are socially injurious, with a view to returning the objects
of care to freedom, if they seriously wish to regain freedom, able,
under favourable circumstances, to take an independent place amongst
the social hewers of wood and drawers of water. Only by setting before
ourselves sane and moderate views shall we be working to serious
purpose; to act otherwise will be to waste effort and court certain
disappointment. It is hardly too much to say that it will be safer
to aim too low than too high in undertaking the difficult task of
socialising and moralising the loafer.
Let us indulge in no illusions on the subject: the proportion of the
detainees who will be really "reformed" will be exceedingly small;
those upon whom some wholesome influence, of longer or shorter
duration, will be exerted, will form a larger number; but it is
possible that the great majority will return again and again to
detention and may even prove irremediable and entirely unfit to be
restored to society.
In the main, therefore, the Detaining Colonies may, in the end, prove
to be largely institutions of restraint. Yet even on that basis they
are necessary, and the service which they will do to society will by
no means be a negative service. They will, in fact, be carrying out the
idea which more and more finds favour amongst penologists, and which
must inevitably be far more rigorously applied in the future than it is
now, that persons whose liberty is injurious to the commonwealth must
be deprived of that liberty, permanently if necessary, and in any case
so long as they continue capable of social harm.
It may be asked, can a place be found in a system of Detention Colonies
and Labour Houses for the Voluntary Labour Colonies and Depots of
various types which already exist in this country? To my mind, the
latter would still be able to do a most important and indispensable
work, and to do it under conditions more favourable to successful
results than those which prevail at present. There is a fashion in
opprobrium as in other things, and it appears to be fashionable to
reproach these voluntary institutions with the small percentage of
their good cases, and to question their efficiency and expediency.
Even if their visible success were far less than it is, the Labour
Colonies and Depots established by philanthropic agencies are
deserving of the highest praise. They are trying to discharge, with
inadequate resources, and with little public recognition, the duty
of society towards two large classes of people--the unemployed and
the unemployable, and they would have work enough of the same kind to
do, even were Detention Institutions of the kind proposed in full
operation.
The existing Labour Colonies and Depots would be specially useful in
dealing with men who were temporarily unemployable owing to physical
and moral deterioration. The Detention Colonies could not be expected
to yield satisfactory results if they were handicapped with inmates of
this kind, who belong rather to infirmaries than to workshops. Hence,
in committing a physical wreck, incapable of immediate employment,
the magistrates should have discretion to order the first part of
his sentence to be passed in one of these Voluntary Institutions,
where he would be able to receive more particular, and perhaps more
sympathetic, treatment than would be possible in a hard-working Labour
House. If, in the opinion of the authorities, the effect of this
recuperative treatment made it unnecessary to pass the man, when fit,
into a Detention Colony, there to complete his sentence, he would be
released on parole, on the understanding that he would be liable to
immediate reapprehension if his conduct gave rise to complaint. The
Voluntary Colonies would continue to be managed as at present, but
they would be entitled to grants of public money, the amount of which
should be dependent less upon the exact number of cases received from
the magistrates, than upon the rescue work of all kinds in which
they were engaged, for this work is one of common advantage, and it
is indefensible that the whole burden of cost should be borne by
voluntary well-wishers.
Before leaving the question of repressive measures, it can hardly
be superfluous to say that much could be done at once to discourage
vagrancy and loafing if greater discrimination in almsgiving were
shown. It sounds paradoxical, but it is true, that many of the people
who, by their thoughtless doles, make loafers, are among the warmest
friends of institutions called into existence for the one purpose of
unmaking them. Nothing in the world is easier than to get rid of an
importunate beggar by the gift of a coin; nothing is more difficult
than to undo the harm which results, in most cases, from this open
incitement to a life of idleness. To the average man all benevolence
of this kind is a virtue; Emerson knew better when he spoke of the
"vicious shillings" which he gave indiscriminately and against his
better judgment. In Tudor times attempts were made by law to check
almsgiving, insofar as it encouraged idleness and vagrancy;[50] and as
late as 1744 (17 George II.) a law was passed exposing to a penalty
of not less than 10s. or more than 40s. (or in default, one month's
detention in a house of correction), any person who knowingly gave to
a rogue or vagabond lodging or shelter and refrained from handing him
over to a constable. Legislation of this kind is still in operation on
the Continent. In 1889 the Canon of Schwyz, in democratic Switzerland,
passed a law making "persons, who, by giving alms, favour begging from
house to house or in the street," liable to a fine of 10 francs. Some
time ago, also, a police ordinance was issued in the Uelzen district of
Prussia, to the following effect:--
[Footnote 50: Statute of 27 Henry VIII., c. 25.]
