Down and Out in London and Paris

by Orwell, George

  over, a dozen tramps who had stationed themselves near

  the door bolted to avoid the service; the rest stayed, less

  from gratitude than lacking the cheek to go.

  The organ let out a few preliminary hoots and the service

  began. And instantly, as though at a signal, the tramps

  began to misbehave in the most outrageous way. One

  would not have thought such scenes possible in a church.

  All round the gallery men lolled in their pews, laughed,

  chattered, leaned over and flicked pellets of bread among

  the congregation; I had to re

  strain the man next to me, more or less by force, from

  lighting a cigarette. The tramps treated the service as a

  purely comic spectacle. It was, indeed, a sufficiently

  ludicrous service-the kind where there are sudden yells of

  "Hallelujah!" and endless extempore prayersbut their

  behaviour passed all bounds. There was one old fellow in

  the congregation-Brother Bootle or some such name-who

  was often called on to lead us in prayer, and whenever he

  stood up the tramps would begin stamping as though in a

  theatre; they said that on a previous occasion he had kept

  up an extempore prayer for twenty-five minutes, until the

  minister had interrupted him. Once when Brother Bootle

  stood up a tramp called out, "Two to one 'e don't beat

  seven minutes!" so loud that the whole church must hear.

  It was not long before we were making far more noise than

  the minister. Sometimes somebody below would send up

  an indignant "Hush!" but it made no impression. We had

  set ourselves to guy the service, and there was no

  stopping us.

  It was a queer, rather disgusting scene. Below were the

  handful of simple, well-meaning people, trying hard to

  worship; and above were the hundred men whom they had

  fed, deliberately making worship impossible. A ring of

  dirty, hairy faces grinned down from the gallery, openly

  jeering. What could a few women and old men do against a

  hundred hostile tramps? They were afraid of us, and we

  were frankly bullying them. It was our revenge upon them

  for having humiliated us by feeding us.

  The minister was a brave man. He thundered steadily

  through a long sermon on Joshua, and managed almost to

  ignore the sniggers and chattering from above. But in the

  end, perhaps goaded beyond endurance, he announced

  loudly:

  "I shall address the last five minutes of my sermon to

  the unsaved sinners!"

  Having said which, he turned his face to the gallery

  and kept it so for five minutes, lest there should be any

  doubt about who were saved and who unsaved. But much

  we cared! Even while the minister was threatening hell

  fire, we were rolling cigarettes, and at the last amen we

  clattered down the stairs with a yell, many agreeing to

  come back for another free tea next week.

  The scene had interested me. It was so different from

  the ordinary demeanour of tramps-from the abject worm-

  like gratitude with which they normally accept charity.

  The explanation, of course, was that we outnumbered the

  congregation and so were not afraid of them. A man

  receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor-it

  is a fixed characteristic of human nature; and, when he has

  fifty or a hundred others to back him, he will show it.

  In the evening, after the free tea, Paddy unexpectedly

  earned another eighteenpence at "glimming." It was

  exactly enough for another night's lodging, and we put it

  aside and went hungry till nine the next evening. Bozo,

  who might have given us some food, was away all day.

  The pavements were wet, and he had gone to the Elephant

  and Castle, where he knew of a pitch under shelter.

  Luckily I still had some tobacco, so that the day might

  have been worse.

  At half-past eight Paddy took me to the Embankment,

  where a clergyman was known to distribute meal tickets

  once a week. Under Charing Cross Bridge fifty men were

  waiting, mirrored in the shivering puddles. Some of them

  were truly appalling specimens-they were Embankment

  sleepers, and the Embankment dredges up worse types

  than the spike. One of them, I

  remember, was dressed in an overcoat without buttons,

  laced up with rope, a pair of ragged trousers, and boots

  exposing his toes-not a rag else. He was bearded like a

  fakir, and he had managed to streak his chest and

  shoulders with some horrible black filth resembling train

  oil. What one could see of his face under the dirt and hair

  was bleached white as paper by some malignant disease. I

  heard him speak, and he had a goodish accent, as of a

  clerk or shopwalker.

  Presently the clergyman appeared and the men ranged

  themselves in a queue in the order in which they had

  arrived. The clergyman was a nice, chubby, youngish

  man, and, curiously enough, very like Charlie, my friend

  in Paris. He was shy and embarrassed, and did not speak

  except for a brief good evening; he simply hurried down

  the line of men, thrusting a ticket upon each, and not

  waiting to be thanked. The consequence was that, for

  once, there was genuine gratitude, and everyone said that

  the clergyman was a good feller. Someone (in his hearing,

  I believe) called out: "Well, he'll never be a-----bishop!"-

  this, of course, intended as a warm compliment.

