Down and Out in London and Paris

by Orwell, George

  naked limbs constantly touching, and rolling against one

  another whenever we fell asleep. One fidgeted from side

  to side, but it did not do much good; whichever way one

  turned there would be first a dull numb feeling, than a

  sharp ache as the hardness of the floor wore through the

  blanket. One could sleep, but not for more than ten

  minutes on end.

  About midnight the other man began making homo-

  sexual attempts upon me-a nasty experience in a locked,

  pitch-dark cell. He was a feeble creature and I could

  manage him easily, but of course it was impossible to go

  to sleep again. For the rest of the night we stayed awake,

  smoking and talking. The man told me the story of his

  life-he was a fitter, out of work for three years. He said

  that his wife had promptly deserted him when he lost his

  job, and he had been so long away from women that he

  had almost forgotten what they were like. Homosexuality

  is general among tramps of long standing, he said.

  At eight the porter came along the passage unlocking

  the doors and shouting "All out!" The doors opened,

  letting out a stale, fetid stink. At once the passage was full

  of squalid, grey-shirted figures, each chamber-pot in hand,

  scrambling for the bathroom. It appeared that in the

  morning only one tub of water was allowed for the lot of

  us, and when I arrived twenty tramps had already washed

  their faces; I took one glance at the black scum floating on

  the water, and went unwashed. After this we were given a

  breakfast identical with the previous night's supper, our

  clothes were returned to us, and we were ordered out into

  the yard to work. The work was peeling potatoes for the

  pauper's dinner, but it was a mere formality, to keep us

  occupied until the doctor came to inspect us. Most of the

  tramps frankly idled. The doctor turned up at about ten

  o'clock and we were told to go back to our cells, strip and

  wait in the passage for the inspection.

  Naked and shivering, we lined up in the passage. You

  cannot conceive what ruinous, degenerate curs we looked,

  standing there in the merciless morning light. A tramp's

  clothes are bad, but they conceal far worse things; to see

  him as he really is, unmitigated,

  you must see him naked. Flat feet, pot bellies, hollow

  chests, sagging muscles-every kind of physical rottenness

  was there. Nearly everyone was under-nourished, and

  some clearly diseased; two men were wearing trusses, and

  as for the old mummy-like creature of seventy-five, one

  wondered how he could possibly make his daily march.

  Looking at our faces, unshaven and creased from the

  sleepless night, you would have thought that all of us were

  recovering from a week on the drink.

  The inspection was designed merely to detect small-

  pox, and took no notice of our general condition. A young

  medical student, smoking a cigarette, walked rapidly

  along the line glancing us up and down, and not inquiring

  whether any man was well or ill. When my cell

  companion stripped I saw that his chest was covered with

  a red rash, and, having spent the night a few inches away

  from him, I fell into a panic about smallpox. The doctor,

  however, examined the rash and said that it was due

  merely to under-nourishment.

  After the inspection we dressed and were sent into the

  yard, where the porter called our names over, gave us back

  any possessions we had left at the office, and distributed

  meal tickets. These were worth sixpence each, and were

  directed to coffee-shops on the route we had named the

  night before. It was interesting to see that quite a number

  of the tramps could not read, and had to apply to myself

  and other "scholards" to decipher their tickets.

  The gates were opened, and we dispersed immediately.

  How sweet the air does smell-even the air of a back street

  in the suburbs-after the shut-in, subfaecal stench of the

  spike! I had a mate now, for while we were peeling

  potatoes I had made friends with an Irish tramp named

  Paddy Jaques, a melancholy

  pale man who seemed clean and decent. He was going to

  Edbury spike, and suggested that we should go together.

  We set out, getting there at three in the afternoon. It was a

  twelve-mile walk, but we made it fourteen by getting lost

  among the desolate north London slums. Our meal tickets

  were directed to a coffee-shop in Ilford. When we got

  there, the little chit of a serving-maid, having seen our

  tickets and grasped that we were tramps, tossed her head

  in contempt and for a long time would not serve us.

  Finally she slapped on the table two "large teas" and four

  slices of bread and dripping-that is, eightpenny-worth of

  food. It appeared that the shop habitually cheated the

  tramps of twopence or so on each ticket; having tickets

  instead of money, the tramps could not protest or go

  elsewhere.

  XXVIII

  PADDY was my mate for about the next fortnight, and, as

  he was the first tramp I had known at all well, I want to

  give an account of him. I believe that he was a typical

  tramp and there are tens of thousands in England like him.

