George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

people know what makes a tramp take to the road. And,

because of the belief in the tramp-monster, the most

fantastic reasons are suggested. It is said, for instance,

that tramps tramp to avoid work, to beg more easily, to

seek opportunities for crime, even-least probable of

reasons-because they like tramping. I have even read in a

book of criminology that the tramp is an atavism, a

throw-back to the nomadic stage of humanity. And

meanwhile the quite obvious cause of vagrancy is staring

one in the face. Of course a tramp is not a nomadic

atavism-one might as well say that a commercial traveller

is an atavism. A tramp tramps, not because he likes it,

but for the same reason as a car keeps to the left;

because there happens to be a law compelling him to do

so. A destitute man, if he is not supported by the parish,

can only get relief at the casual wards, and as each casual

ward will only admit him for one night, he is

automatically kept moving. He is a vagrant because, in

the state of the law, it is that or starve. But people have

been brought up to believe in the tramp-monster, and

so they prefer to think that there must be some more or

less villainous motive for tramping.

As a matter of fact, very little of the tramp-monster

will survive inquiry. Take the generally accepted idea

that tramps are dangerous characters. Quite apart from

experience, one can say

a priori that very few

tramps are dangerous, because if they were dangerous they

would be treated accordingly. A casual ward will often

admit a hundred, tramps in one night, and these are

handled by a staff of at most three porters. A hundred

ruffians could not be controlled by three unarmed men.

Indeed, when one sees how tramps let themselves be

bullied by the workhouse officials, it is obvious that they

are the most docile, broken-spirited creatures imaginable.

Or take the idea that all tramps are drunkards-an idea

ridiculous on the face of it. No doubt many tramps would

drink if they got the chance, but in the nature of things

they cannot- get the chance. At this moment a pale watery

stuff called beer is sevenpence a pint in England. To be

drunk on it would cost at least half a crown, and a man

who can command half a crown at all often is not a tramp.

The idea that tramps are impudent social parasites

("sturdy beggars") is not absolutely unfounded, but it is

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

cynical parasitism, such as one reads of in Jack London's

books on American tramping, is not in the English

character. The English are a conscience-ridden race, with

a strong sense of the sinfulness of poverty. One cannot

imagine the average Englishman deliberately turning

parasite, and this national character does not necessarily

change because a man is thrown out of work. Indeed, if

one remembers that a tramp is only an Englishman out of

work, forced by law to live as a vagabond, then the tramp-

monster vanishes. I am not saying, of course, that most

tramps are ideal characters; I am only saying that they are

ordinary human beings, and that if they are worse than

other people it is the result and not the cause of their way

of life.

It follows that the "Serve them damned well right"

attitude that is normally taken towards tramps is no

fairer than it would be towards cripples or invalids. When

one has realised that, one begins to put oneself in a

tramp's place and understand what his life is like. It is an

extraordinarily futile, acutely unpleasant life. I have

described the casual ward-the routine of a tramp's day-but

there are three especial evils that need insisting upon. The

first is hunger, which is the almost general fate of tramps.

The casual ward gives them a ration which is probably not

even meant to be sufficient, and anything beyond this

must be got by begging-that is, by breaking the law: The

result is that nearly every tramp is rotted by malnutrition;

for proof of which one need only look at the men lining up

outside any casual ward. The second great evil of a

tramp's life-it seems much smaller at first sight, but it is a

good second-is that he is entirely cut off from contact with

women. This point needs elaborating.

Tramps are cut off from women, in the first place,

because there Are very few women at their level of

society. One might imagine that among destitute people

the sexes would be as equally balanced as elsewhere. But

it is not so; in fact, one can almost say that below a certain

level society is entirely male. The following figures,

published by the L.C.C. from a night census taken on

February 13th, 1931, will show the relative numbers of

destitute men and destitute women:

Spending the night in the streets, 6o men, 18 women.'

In shelters and homes not licensed as common lodging-houses,

1,057 men, 137 women.

In the crypt of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields Church, 88 men, 12

women.

In L.C.C. casual wards and hostels, 674 men, 15 women.