"(1) The giving of alms of any kind whatever to
mendicant vagrants is prohibited on pain of a fine not
exceeding 9 marks (9s.).
"(2) The giving of food and clothing for the relief
of visible want is as before subject to no penalty, provided
that there be no possibility of the recipient exchanging
such gifts for money or brandy."
The legal prohibition in this country of indiscriminate charity, so
called, even when offered to mendicants, and thus contributing to
illegality, would nowadays be regarded as so serious an invasion of the
"liberty of the subject" as to be inconceivable, and no writer who has
a due reverence for that august principle would propose it.[51] Much
may be done to discourage the practice, however, by educating public
opinion to a recognition of the fact that only the philanthropy that is
wise and well-directed can be truly helpful and beneficent.
[Footnote 51: That this principle was not always the fetish it has
become is shown by the following extract from Dr. Burn's "History
of the Poor Law," published in 1764:--"But how shall begging be
restrained, which by a kind of prescriptive claim hath so long been
accustomed to triumph above the laws? All sorts of severities, it
appears, have been enacted against vagrants; and yet they wander still.
Nevertheless, one would hope the disease is not past all remedy. If it
is, let us cease the unequal contention, and submissively give up our
fortunes to the next that comes with a pass, and tells us a justice of
the peace hath so ordered it; but let beggars and vagrants be doing.
There is one infallible way to put an end to all this, and the easiest
in the world, which consists merely in a non-feasance. Give them
nothing. If none were to give, none would beg, and the whole mystery
and craft would be at an end in a fortnight. Let the laws continue if
you please to apprehend and punish the mendicants; but let something
also be done effectually against those who encourage them. If the
principal is punished it is not reasonable the accessory should go
free. In order to which, let all who relieve a common beggar be subject
to a penalty."]
The further question follows: What part, then, might the existing
workhouse continue to play in our Poor Law system? In my opinion a part
far more important than it has played in the past. For when the tramp
and the loafer have been disposed of, there will remain the dependent
and infirm poor, to the relief of whose needs it might, under improved
conditions, be henceforth exclusively and more intelligently devoted.
As, however, it would be no longer a workhouse, even to the extent
of its casual wards, it would be expedient from every standpoint to
discard for ever the hard name which it now bears, and to return to
the earlier and less repulsive name of Poorhouse. One need not be very
old to be able to recall the time when the name Bastille ("Basty,"
with a long "y," was the popular distortion of the word in my native
Yorkshire), was the name by which the poorer classes universally
expressed their horror of the workhouse: so much of modern French
history had reached their contracted minds. That ill-repute has to
some extent been outlived, yet the evil that institutions, as well
as men, do lives after them, and an intense prejudice against the
workhouse is still laudably common amongst the more deserving poor,
and it will persist so long as the present name lasts, in spite of all
that may be done to humanise our principles and methods of Poor Law
administration. Poorhouses, of some sort, however named, we shall need
to have so long as a Poor Law is necessary; and when the stigma has
been removed from honest poverty, there is no reason to believe that
the deserving recipients of public relief would show the old sense of
humiliation and dread when necessity decrees their passage through
portals which would no longer be those of hopeless indignity but of
honourable comfort.
Happily, the improvement of these institutions proceeds apace, and to
my mind the best thing is to continue improving them until they are
good enough to serve as asylums for the most deserving of our aged
and infirm poor, and infinitely too good for the idle and worthless.