  He was a tallish man, aged about thirty-five, with fair

  hair going grizzled and watery blue eyes. His features

  were good, but his cheeks had lanked and had that greyish,

  dirty in the grain look that comes of a bread and margarine

  diet. He was dressed, rather better than most tramps, in a

  tweed shooting jacket and a pair of old evening trousers

  with the braid still on them. Evidently the braid figured in

  his mind as a lingering scrap of respectability, and he took

  care to sew it on again when it came loose. He was careful

  of his appearance altogether, and carried a razor and

  bootbrush that he would not sell, though he had sold his

  "papers" and even his pocket-knife long since.

  Nevertheless, one would have known him for a tramp a

  hundred yards away. There was something in his drifting

  style of walk, and the way he had of hunching his

  shoulders forward, essentially abject. Seeing him walk,

  you felt instinctively that he would sooner take a blow

  than give one.

  He had been brought up in Ireland, served two years

  in the war, and then worked in a metal polish factory,

  where he had lost his job two years earlier. He was

  horribly ashamed of being a tramp, but he had picked up

  all a tramp's ways. He browsed the pavements

  unceasingly, never missing a cigarette end, or even an

  empty cigarette packet, as he used the tissue paper for

  rolling cigarettes. On our way into Edbury he saw a

  newspaper parcel on the pavement, pounced on it, and

  found that it contained two mutton sandwiches, rather

  frayed at the edges; these he insisted on my sharing. He

  never passed an automatic machine without giving a tug

  at the handle, for he said that sometimes they are out of

&nbs
p; order and will eject pennies if you tug at them. He had

  no stomach for crime, however. When we were in the

  outskirts of Romton, Paddy noticed a bottle of milk on a

  doorstep, evidently left there by mistake. He stopped,

  eyeing the bottle hungrily.

  "Christ!" he said, "dere's good food goin' to waste.

  Somebody could knock dat bottle off, eh? Knock it off

  easy."

  I saw that he was thinking of "knocking it off" himself.

  He looked up and down the street; it was a quiet

  residential street and there was nobody in sight. Paddy's

  sickly, chap-fallen face yearned over the milk. Then he

  turned away, saying gloomily:

  "Best leave it. It don't do a man no good to steal.

  Tank God, I ain't never stolen nothin' yet."

  It was funk, bred of hunger, that kept him virtuous.

  With only two or three sound meals in his belly, he would

  have found courage to steal the milk.

  He had two subjects of conversation, the shame and

  come-down of being a tramp, and the best way of getting

  a free meal. As we drifted through the streets he would

  keep up a monologue in this style, in a whimpering, self-

  pitying Irish voice:

  "It's hell bein' on de road, eh? It breaks yer heart goin'

  into dem bloody spikes. But what's a man to do else, eh?

  I ain't had a good meat meal for about two months, an'

  me boots is getting bad, an'-Christ! How'd it be if we was

  to try for a cup o' tay at one o' dem convents on de way

  to Edbury? Most times dey're good for a cup o' tay. Ah,

  what'd a man do widout religion, eh? I've took cups o' tay

  from de convents, an' de Baptists, an' de Church of

  England, an' all sorts. I'm a Catholic meself. Dat's to say,

  I ain't been to confession for. about seventeen year, but

  still I got me religious feelin's, y'understand. An' dem

  convents is always good for a cup o' tay . . ." etc. etc. He

  would keep this up all day, almost without stopping.

  His ignorance was limitless and appalling. He once

  asked me, for instance, whether Napoleon lived before

  Jesus Christ or after. Another time, when I was looking

  into a bookshop window, he grew very perturbed because

  one of the books was called Of the Imitation of Christ. He

  took this for blasphemy. "What de hell do dey want to go

  imitatin' of Him for?" he demanded angrily. He could

  read, but he had a kind of loathing for books. On our

  way from Romton to Edbury I went into a public library,

  and, though Paddy did not want to read, I suggested that

  he should come in and rest his

  legs. But he preferred to wait on the pavement. "No," he

  said, "de sight of all dat bloody print makes me sick."

  Like most tramps, he was passionately mean about

  matches. He had a box of matches when I met him, but I

  never saw him strike one, and he used to lecture me for

  extravagance when I struck mine. His method was to

  cadge a light from strangers, sometimes going without a

  smoke for half an hour rather than strike a match.

  Self-pity was the clue to his character. The thought of

  his bad luck never seemed to leave him for an instant. He

  would break long silences to exclaim, apropos of nothing,

  "It's hell when yer clo'es begin to go up de spout, eh?" or

  "Dat tay in de spike ain't tay, it's piss," as though there

  was nothing else in the world to think about. And he had a

  low, worm-like envy of anyone who was better off-not of

  the rich, for they were beyond his social horizon, but of

  men in work. He pined for work as an artist pines to be

  famous. If he saw an old man working he would say

  bitterly, "Look at dat old keepin' able-bodied men out o'

  work"; or if it was a boy, "It's dem young devils what's

  takin' de bread out of our mouths." And all foreigners to

  him were "dem bloody dagoes"-for, according to his

  theory, foreigners were responsible for unemployment.