  The tickets were worth sixpence each, and were

  directed to an eating-house not far away. When we got

  there we found that the proprietor, knowing that the

  tramps could not go elsewhere, was cheating by only

  giving four pennyworth of food for each ticket. Paddy and

  I pooled our tickets, and received food which we could

  have got for sevenpence or eightpence at most coffee-

  shops. The clergyman had distributed well over a pound in

  tickets, so that the proprietor was evidently swindling the

  tramps to the tune of seven shillings or more a week. This

  kind of victimisation is a regular part of a tramp's life, and

  it will go on as long as people continue to give meal tickets

  instead of money.

  Paddy and I went back to the lodging-house and, still

  hungry, loafed in the kitchen, making the warmth of the

  fire a substitute for food. At half-past ten Bozo arrived,

  tired out and haggard, for his mangled leg made walking

  an agony. He had not earned a penny at screening, all the

  pitches under shelter being taken, and for several hours he

  had begged outright, with one eye on the policemen. He

  had amassed eightpence -a penny short of his kip. It was

  long past the hour for paying, and he had only managed to

  slip indoors when the deputy was not looking; at any

  moment he might be caught and turned out, to sleep on the

  Embankment. Bozo took the things out of his pockets and

  looked them over, debating what to sell. He decided on his

  razor, took it round the kitchen, and in a few minutes he

  had sold it for threepence-enough to pay hi
s kip, buy a

  basin of tea, and leave a halfpenny over.

  Bozo got his basin of tea and sat down by the fire to

  dry his clothes. As he drank the tea I saw that he was

  laughing to himself, as though at some good joke.

  Surprised, I asked him what he had to laugh at.

  "It's bloody funny!" he said. "It's funny enough for

  Punch. What do you think I been and done?"

  "What?"

  "Sold my razor without having a shave first: Of all

  the fools!"

  He had not eaten since the morning, had walked several

  miles with a twisted leg, his clothes were drenched, and he

  had a halfpenny between himself and starvation. With all

  this, he could laugh over the loss of his razor. One could

  not help admiring him.

  XXXIV

  THE next morning, our money being at an end, Paddy and

  I set out for the spike. We went southward by the Old

  Kent Road, making for Cromley; we could not go to a

  London spike, for Paddy had been in one recently and did

  not care to risk going again. It was a sixteen-mile walk

  over asphalt, blistering to the heels, and we were acutely

  hungry. Paddy browsed the pavement, laying up a store of

  cigarette ends against his time in the spike. In the end his

  perseverance was rewarded, for he picked up a penny. We

  bought a large piece of stale bread, and devoured it as we

  walked.

  When we got to Cromley, it was too early to go the

  spike, and we walked several miles farther, to a plantation

  beside a meadow, where one could sit down. It was a

  regular caravanserai of tramps-one could tell it by the

  worn grass and the sodden newspaper and rusty cans that

  they had left behind. Other tramps were arriving by ones

  and twos. It was jolly autumn weather. Near by, a deep

  bed of tansies was growing; it seems to me that even now

  I can smell the sharp reek of those tansies, warring with

  the reek of tramps. In the meadow two carthorse colts, raw

  sienna colour with white manes and tails, were nibbling at

  a gate. We sprawled about on the ground, sweaty and ex-

  hausted. Someone managed to find dry sticks and get a

  fire going, and we all had milkless tea out of a tin "drum"

  which was passed round.

  Some of the tramps began telling stories. One of them,

  Bill, was an interesting type, a genuine sturdy beggar of

  the old breed, strong as Hercules and a frank foe of work.

  He boasted that with his great strength he

  could get a navvying job any time he liked, but as soon as

  he drew his first week's wages he went on a terrific drunk

  and was sacked. Between whiles he "mooched," chiefly

  from shopkeepers. He talked like this:

  "I ain't goin' far in ---Kent. Kent's a tight county,

  Kent is. There's too many bin' moochin' about 'ere. The

  ---bakers get so as they'll throw

  their bread away sooner'n give it you. Now Oxford, that's

  the place for moochin', Oxford is. When I was in Oxford I

  mooched bread, and I mooched bacon, and I mooched

  beef, and every night I mooched tanners for my kip off of

  the students. The last night I was twopence short of my

  kip, so I goes up to a parson and mooches 'im for

  threepence. He give me threepence, and the next moment

  he turns round and gives me in charge for beggin'. 'You

  bin beggin',' the copper says. 'No I ain't,' I says, 'I was

  askin' the gentlemen the time,' I says. The copper starts

  feelin' inside my coat, and he pulls out a pound of meat

  and two loaves of bread. 'Well, what's all this, then?' he

  says. 'You better come 'long to the station,' he says. The

  beak give me seven days. I don't mooch from no more

  ---parsons. But Christ! what do I

  care for a lay-up of seven days?" etc. etc.