Several years ago the writer of the annual "Legal Poor of London"
article in _The Times_ called attention to the ameliorative influences
which are so actively working in the metropolitan workhouses, and
questioned whether too much was not being done for the inmates of these
places:--
"For aged and deserving inmates," he said, "discipline is relaxed,
the wards are made comfortable with carpets, window curtains, table
covers, and arm chairs, and the cheery day rooms are supplied with
literature, while a certain amount of privacy is allowed. The dietary
has been improved, the electric light established, and warmth and
comfort prevail, the inmates having no care as to the provision of
maintenance. It is not surprising that they 'appear to appreciate'
such attentions, nor is it matter for wonder that additions are made
to their numbers. Nobody desires to see the poor, especially the aged
poor, who are compelled to resort to the workhouse, treated otherwise
than in a humane way; but sound views should prevail; and if we are to
reckon the piling up of comforts in the workhouses as being 'so much
to the good in the organisation of the life of the otherwise destitute
poor,' we must be prepared to see thousands of ratepayers who are now
less eligibly placed than the inmates of the workhouse, and whose
burdens, in having to contribute to the maintenance of those inmates
in greater comfort than themselves, are annually growing heavier,
added to our present mass of indoor pauperism. Old age pauperism,
encouraged by the altered conditions of the workhouses, has really
become a serious question."
That is one aspect of the question, but there is another. The really
pertinent point is, are the conditions of life nowadays prevalent
in the workhouse in themselves too humane; do they go beyond the
requirements of our modern civilisation? If not, there is no
justification for holding the reforming hand. The right thing, surely,
is to level up the conditions of life outside. Just as the admirable
example set by so many public authorities in the treatment of their
servants exerts a favourable influence in favour of employees in
private service, so the standard of life insisted upon for the public
workhouse, infirmary and asylum is bound to react upon the homes and
habits of the independent labouring classes. If the workman who is
taxed to keep the pauper in tolerable comfort does not enjoy at least
equal conditions of existence himself, he will ask himself, and then
others, the reason why. And who will blame him for so doing? Least of
all the sociologist, who knows that no factor in the civilisation of
society is more potent or more irresistible than the expansion of one's
view of life and the multiplication of rational needs.
There remain the _bona-fide_ seekers of work. For them no adequate
provision exists, and the neglect to make it is a crying wrong. The
present indiscriminate treatment of all wayfarers works unjustly in
every way. It is unfair to the dissolute idler, whom it confirms in
his sloth; it is monstrously unfair to the unwilling idler, whom it
penalises for his misfortune. When society has done its duty to the
tramp, it will not hesitate to recognise its responsibilities towards
the genuine unemployed. It will do so not from motives of philanthropy
alone, though it is a platitude to say that a society which professes
to be based on Christian principles owes far more than it has ever
paid or acknowledged to its workless members; it will do it also from
considerations of social interest and well-being, recognising that
it is the best charity and the truest economy to get an idle man's
hands employed as soon as possible, the worst extravagance to allow
him to remain unproductive a day longer than can be avoided. Labour is
the first element in all wealth-creation, and every idle man is, in
greater or less degree, a source of national impoverishment, for he is
consuming without producing.
Wherever public labour registries have been established as part of a
co-ordinated system, as in Bavaria and other parts of Germany, and
in Switzerland, it has been found that, short of a free use of the
railway, which is no doubt the ideal arrangement, hostels for decent
wayfarers of the working class are essential. Those who think that such
institutions are superfluous will do well to read the following story
told by a working man correspondent in _The Times_:--
"Last summer some two hundred of us were given a week's notice,
through slackness of work, by a powerful London company, and, although
we all brought characters when we entered the company's service, we
were informed on discharge that the company never gave references,
and would not answer any letters with regard to our characters. Now,
as everyone in London requires a personal character, unless we have
influence at our back what chance have we for anything but casual
work? One of the men, in despair of finding employment in London, left
for the Lincolnshire potato harvest. He tells me that, not having
money for all his journey, he walked down, and on several occasions
had to put up at a casual ward, where he had to break 13 cwt. of
stones in return for the shelter from the rain for the night. He
says in some unions one has to lay on boards, with filthy rugs for
bedclothes, and only dry bread to eat at meals, except at dinner,
when you are allowed 1-1/2 oz. of cheese. To avoid this organised
charity he one night crept into a cart-shed. He was there found by the
police, and by the goodness of the magistrates was sent on by train to
Lincoln, and at the expense of the country provided with free board
and lodge for fourteen days at the prison there. On being released
he was fortunate enough to obtain work in the harvest fields, and
being an all round good worker followed up a threshing machine all the
winter till now. This is only one case, due entirely to the fact that
many large firms will not give characters to men on discharge."