  He looked at women with a mixture of longing and

  hatred. Young, pretty women were too much above him to

  enter into his ideas, but his mouth watered at prostitutes.

  A couple of scarlet-lipped old creatures would go past;

  Paddy's face would flush pale pink, and he would turn and

  stare hungrily after the women. "Tarts!" he would

  murmur, like a boy at a sweetshop window. He told me

  once that he had not had to do with a woman for two

  years-since he had lost his job, that is-and he had

  forgotten that one could aim higherthan prostitutes.

  He had the regular character of a tramp-abject, envious,

  a jackal's character.

  Nevertheless, he was a good fellow, generous by nature

  and capable of sharing his last crust with a friend;

  indeed he did literally share his last crust with me

  more than once. He was probably capable of work too, if

  he had been well fed for a few months. But two years of

  bread and margarine had lowered his standards hopelessly.

  He had lived on this filthy imitation of food till his own

  mind and body were compounded of inferior stuff. It was

  malnutrition and not any native vice that had destroyed

  his manhood.

  XXIX

  ON the way to Edbury I told Paddy that I had a friend

  from whom I could be sure of getting money, and

  suggested going straight into London rather than face

  another night in the spike. But Paddy had not been in

  Edbury spike recently, and, tramp-like, he would not

  waste a night's free lodging. We arranged to go into

  London the next morning. I had only a halfpenny, but

  Paddy had two shillings, which would get us a bed each

  and a few cups of tea.

  The Edbury spike did not differ much from the one at

  Romton. The worst feature was that all tobacco was

  confiscated at the gate, and we were warned that any man

  caught smoking would be turned out at once. Under the

  Vagrancy Act tramps can be prosecuted for smoking in the

  spike-in fact, they can be prosecuted for almost anything;

  but the authorities generally save the trouble of a

  prosecution by turning disobedient men out of doors.

  There was no work to do, and the cells were fairly

  comfortable. We slept two in a cell,

  "one up, one down"-that is, one on a wooden shelf and

  one on the floor, with straw palliasses and plenty of

  blankets, dirty but not verminous. The food was the same

  as at Romton, except that we had tea instead of cocoa.

  One could get extra tea in the morning, as the Tramp

  Major was selling it at a halfpenny a mug, illicitly no

  doubt. We were each given a hunk of bread and cheese to

  take away for our midday meal.

  When we got into London we had eight hours to kill

  before the lodging-houses opened. It is curious how one

  does not notice things. I had been in London innumerable

  times, and yet till that day I had never noticed one of the

  worst things about London-the fact that it costs money

  even to sit down. In Paris, if you had no money and could

  not find a public bench, you would s
it on the pavement.

  Heaven knows what sitting on the pavement would lead to

  in London-prison, probably. By four we had stood five

  hours, and our feet seemed red-hot from the hardness of

  the stones. We were hungry, having eaten our ration as

  soon as we left the spike, and I was out of tobacco-it

  mattered less to Paddy, who picked up cigarette ends. We

  tried two churches and found them locked. Then we tried a

  public library, but there were no seats in it.-As a last hope

  Paddy suggested trying a Romton House; by the rules they

  would not let us in before seven, but we might slip in

  unnoticed. We walked up to the magnificent doorway (the

  Rowton Houses really are magnificent) and very casually,

  trying to look like regular lodgers, began to stroll in.

  Instantly a man lounging in the doorway, a sharp-faced

  fellow, evidently in some position of authority, barred the

  way.

  "You men sleep 'ere last night?"

  "No."

  "Then-off."

  We obeyed, and stood two more hours on the street

  corner. It was unpleasant, but it taught me not to use the

  expression "street corner loafer," so I gained something

  from it.

  At six we went to a Salvation Army shelter. We could

  not book beds till eight and it was not certain that there

  would be any vacant, but an official, who called us

  "Brother," let us in on the condition that we paid for two

  cups of tea. The main hall of the shelter was a great white-

  washed barn of a place, oppressively clean and bare, with

  no fires. Two hundred decentish, rather subdued-looking

  people were sitting packed on long wooden benches. One

  or two officers in uniform prowled up and down. On the

  wall were pictures of General Booth, and notices

  prohibiting cooking, drinking, spitting, swearing,

  quarrelling and gambling. As a specimen of these notices,

  here is one that I copied word for word:

  "Any man found gambling or playing cards will be

  expelled and will not be admitted under any

  circumstances.

  "A reward will be given for information leading to

  the discovery of such persons.

  "The officers in charge appeal to all lodgers to

  assist them in keeping this hostel free from the

  DETESTABLE EVIL OF GAMBLING."

  "Gambling or playing cards" is a delightful phrase.