The Vagrancy Problem.: The Case for Measures of Restraint for Tramps, Loafers, and Unemployables: With a Study of Continental Detention Colonies and Labour HousesDawson, William Harbutt
History
The Vagrancy Problem.: The Case for Measures of Restraint for Tramps, Loafers, and Unemployables: With a Study of Continental Detention Colonies and Labour Houses
Dawson, William Harbutt
Poor laws; Poor laws -- Great Britain; Tramps; Unemployed
"The ticket should give the man's personal description, his usual
trade, his reason for wanting to travel, and his proposed destination,
and should contain his signature, and, possibly, his finger-prints for
the purpose of testing his identity. It should be in the form of a
book, something like the Swiss traveller's book, with spaces on which
should be stamped the name of each casual ward visited. We think that
the duration of the book should be limited to a certain period, say
one month. With this book, the man would go to the casual ward, and
be entitled to a night's lodging, supper, and breakfast, and, after
performing two hours' work to help to pay for his food and lodging,
he should be free to leave the ward whenever he likes. The name of
the next ward on the direct line of his route, which he can reach
that night, should be entered in the book, and if he arrived at that
place he should be treated in the same manner. The book would thus be
a record of the man's journey, and show clearly on the face of it
whether he is genuinely in search for work."[87]
[Footnote 87: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., pp. 48, 49.]
There would appear to be no reason, however, why the issue of
way-tickets should be confined to the police, and the finger-print
method of identification, which is well enough for rogues and
vagabonds, would be an indignity in the case of _bona fide_ working
men. In both respects a certain degree of elasticity seems desirable.
Way-tickets might be issued by the State labour registries, the Charity
Organization Societies, and relieving officers, and in the case of
organised workers by their trade unions, without reference to the
police, and the less reputable class of way farers alone might be
required to apply to the local police office.
The Poor Law Commission have virtually endorsed the Detention Colony
proposals contained in the Report of the Vagrancy Committee, while
giving them wider application. The Vagrancy Committee considered the
vagrant alone; the Poor Law Commission considered him only in so far
as he uses the casual wards and hence falls upon public charity, and
even so quite incidentally as one among many types of mischievous
paupers with whose case existing Poor Law methods and institutions are
unable satisfactorily to deal. The recommendations of the Commission,
therefore, cover a wide field, yet so far as measures of discipline and
restraint go they coincide broadly with the proposals detailed in the
earlier pages of this book.
The Commission say in the Majority Report:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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