The incidents here recorded afford a striking illustration of a passage
in the report of the Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee on Vagrancy:--
"With regard to the man seeking work, your Committee are of opinion
that the present methods of dealing with vagrancy constitute a
real danger.... A certain number of such men find their way into
our prisons owing to their failure to establish their _bona fide_
character as working men before the courts. The temptation afterward
to drift gradually into the ranks of the professional tramp class is
considerable. Loss of manual or technical skill soon follows, and
the man who ought to be a producer becomes a costly burden to the
community."
To distinguish between the genuine work-seeker and the fraud would be
no difficult task. All that would be necessary would be to require
the former to authenticate himself by a way-ticket or pass, attested
either by the police, a trade union, a labour bureau, or a recent
responsible employer.[52] On the strength of such a certificate, which
a _bona-fide_ applicant should have a right to demand, unless good
reasons existed to the contrary, he might well be allowed to proceed
on his journey, and be admitted to such public hostels as happened to
lie in his way. Vagabondage pure and simple would be a game no longer
worth the candle. If the itinerant were an industrial malingerer, the
fact would speedily come to light, and with no Poor Law to fall back
upon, the sure prospect of detention in a Labour House would await
him. The entire supplanting of the so-called "model" lodging-houses
by travellers' hostels in public hands would be one of the greatest
benefits that could be conferred upon the working classes.
[Footnote 52: In my evidence before the Departmental Committee on
Vagrancy, I fully described the hostel and way ticket system which
has for many years been in successful operation in Germany, and the
same information was given by Mr. H. Preston Thomas regarding the more
recent Swiss system. _See also_ Chap. X. (pp. 212-228), of the present
Volume.]
It is worthy of note that the use of way-tickets, minus the houses of
call now proposed, is not unknown to English legislation on vagrancy.
So long ago as 1824 an Act was passed empowering magistrates to grant
certificates or passes to vagrants discharged from prison, to enable
them to reach their places of settlement, and to obtain relief from
parochial authorities on the way, though this pass system appears to
have been carried out in four counties only, and to have soon fallen
into disuse. Further, a Minute of the old Poor Law Board, dated
August 4, 1848, in recommending differential treatment as between the
work-seeking and the work-shy wayfarer, urged, in particular, that the
former should be helped by a system of way-tickets, applicable to fixed
routes and valid for a definite period.
"There is obviously a wide distinction," said the Minute, " between
those who are temporarily and unavoidably in distress and the habitual
tramp or vagrant who simulates destitution; and one of the worst
results of the present undiscriminating treatment of all who are
commonly denominated 'casuals' is, that some of the most fitting
objects of public charity are subjected to the discomforts that were
intended to repel the worthless. Among all the unfortunate there are
none whose destitution is more unquestionable, and whose hard lot
presents stronger claims to sympathy, than the widow and orphan,
deprived, at a distance from home, of their natural supporter, and
the honest artisan or labourer who is seeking the employment of which
accidental circumstances have suddenly deprived him. Yet, under the
present system, such persons as these either share the discomforts,
the filth, the turbulence, and the demoralising fellowship of the
thief, the mendicant and the prostitute, who crowd the vagrant wards
of the workhouses, or are compelled to brave the inclemency of the
weather and the pains of hunger by reason of their unconquerable
aversion to such companionship.
"It would not appear to be difficult to establish a system by
which this deserving class of persons might be furnished with such
evidence of their character and circumstances as might afford a fair
presumption of the truth of their plea of destitution. A wayfarer of
this class might, at the place where the cause of destitution occurs,
be enabled by those who are cognisant of it to obtain a certificate
from some proper authority, setting forth his name, the cause of
destitution, and the object and destination of his journey. On his
presenting this certificate at any workhouse, the master, on finding
that it was satisfactory, that the applicant was on the road to his
destination, and that he was without money or other means, might at
once admit him, and supply him with the usual accommodation of the
inmates. In this way the honest but destitute wayfarer, possessed of
such credentials, would obtain the advantage of being admitted into
the workhouse without reference to the relieving officer, and also of
receiving better accommodation, than that at present afforded to him
in the vagrant ward."
The plan proposed appears to have been followed but little. It was
reported to the Poor Law Board in 1865 that it was in force in one
county only (Essex), where vagrancy had been practically abolished as a
result.
