Dan Snow's History Hit - History of Homelessness

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

Throughout history homelessness has been given many names vagrancy, vagabonding, tramping. Indeed, homeless people have been seen in different lights. Sometimes portrayed as romantic heroes maintaining their freedom to roam and refusing to accept the yoke of a capitalist, settled society but also as an existential threat to order and property. I spoke to Professor of Contemporary British History Nick Crowson in this episode of the podcast who has spent much of his career studying homelessness. We explored how homelessness has been seen throughout history, his efforts to find out more about the individuals involved, how the homeless are labelled by the legal system here in the UK and how the 1824 Vagrancy Act remains in force.

Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, and Stephen Fry, the British comedian and public intellectual, are two people who probably agree on almost nothing. But they share a deep love for science fiction writer Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My name is Arvind Ethan David, and I'm the author of Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth. In my new audiobook, you'll hear rare recordings from the man who inspired a generation of futurists, technologists, and scientists. You'll hear readings of his visionary work from the voices of those who knew and loved him best, people like Stephen Fry and

David Baddiel. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking about homelessness on this podcast. Vagrancy, vagabonding, tramping. There's been many words for homelessness over the years and many spins put on it. Are homeless people romantic heroes who refuse to submit to the yoke of a capitalist settled society? Or are they an existential threat to order, to property? Well Professor Nick Croson has been

studying homelessness all his career. I got a chance to ask him now about how it's always been seen and how it's been labelled by the legal system here in the UK and he reminds me that the legal context of homelessness here in the UK owes And he reminds me that the legal context of homelessness here in the UK owes much to the various parts of the 1824 Vagrancy Act that are still in force. Remarkable stuff. If you enjoy this chat with Professor Nick Croson, please go and check out other podcasts. They're available without ads at historyhit.tv alongside hundreds of hours of history documentaries. Please go and check them all out. Just simply pop over to historyhit.tv and subscribe.

It's going to be good to have you on the service. I was out yesterday filming on the mirror smooth waters of the English Channel. Today, as I look out my window here, there's a mighty southerly gale, the trees straining in a classic spring storm. So I won't be doing any filming for the next few days. But don't there's plenty in the pipeline head over to historyhit.tv and if you like these and you want to hear people like professor nick crowson talking live on our tour we got lots of wonderful historians joining us check out historyhit.com slash tour big cities all over in the autumn in the meantime meantime, here's Nick Croson. Enjoy. Nick, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Hi, very pleased to meet you. What did homelessness and vagrancy mean? I mean, before the early modern period, I mean, when we see descriptions of medieval streets, would there have been people, what we now call sleeping rough? The medieval period? There would have been the poor, wandering, idle, the term vagabond, which comes from Greek language is used to describe the wanderer, and the punishment that could be meted out to you should you be convicted of being a rogue and a vagabond could actually be quite serious ultimately death even has there always been a constant desire on the part of the man you know the state authority to

make people have a domicile because actually i always think with vagabonding that is actually our true state you know wandering around moving with the seasons but authority wants us to settle down, presumably. Certainly that narrative of having a parish or settlement or abode, it runs through, it still underpins much of the modern day homelessness legislation. So if you present now your local housing authorities as homeless, you kind of have to demonstrate where your residency or at least your association with an area is in order to be able to access services. So that kind of goes back and we see it in the Victorian period with the New Porlaw attempting to have this parish of settlement idea so that the responsibility, the cost for upkeeping the pauper fell upon the parish, the collection of parishes that formed that particular

workhouse collective and if you were the wanderer the vagabond coming in outside you weren't contributing to society so you were a burden so we kind of see the whole approach to kind of insisting on work as the way to drive the homeless back into the means of production. And that can be traced right back to the medieval period. It's so interesting that it's so threatening to the settled order, is it? Because, you know, the man, he wants to conscript us in his ships of the line, in his naval ships, or send us to war or tax us or make us productive. It's such an interesting tension. And do you see, when you go back and look at the work you've done,

the demonisation of vagrancy, of vagabondondage because there is a sort of powerful romantic idea of celebrating the person who's rejected the material comforts of the world and the settled life yeah so from sort of around the 1860s and greenwood who pioneered this idea of social investigation where you would go into the workhouse or into the common lodging houses of Victorian Edwardian Britain to experience the underworld, and you'd write about it. So on the one hand, we have a literature that existed, which is exposing the alienness, the horrors, the awfulness. And then on the other side, we have a romanticised literature about it's man's right to, to be on the road.

