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Page 26
Summing up the results of this inquiry into the relations between
destitution and offences against property, we arrive as nearly as
possible at the following figures, so far as England and Wales are
concerned:--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Proportion of offences against property to total
offences: 8. p. cent.
---
Thus divided:
Proportion of offenders in work when arrested: 4. p. cent.
Proportion of offenders, habitual thieves: 2. p. cent.
Proportion of offenders, homeless lads and old men: 1. p. cent.
Proportion of offenders, drunkards, tramps: 1. p. cent.
---
8. p. cent.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
We shall now proceed to an examination of offences against the
Vagrancy Acts presumably arising from destitution. It has already
been pointed out that seven per cent. of the annual amount of crime
committed in England and Wales consists of offences against the
Vagrancy Acts, and it now remains for us to inquire whether these
offences are the result of destitution, or what part destitution plays
in producing them.
Out of the 52,136 offenders against the Vagrancy Acts in the year
1888, less than one half (45 per cent.) were charged with begging; the
other offences consisted principally in prostitution, in having
implements of housebreaking, in frequenting places of public resort to
commit felony, in being found on enclosed premises for unlawful
purposes. In all these cases, with the exception of prostitution, it
is not probable that destitution had much, if anything, to do with
inducing the offenders to violate the law. Men who live the life of
incorrigible rogues, who prowl about enclosed premises, who lead a
mysterious existence, without doing any work, are not to be classed
among the destitute; as a general rule, such persons are habitual
thieves and vagabonds, who persist in the life they have adopted
merely because it suits them best. One of the great difficulties in
dealing with persons of this stamp is their hatred of a well-ordered
existence; in a vast number of cases the life they live is the only
kind of life they thoroughly enjoy; it is a profound mistake to
imagine that they are pining for what are usually regarded as the
decencies and comforts of human beings. Nothing is further from their
thoughts. Let us alone and mind your own business is the secret
sentiment and often the open avowal of most of these people. "We
should be miserable living according to your ideas; let us live
according to our own." It is very common for benevolent people to
assume that the objects of their compassion and solicitude are, in
reality, as wretched as they imagine them to be. Living themselves in
ease, and it may be affluence, and surrounded by all the amenities of
existence, it is difficult for them to realise that multitudes can
enjoy a rude kind of happiness in the absence of all this. Such,
however, is the fact. The vagabond class is not more miserable than
any other; it is, of course, not without its sorrows, vicissitudes,
and troubles, but what section of the community is free from these
ills? This class has even a philosophy adapted to its circumstances,
the fundamental articles of which have been once for all summed up in
the lines of Burns:--
"Life is all a variorum;
We regard not how it goes,
Let them cant about decorum
Who have characters to lose."
What has just been said respecting the loafing, thieving vagabond
applies in a very great measure to the ordinary beggar. The habitual
beggar is a person who will not work. He hates anything in the shape
of regular occupation, and will rather put up with severe hardships
than settle down to the ordinary life of a working-man. It would be
easy to adduce instances to demonstrate the accuracy of what is here
stated. It would be easy to mention cases by the hundred, in which men
addicted to begging have been thoroughly fitted out and started in
life, but all to no purpose. Once a man fairly takes to begging, as a
means of livelihood, it is almost hopeless attempting to cure him.
After a time he loses the capacity for labour; his faculties, for want
of exercise, become blunted and powerless, and he remains a beggar to
the end of his days. It sometimes happens that the beggar who has
taken to mendicancy as a profession is obliged to go to the workhouse
as a kind of temporary refuge. This is not so frequent considering the
sort of life a vagrant has to lead; but when it does occur, the
labour-master of the Union very often finds it next to impossible to
got him to perform the task every able-bodied person is expected to
complete when taking shelter in a Casual Ward. As a result the
habitual beggar has sometimes to appear before the magistrates as a
refractory pauper, but a short sentence of imprisonment, which usually
follows, has lost all its terrors for him; he prefers enduring it to
doing the task allotted to him at the workhouse.
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