It is more to the purpose to know that, at the present time,
way-tickets in a modified form are in use in some of the southern
counties of England--Sussex, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire--and
in parts of Wales. The best known system is that of Berkshire, which
was adopted in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire in 1882, and is still in
efficient operation. Its object is to enable a work-seeker to move
through the county to his destination by the most direct route, and
without unnecessary delay, and by providing him with lodging, supper,
and breakfast at the casual ward, and with a mid-day meal on his going,
to remove all necessity for begging from the public. The system was
thus described to the Vagrancy Committee by Lieut. Col. J. Curtis
Hayward, Chairman of the Gloucestershire Poor Law Vagrancy Committee:--
"A vagrant on entering the county gets a ticket from the assistant
relieving officer who, in most cases, in our county is a police
officer. That ticket has marked upon it his final destination and his
description. With that he goes to the casual ward, where, of course,
he is dealt with in the ordinary way; he gets his food night and
morning and he has to do his task. When he leaves, the master puts on
the ticket the name of the union which he has to go to next day--it
must be on the road to his final destination--and also the name of
a bread station. We have got one in nearly every case half-way.
Sometimes he has to go a little out of his way to a bread station. It
is also a police station. If he arrives there between one and three,
he is given a ticket on a baker close by.
"If he arrives at the union entered upon the ticket that evening,
he has what we call a good ticket; if, on the other hand, he arrives
at some other union, or has no ticket at all, he is given a new one
and it is considered a bad ticket. Our committee recommend the boards
of guardians to detain, for one night only, all those who show they
are passing as quickly as they can to the destination which they say
they are going to; and to detain for two nights all those without
any tickets, or who show that they are not going straight to their
destination.
"For instance, supposing a man says, 'I am going from Gloucester to
Cardiff,' he would have, perhaps, 'Westbury' marked on his ticket to
go to; and suppose he turned up at Stroud, which is directly in the
opposite direction, we would say:--'That is not where you are going
to; this is a bad ticket; you must have a new ticket, and you will be
detained two nights.'
"We give everybody a ticket. That is different to what they have done
in Worcestershire and other places, where they do not give a ticket.
They tried to discriminate between ... the _bona-fide_ working men
and those who were not _bona-fide_. We never attempt to make any
distinction, because we say giving this ticket is taking away the
excuse for begging; therefore, we say every man ought to have a ticket
in his pocket."
The system in force in Wiltshire was described to the same Committee by
Mr. A. C. Mitchell, Chairman of the Poor Law Vagrancy Committee of that
county:--
"The system was shortly this--that on a tramp applying at the
first union he arrived at in the county for relief, he was given
a way-ticket on which was entered his description, his final
destination, and the places where he would call. Arrangements were
made at convenient places where a police constable was stationed,
where the tramp could get bread between workhouses which necessitated
a fair day's march. This ticket, as long as he proceeded in the
direction to the final destination to which he declared himself to be
proceeding, entitled him to eight ounces of bread (in Gloucestershire
it was a larger amount at first, now it is eight ounces), between
the hours of twelve and two at the given stations. As long as he kept
on his way to his final destination that held good between union and
union.
"The man is passed on from point to point, as long as he keeps on the
route originally described, and he obtains his meals of bread at a
given point in the middle of each day, between the hours of twelve and
two.
"If that man varies his route, according to the recommendations of
our committee--of course we cannot be responsible for the actions of
boards of guardians--he would then be in the same position as the
man who arrived without a ticket at all, and would be liable to full
detention under the Casual Poor Act, 1882.
"We advise the boards of guardians that if a man has his ticket in
order, he shall be forwarded on his road at the earliest possible
time, after having broken the portion of stones for his one night's
detention."
The same system is in operation in West and East Sussex, and as late as
1908 the Poor Law Inspector for those districts reported to the Local
Government Board:--
"As regards vagrancy, the way-ticket system in operation in West
Sussex is reported to be working well, and is looked upon as a
permanent institution. It has also been extended to East Sussex. A
considerable reduction took place in the number of vagrants relieved
in Kent and Sussex."[53]
[Footnote 53: Mr. J. W. Thompson, in Annual Report for 1908, p. 42.]
In the following chapters the measures which have been adopted in
Continental countries for dealing with the social parasite will be
considered in detail.