It will be seen from these figures that at the charity

1 This must be an underestimate. Still, the proportions probably

hold good.

level men outnumber women by something like ten to

one. The cause is presumably that unemployment affects

women less than men; also that any presentable woman

can, in the last resort, attach herself to some man. The

result, for a tramp, is that he is condemned to perpetual

celibacy. For of course it goes without saying that if a

tramp finds no women at his own level, those above-

even a very little above-are as far out of his reach as the

moon. The reasons are not worth discussing, but there

is no doubt that women never, or hardly ever,

condescend to men who are much poorer than

themselves. A tramp, therefore, is a celibate from the

moment when he takes to the road. He is absolutely

without hope of getting a wife, a mistress, or any kind of

woman except-very rarely, when he can raise a few

shillings-a prostitute.

It is obvious what the results of this must be: homo-

sexuality, for instance, and occasional rape cases. But

deeper than these there is the degradation worked in man

who knows that he is not even considered fit for

marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any higher, is a

fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as

demoralising as physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not

so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him

physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that

sexual starvation contributes to this rotting process. Cut

off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels himself

degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No

humiliation could do more damage to a man's self-

respect.

The other great evil of a tramp's life is enforced idleness.

By our vagrancy laws things are so arranged that when he

is not walking the road he is sitting in a cell; or, in the

intervals, lying on the ground waiting for the casual ward

to open. It is obvious that this is a dismal,

demoralising way of life, especially for an uneducated

man.

Besides these one could enumerate scores of minor

evils-to name only one, discomfort, which is inseparable

from life on the road; it is worth remembering that the

average tramp has no clothes but what he stands up in,

wears boots that are ill-fitting, and does not sit in a chair

for months together. But the important point is that a

tramp's sufferings are entirely useless. He lives a

fantastically disagreeable life, and lives it to no purpose

whatever. One could not, in fact invent a more futile

routine than walking from prison to prison, spending

perhaps eighteen hours a day in the cell and on the road.

There must be at the least several tens of thousands of

tramps in England. Each day they expend innumerable

foot-pounds of energy-enough to plough thousands of

acres, build miles of road, put up dozens of houses-in

mere, useless walking. Each day they waste between them

possibly ten years of time in staring at cell walls. They cost

the country at least a pound a week a man, and give

nothing in return for it. They go round and round, on an

endless boring game of general post, which is of no use,

and is not even meant to be of any use to any person

whatever. The law keeps this process going, and we have

got so accustomed to it that we are not surprised. But it is

very silly.

Granting the futility of a tramp's life, the question is

whether anything could be done to improve it. Obviously

it would be possible, for instance, to make the casual

wards a little more habitable, and this is actually being

done in some cases. During the last year some of the

casual wards have been improved-beyond recognition, if

the accounts are true-and there is talk of doing the same

to all of them. But this does not go to the heart of the

problem. The problem is how to turn

the tramp from a bored, half alive vagrant into a self-

respecting human being. A mere increase of comfort

cannot do this. Even if the casual wards became positively

luxurious (they never will)' a tramp's life would still be

wasted. He would still be a pauper, cut off from marriage

and home life, and a dead loss to the community. What is

needed is to depauperise him, and this can only be done by

finding him work-not work for the sake of working, but

work of which he can enjoy the benefit. At present, in the

great majority of casual wards, tramps do no work

whatever. At one time they were made to break stones for

their food, but this was stopped when they had broken

enough stone for years ahead and put the stone-breakers

out of work. Nowadays they are kept idle, because there is

seemingly nothing for them to do. Yet there is a fairly

obvious way of making them useful, namely this: Each

workhouse could run a small farm, or at least a kitchen

garden, and every able-bodied tramp who presented

himself could be made to do a sound day's work. The

produce of the farm or garden could be used for feeding

the tramps, and at the worst it would be better than the

filthy diet of bread and margarine and tea. Of course, the

casual wards could never be quite selfsupporting, but they

could go a long way towards it, and the rates would

probably benefit in the long run. It must be remembered

that under the present system tramps are as dead a loss to

the country as they could possibly be, for they do not only

do no work, but they live on a diet that is bound to

undermine their health; the system, therefore, loses lives

as well as money. A

1 In fairness it must be added that a few of the casual wards have been

improved recently, at least from the point of view of sleeping

accommodation. But most of them are the same as ever, and there has

been no real improvement in the food.

scheme which fed them decently, and made them produce

at least a part of their own food, would be worth trying.

It may be objected that a farm or even a garden could

not be run with casual labour. But there is no real reason