Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond LifeFlynt, Josiah
History
Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life
Flynt, Josiah
Tramps
It is thought by criminologists that the good fellowship of the criminal
is due to self-preservation and the fear that each man will hang
separately if all do not hang together. They maintain that his good
feeling is not genuine and spontaneous emotion, and that it is
immaterial what happens to a "pal" so long as he himself succeeds. This
is not my experience in his company. He has never had the slightest
intimation that I would return favors that he did me; and in the
majority of instances he has had every reason to know that it was not in
my power to show him the friendliness he wanted. Yet he has treated me
with an altruism that even a Tolstoi might admire. At the hang-out I
have been hospitably entertained on all occasions; and I have never met
a criminal there who would not have given me money or seen me through a
squabble, had I needed his assistance and he was able to give it. This
same comradeship is noticeable in all his relations with men who are in
the least connected with his life and business; and it is a notorious
fact that he will "divvy" his last meal with a pal. To have to refuse
the request of one of his fellows, or to do him an unkindness, is as
much regretted by the criminal as by any one else; and I have never
known him to tell me a lie or to cheat me or to make fun of me behind
my back.
There are also some things in his relations with the outside world
which, in his heart of hearts, he regrets and repents of as much as he
does the misdeeds in his own world. He always feels bad, for instance,
when he takes money from the poor. It sometimes happens in his raids
that he makes mistakes and gets into the wrong house, or has been
deceived about the wealth of his victims; and if he discovers that he
has robbed a poor man, or one who cannot conveniently bear the loss, he
is ashamed and never enjoys the plunder thus won. He is too near the
poor, in both birth and sentiment, not to feel remorse for such an
action; and I have known him to send back money after he has discovered
that the person from whom he took it needed it more than he.
The taking of life is another deed that he regrets far more than he has
been given credit for. One thinks of the criminal as the man who has no
respect for life, as one who takes it without any twitchings of
conscience; but this is not the general rule. The business criminal
never takes a life, if he can help it; and when he does, he expects, in
court, to receive the death-penalty. Indeed, he believes, as a rule,
that murder deserves capital punishment; and I have often heard him
express wonder at the lightness of the penalties which murderers
receive.
At the hang-out a favorite topic of discussion is, which penalty is
preferable--life-imprisonment or death. The consensus of opinion has
generally run in favor of life-imprisonment, even with no hope of
pardon; but I have never heard a whimper against the justice of the
death-sentence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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