George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
, and even a copy of
Raffles from the workhouse
library. The paupers talked interestingly about workhouse
life. They told me, among other things, that the thing
really hated in the workhouse, as a stigma of charity, is
the uniform; if the men could
wear, their own clothes, or even their own caps and
scarves, they would not mind being paupers. I had my
dinner from the workhouse table, and it was a meal fit for
a boa-constrictor-the largest meal I had 'eaten since my
first day at the Hôtel X. The paupers said that they
habitually gorged to the bursting-point on Sunday and
were underfed the rest of the week. After dinner the cook
set me to do the washing up, and told me to throw away
the food that remained. The wastage was astonishing and,
in the circumstances, appalling. Half-eaten joints of meat,
and bucketfuls of broken bread and vegetables, were
pitched away like so much rubbish and then defiled with
tea-leaves. I filled five dustbins to overflowing with quite
eatable food. And while I did so fifty tramps were sitting
in the spike with their bellies half filled by the spike
dinner of bread and cheese, and perhaps two cold boiled
potatoes each in honour of Sunday. According to the
paupers, the food was thrown away from deliberate policy,
rather than that it should be given to the tramps.
At three I went back to the spike. The tramps had
been sitting there since eight, with hardly room to move
an elbow, and they were now half mad with boredom.
Even smoking was at an end, for a tramp's tobacco is
picked-up cigarette ends, and he starves if he is more
than a few hours away from the pavement. Most of the
men were too bored even to talk; they just sat packed on
the benches, staring at nothing, their scrubby faces split
in two by enormous yawns. The room stank of
ennui.
Paddy, his backside aching from the hard bench, was
in a whimpering mood, and to pass the time away I
talked with a rather superior tramp, a young carpenter
who wore a collar and tie and was on the
road, he said, for lack of a set of tools. He kept a little
aloof from the other tramps, and held himself more like a
free man than a casual. He had literary tastes, too, and
carried a copy of
Quentin Durward in his pocket. He told
me that he never went into a spike unless driven there by
hunger, sleeping under hedges and behind ricks in
preference. Along the south coast he had begged by day
and slept in bathing-huts for weeks at a time.
We talked of life on the road. He criticised the
system that makes a tramp spend fourteen hours a day
in the spike, and the other ten in walking and dodging
the police. He spoke of his own case-six months at the
public charge for want of a few pounds' worth of tools.
It was idiotic, he said.
Then I told him about the wastage of food in the
workhouse kitchen, and what I thought of it. And at that
he changed his tone instantly. I saw that I had awakened
the pew-renter who sleeps in every English workman.
Though he had been famished along with the others, he
at once saw reasons why the food should have been
thrown away rather than given to the tramps. He
admonished me quite severely.
"They have to do it," he said. "If they made these
places too comfortable, you'd have all the scum of the
country flocking into them. It's only the bad food as
keeps all that scum away. These here tramps are too
lazy to work, that's all that's wrong with them. You
don't want to go encouraging of them. They're scum."
I produced, arguments to prove him wrong, but he
would not listen. He kept repeating:
"You don't want to have any pity on these here
tramps-scum, they are. You don't want to judge them
by the same standards as men like you and me. They're
scum, just Scum."
It was interesting to see the subtle way in which he
disassociated himself from "these here tramps." He had
been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he
seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. I imagine there are
quite a lot of tramps who thank God they are not tramps.
They are like the trippers who say such cutting things
about trippers.
Three hours dragged by. At six supper arrived, and
turned out to be quite uneatable; the bread, tough enough
in the morning (it had been cut into slices on Saturday
night), was now as hard as ship's biscuit. Luckily it was
spread with dripping, and we scraped the dripping off and
ate that alone, which was better than nothing. At a quarter-
past six we were sent to bed. New tramps were arriving,
and in order not to mix the tramps of different days (for
fear of infectious diseases) the new men were put in the
cells and we in dormitories. Our dormitory was a barn-like
room with thirty beds close together, and a tub to serve as
a common chamber-pot. It stank abominably, and the
older men coughed and got up all night. But being so
many together kept the room warm, and we had some
sleep.
We dispersed at ten in the morning, after a fresh
medical inspection, with a hunk of bread and cheese for
our midday dinner. William and Fred, strong in the
possession of a shilling, impaled their bread on the spike
railings-as a protest, they said. This was the second spike
in Kent that they had made too hot to hold them, and
they thought it a great joke. They were cheerful souls,
for tramps. The imbecile (there is an imbecile in every
collection of tramps) said that he was too tired to walk
and clung to the railings, until the Tramp Major had to
dislodge him and start him with a kick, Paddy and I
turned north, for London.
Most of the others were going on to Ide Hill, said to be
about the worst spike in England.'
Once again it was jolly autumn weather, and the road
was quiet, with few cars passing. The air was like sweet-
briar after the spike's mingled stenches of sweat, soap
and drains. We two seemed the only tramps on the road.
Then I heard a hurried step behind us, and someone
calling. It was little Scotty, the Glasgow tramp, who had
run after us panting. He produced a rusty tin from his
'pocket. He wore a friendly smile, like someone repaying
an obligation.
"Here y'are, mate," he said cordially. "I owe you some
fag ends. You stood me a smoke yesterday. The Tramp
Major give me back my box of fag ends when we come
out this morning. One good turn deserves another-here
y'are."
And he put four sodden, debauched, loathly cigarette
ends into my hand.
XXXVI
I WANT to set down some general remarks about
tramps. When one comes to think of it, tramps are a
queer product and worth thinking over. It is queer that a
tribe of men, tens of thousands in number, should be
marching up and down England like so many Wandering
Jews. But though the case obviously wants considering,
one cannot even start to consider it until one has got rid
of certain prejudices. These prejudices are rooted in the
idea that every tramp,
ipso facto, is a blackguard. In
childhood we have been taught that tramps are
blackguards, and consequently there exists in our minds a
sort of ideal or typical tramp -a repulsive, rather
dangerous creature, who would
1 I have been in it since, and it is not so bad.
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
