Down and Out in London and Paris

by Orwell, George

  die rather than work or wash, and wants nothing but to

  beg, drink and rob hen-houses. This tramp-monster is

  no truer to life than the sinister Chinaman of the

  magazine stories, but he is very hard to get rid of. The

  very word "tramp" evokes his image. And the belief in

  him obscures the real questions of vagrancy.

  To take a fundamental question about vagrancy: Why do

  tramps exist at all? It is a curious thing, but very few

  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

  why tramps should only stay a day at each casual ward;

  they might stay a month or even a year, if there were work

  for them to do. The constant circulation of tramps is

  something quite artificial. At present a tramp is an

  expense to the rates, and the object of each workhouse is

  therefore to push him on to the next; hence the rule that he

  can stay only one night. If he returns within a month he is

  penalised by being confined for a week, and, as this is

  much the same as being in prison, naturally he keeps

  moving. But if he represented labour to the workhouse,

  and the workhouse represented sound food to him, it

  would be another matter. The workhouses would develop

  into partially self-supporting institutions, and the tramps,

  settling down here or there according as they were needed,

  would cease to be tramps. They would be doing something

  comparatively useful, getting decent food, and living a

  settled life. By degrees, if the scheme worked well, they

  might even cease to be regarded as paupers, and be able to

  marry and take a respectable place in society.

  This is only a rough idea, and there are some obvious

  objections to it. Nevertheless, it does suggest a way of

  improving the status of tramps without piling new burdens

  on the rates. And the solution must, in any case, be

  something of this kind. For the question is, what to do

  with men who are underfed and idle; and the answer-to

  make them grow their own food - imposes itself

  automatically.

  XXXVII

  A WORD about the sleeping accommodation open to

  a homeless person in London. At present it is impossible

  to get a bed in any non-charitable institution in London for

  less than sevenpence a night. If you cannot afford

  sevenpence for a bed, you must put up

  with one of the following substitutes:

  I. The Embankment. Here is the account that Paddy

  gave me of sleeping on the Embankment:

  "De whole t'ing wid de Embankment is gettin' to sleep

  early. You got to be on your bench by eight o'clock,

  because dere ain't too many benches and sometimes
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  dey're all taken. And you got to try to get to

  sleep at once. 'Tis too cold to sleep much after twelve

  o'clock, an' de police turns you off at four in de mornin'.

  It ain't easy to sleep, dough, wid dem bloody trams flyin'

  past your head all de time, an' dem sky-signs across de

  river flickin' on an' off in your eyes. De cold's cruel. Dem

  as sleeps dere generally wraps demselves

  up in newspaper, but it don't do much good. You'd

  be bloody lucky if you got t'ree hours' sleep."

  I have slept on the Embankment and found that it

  corresponded to Paddy's description. It is, however,

  much better than not sleeping at all, which is the alter-

  native if you spend the night in the streets, elsewhere

  than on the Embankment. According to the law in

  London, you may sit down for the night, but the police

  must move you on if they see you asleep; the Embank

  ment and one or two odd corners (there is one behind

  the Lyceum Theatre) are special exceptions. This law

  is evidently a piece of wilful offensiveness. Its object, so it

  is said, is to prevent people from dying of exposure;

  but clearly if a man has no home and is going to die of

  exposure, die he will, asleep or awake. In Paris there is no

  such law. There, people sleep by the score under the Seine

  bridges, and in doorways, and on benches in the squares,

  and round the ventilating shafts of the Metro, and even

  inside the Metro stations. It does no apparent harm. No

  one will spend a night in the street if he can possibly help

  it, and if he is going to stay out of doors he might as well

  be allowed to sleep, if he can.

  2. The Twopenny Hangover. This comes a little

  higher than the Embankment. At the Twopenny Hang

  over, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope

  in front of them, and they lean on this as though

  leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet,

  cuts the rope at five in the morning. I have never

  been there myself, but Bozo had been there often. I asked

  him whether anyone could possibly sleep in such

  an attitude, and he said that it was more comfortable

  than it sounded-at any rate, better than the bare

  floor. There are similar shelters in Paris, but the charge

  there is only twenty-five centimes (a halfpenny) instead

  of twopence.