And we see this particularly in the 1930s in what I term tramp manuals. Hippo Neville is one of those. Stuart's Vagabond is another example where they're very much playing a romanticised vision of being able to move around the country unhindered by the burdens of the need to have money and a home and work and instead you find tips on how to sleep out rough should you be in heather should you be using hay or straw how to skin a rabbit these kinds of sort of tips to survive here which is the best houses to approach should you want to acquire food or victuals so So this kind of a romanticised vision. The reality, though, is that it's a harsh existence. The work I've been doing has been looking at individuals who are prosecuted under the 1824 Vagrancy Act, and they're coming before the authorities,

and they're appearing on a very wide spectrum of social misdemeanours. So it could just be a tramp who has been found rough sleeping. It could be the beggar. But equally, you could be a woman who's accused of trying to sell your body under the prostitution laws. It could be telling fortunes. You could be peddling items of little monetary value as a way of eking out some form of subsistence. And they're stigmatised by the courts. and they're stigmatised by the courts. And what I've been doing is trying to see the way that these individuals push back against the system, how they use humour when before the courts to try and either win over the public gallery or to just gently poke fun at authority. And sometimes this works, other times they're doing it to demonstrate their credentials. I am actually an honest individual. I am seeking work. Or in other cases where they're appearing perhaps on a charge of drunkenness, they'll try and demonstrate that actually they're prepared to take the pledge. But all the time, the way the courts stigmatise them, but it can vary. So I've got individuals

who on one occasion will appear and will be described as intelligent looking, well-dressed young men and women and six weeks later in a different part of the country in a different court they're being accused of being good for nothing work shy and hard labor 14 days as a standard punishment handed out i don't know man six weeks i've gone from a suit wearing professional to a tracky bums lockdown existence in six weeks what is the historical context of 1824 because i always assume that very it comes i mean perhaps it's my active imagination and my focus on the napoleonic wars a lot of soldiers a lot of sailors that have been kind of released from service thrown out with nothing and then obviously the very hard years of the 18 teens climate various other things depression

was it a real problem do you think or why did this legislation come into being? The irony is, is this act is still in force today. So sections three and four, still legally in force today. So you can be prosecuted and fined and therefore criminalised for either rough sleeping or for begging. So the fact that that legislation is now nearly 200 years old, there was an amendment in 1935, but other than that, essentially that legislation is now nearly 200 years old there was an amendment in 1935 but other than that essentially that legislation has stayed in force prior to that we have frequent vagrancy acts being passed through parliament so in fact there was one in 1822 earlier ones before that and it was constantly this issue about seeking to control anti-social behaviors particularly in the

urban environment and you're right, the Georgian policymakers brought it in because they were concerned that post-Napoleonic wars, there was this mobile population of ex-servicemen combined with inward immigration from Scotland and from Ireland particularly, and that these populations were engaging in activities that needed greater enforcement. And of course, we've got the emergence of a police force system at this time coming alongside it. You've got the new poor law coming a decade afterwards and seeking to control the poverty side of it. So it's there working and they add little extra dimensions as they become concerned. So the big kind of moral panic in the latter part of the 19th century

is suddenly public gambling. And so that becomes added to the statutes. But the range of activities that are criminalised is really wide-ranging and pretty much anything you could be up to on the streets, if the authorities deemed it to be antisocial, they could prosecute you under this act because, in a sense, the burden of proof really increasingly so as the 19th century went on was the word of a policeman.