  It seemed that his whole life was this-a round of

  mooching, drunks and lay-ups. He laughed as he talked of

  it, taking it all for a tremendous joke. He looked as though

  he made a poor thing out of begging, for he wore only a

  corduroy suit, scarf and capno socks or linen. Still, he was

  fat and jolly, and he even smelt of beer, a most unusual

  smell in a tramp nowadays.

  Two of the tramps had been in Cromley spike recently,

  and they told a ghost story connected with it. Years

  earlier, they said, there had been a suicide there.

  A tramp had managed to smuggle a razor into his cell, and

  there cut his throat. In the morning, when the Tramp

  Major came round, the body was jammed against the door,

  and to open it they had to break the dead man's arm. In

  revenge for this, the dead man haunted his cell, and

  anyone who slept there was certain to die within the year;

  there were copious instances, of course. If a cell door

  stuck when you tried to open it, you should avoid that cell

  like the plague, for it was the haunted one.

  Two tramps, ex-sailors, told another grisly story. A

  man (they swore they had known him) had planned to

  stow away on a boat bound for Chile. It was laden with

  manufactured goods packed in big wooden crates, and

  with the help of a docker the stowaway had managed to

  hide himself in one of these. But the docker had made a

  mistake about the order in which the crates were to be

  loaded. The crane gripped the stowaway, swung him aloft,

  and deposited him-at the very bottom of the hold, beneath

  hundreds of crates. No one discovered what had happened

  until the end of the voyage, when they found the

  stowaway rotting, dead of suffocation.

  Another tramp told the story of Gilderoy, the Scottish

  robber. Gilderoy was the man who was condemned to be

  hanged, escaped, captured the judge who had sentenced

  him, and (splendid fellow!) hanged him. The tramps liked

  the story, of course, but the interesting thing was to see

  that they had got it all wrong. Their version was that

  Gilderoy escaped to America, whereas in reality he was

  recaptured and put to death. The story had been amended,

  no doubt deliberately; just as children amend the stories of

  Samson and Robin Hood, giving them happy endings

  which are quite imaginary.

  This set the tramps talking about history, and a very

  old man declared that the "one bite law" was a survival

  from days when the nobles hunted men instead of deer.

  Some of the others laughed at him, but he had the idea

  firm in his head. He had heard, too, of the Corn Laws,

  and the jus primae noctis (he believed it had really

  existed); also of the Great Rebellion, which he thought

  was a rebellion of poor against rich-perhaps he had got it

  mixed up with the peasant rebellions. I doubt whether

  the old man could read, and certainly he was not

  repeating newspaper articles. His scraps of history had

  been passed from generation to generation of tramps,

  perhaps for centuries in some cases. It was oral tradition

  lingering on, like a faint echo from the Middle Ages.

  Paddy and I went to the spike at six in the evening,

  getting out at
ten in the morning. It was much like

  Romton and Edbury, and we saw nothing of the ghost.

  Among the casuals were two young men named William

  and Fred, ex-fishermen from Norfolk, a lively pair and

  fond of singing. They had a song called "Unhappy Bella"

  that is worth writing down. I heard them sing it half a

  dozen times during the next two days, and I managed to

  get it by heart, except a line or two which I have guessed.

  It ran:

  Bella was young and Bella was fair With

  bright blue eyes and golden hair, O

  unhappy Bella!

  Her step was light and her heart was gay, But

  she had no sense, and one fine day She got

  herself put in the family way

  By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

  Poor Bella was young, she didn't believe That

  the world is hard and men deceive, 0 unhappy

  Bella!

  She said, "My man will do what's just, He'll

  marry me now, because he must"; Her heart

  was full of loving trust

  In a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

  She went to his house; that dirty skunk Had

  packed his bags and done a bunk, O unhappy

  Bella!

  Her landlady said, "Get out, you whore,

  I won't have your sort a-darkening my door." Poor

  Bella was put to affliction sore

  By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

  All night she tramped the cruel snows, What she

  must have suffered nobody knows, O unhappy

  Bella!

  And when the morning dawned so red, Alas,

  alas, poor Bella was dead,

  Sent so young to her lonely bed

  By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

  So thus, you see, do what you will, The

  fruits of sin are suffering still, O unhappy

  Bella!

  As into the grave they laid her low, The men

  said, "Alas, but life is so," But the women

  chanted, sweet and low, "It's all the men, the

  dirty bastards!"

  Written by a woman, perhaps.

  William and Fred, the singers of this song, were

  thorough scallywags, the sort of men who get tramps a

  bad name. They happened to know that the Tramp Major

  at Cromley had a stock of old clothes, which were to be

  given at need to casuals. Before going in William and

  Fred took off their boots, ripped the seams and cut

  pieces off the soles, more or less ruining them. Then they