Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell

, 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