If you're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit, we're talking about homelessness with Professor Nick Croson more after this. Join me, James Rogers, each week on the History Hit World Wars podcast. I meet world- leading experts and the veterans who served to get to the bottom of our global conflicts. We're re-examining the stories and the strategies we think we know, as well as those secret and forgotten wars, to truly put the world back in the world wars. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows,

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Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, and Stephen Fry, the British comedian and public intellectual, are two people who probably agree on almost nothing. But they share a deep love for science fiction writer Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My name is Arvind Ethan David, and I'm the author of Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth. In my new audiobook, you'll hear rare recordings

from the man who inspired a generation of futurists, technologists and scientists. You'll hear readings of his visionary work from the voices of those who knew and loved him best, people like Stephen Fry and David Baddiel. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. It's fascinating this drive for respectability in this period. As the 19th century goes on, presumably you see a lot more inward migration from vast numbers of rural workers heading to the cities and finding a life, a very insecure life in those places. Well, of course, there's an assumption that somehow homelessness is an urban problem. And I'll put that in kind of the inverted sort of quote marks. But in fact, it's a rural experience. And so my start point to this particular aspect of this bigger project

on homelessness was finding these prosecution certificates under the Vagrancy Act for Leicestershire and taking a sample of them between 1881 and 1911, getting 850 names, and then seeing how I could begin to piece together these individuals and thinking that I might just get a newspaper report of that particular case in the courts if I was lucky. But then to realise, in fact, I could piece together entire lives from birth through to death, that I could pinpoint where an individual was moving around the country and then using the genealogy begin to unravel what is it? Why is a particular individual following that pattern? Because historians have written about the migratory population, suggesting that, you know, it's the Irish coming across, moving through South Wales, across to sort of Kent and that to do hot

picking and annual harvesting, or it's a rural population moving around the fenlands of lincolnshire i'm finding that actually we've got a range of individuals i've got a spaniard for example who appears to have come to london with his mother when he was about five years old she marries someone who's working at the woolwich arsenal the lad falls into the wrong crowd appears to have been kicked out of home by his stepfather and then he starts circulating around but it's not till 1911 when he's in Leicestershire that the authorities realise that he is alien and they deport him except he returns and I can track him back and forth every time after his deportation. And 17 times the authorities deport him up until 1933 is the last time I've got him trapped.

And 18 times he manages to get back to the UK, even to the point where he arrives at one occasion at the British consulate in Spain, in the Spanish port where he's been returned. And he says that he's a sailor. Can they help him have his passage back? And I've got his seaman's ID. So I know what he looks like. He tries to commit suicide in the 1920s. It was a pretty tough existence for him. But as he says, I've been brought up in this country. I am English. I do not consider myself Spanish. Why are you sending me back to this alien country? So there is clearly migrant populations in and around, and of course Irish, but trying to trap the Irish and establish,

are they first generation, second generation, third generation? When do you want to be Irish and when don't you want to be Irish? Do you play on that? So yeah, it's all there. Why do you think the settled order found these people so threatening? Were they a threat? Is there a greater instance of criminality and theft or inquisitive crime? Or is this a kind of moral panic, do you think, or a bit of both?

Well, you could argue it's a moral panic just purely on the statistics. So just under sections three and four, which is the rough sleeping and the begging element before the First World War, 39,000 prosecutions were occurring a year under that Vagrancy Act. I mean, that's vast. Just think of the resource that's taking up in terms of court time, in terms of police time, in terms of the individuals serving time in the prisons. Vast resource. So then you've got to look at what these individuals are doing.

And yes, some of them are engaging in petty criminality. But then when you look at what they're actually doing, you begin to understand the circumstances and the rationale. So theft of boots, theft of an overcoat. These tend to happen September, October time quite often, perhaps again somewhere in around about January, February. Well, of course, if you're out and moving around the countryside, you're heavy on your boots. And that's often a way of identifying the vagrant, because in a sense, generally, their clothes aren't much different from the general labouring working population. They're wearing similar clothes, but their footwear and how dirty they are is usually the indicator for the authorities when they encounter them. So their necessity is driving them. The other element is that sometimes individuals will intentionally seek to get themselves arrested.

So they will come in out of the countryside into the urban bit, the county town. And there's this frequency in which they're found knocking on policemen's doors, begging. And then when the policeman threatens so basically says go away and they say no no i'm not going to go away well please go away i don't really want the aggravation of having to arrest you well i'm going to do something worse if you don't and this often is a quite an intentional act on the vagrant's behalf because if you then look at the wider circumstances it might be particularly bad weather There might be extensive flooding in the area. They might have a health issue where they're hoping that if they can get two weeks in the local county jail,

then it's some form of respite. They've got some access to a very rudimentary medical treatment as well. So there's kind of a whole range of motives that are all bundled up into this. As we enter the 20th century what changes in our attitudes towards or the government's attitudes towards vagrancy? So there's always been a problem in the eyes of the authority that ex-servicemen disproportionately made up the numbers of wandering vagrants and that seems within my cohort to be quite true. Many have got some form of ex-military background in their history. But obviously, after the First World War, you've got a generation that has essentially been conscripted into some form of military service.

And in recognition of the service to the country that's come after the First World War, the authorities in the workhouse system begin to treat the ex-servicemen slightly differently. So there's beginnings of a move towards rehabilitation, only rudimentary rehabilitation, but one that's driven again by the work ethic. So if you arrive at a casual ward or the tramp ward of the workhouse, hoping to stay overnight, they will ask and inquire, were you ex-service? What's your regimental number? Where did you serve? Have you picked up a disability? And register these details in separate admission books. you to attend the local job exchange the following morning on release. Often these individuals won't, but some do. So there's a gradual attempt and recognition that actually many men have come out of the First World War damaged, not necessarily physically, but also mentally. So there's kind of a great awareness. Post Second World War, there's an assumption that the tramp is no more that somehow this has just disappeared and they base this on the returns to the workhouse when they reopened rather slightly

re-turned what happens though in the 50s is single vagrancy continues the term drops out of use around the late 60s and we begin to start talking about the single homeless rather than vagrants. So the less stigmatisation, the use of the Act also diminishes. We're averaging probably 2,000 prosecutions to 3,000 prosecutions annually through the 50s, 60s, 70s. Still jailable and still aspects of that. So in the 70s, there's a couple of high profile cases where high end Mayfair art galleries are prosecuted under the Vagrancy Act for displaying arts of work with male genitalia. So the obscenity dimension. And then in the 80s, we, of course, have all the controversy where the Vagrancy Act is being used under the sus. The police can stop particularly black youths under the suspicion that they're up to acts of criminality.

And so we have all that controversy and then in the early 80s they removed the jail term from the vagrancy act and bring it into being just a fine only but again if you fine a beggar what's the prospect that they're actually capable of paying the fine this is one of the challenges and so we've had repeated attempts through the 80s and 90s and much more recently by politicians and campaign groups to seek repeal of the Act. And I suppose really the term had fallen out of even the public consciousness until Harry and Meghan's wedding, when a local councillor wrote to their PCC complaining about vagrant behaviours and aggressive beggars in Windsor, and how they were

a detriment to the town. So you can see how the term ebbs and flows in terms of use and understanding. Is there anywhere in the world that we can look to, this may fall outside your work, but we can look to where we see settled societies comfortable with an element of people within them that refuse to settle, that remain mobile? Pass would be my answer. But what I'd say is that I'm looking at almost a micro level because I'm following a range of individuals within a national context. But actually, the imperial understanding and application of the British vacancy laws went across the world. So India, for example, Kenya, the Americas, all have forms or did have forms of the Vagrancy Act, which directly were derived

from the British model. And so many of those countries, ironically, have abolished their vagrancy acts well before we have. A reminder that what we do on this little island of ours has resonance all over the world. Thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast. Tell me how people can get hold of your work. They can probably find me on my university web profile at the University of Birmingham. If they're interested, YouTube, Cardboard Citizens Theatre Company, who I've been collaborating with, and we've been bringing to life a number of these individuals who i've been tracking through a series of plays and performances through last december and just recently up in coventry yeah

go and check that out everyone thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast absolutely no problem at all i feel we had the history on our shoulders all this tradition of ours our school history our songs this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast if you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review purge yourself give it a glowing review I'd really appreciate that it's tough weather that law of the jungle out there and I need all the fire support I can get so that will boost it up the charts it's so tiresome but if you could do it I'd be very very grateful thank you

Elon Musk the richest man on the planet, and Stephen Fry, the British comedian and public intellectual, are two people who probably agree on almost nothing. But they share a deep love for science fiction writer Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My name is Arvind Ethan David, and I'm the author of Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Galaxy. My name is Arvind Ethan David, and I'm the author of Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth. In my new audiobook, you'll hear rare recordings from the man who inspired a generation of futurists, technologists, and scientists. You'll hear readings of his

visionary work from the voices of those who knew and loved him best, people like Stephen Fry and David Baddiel. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. you