Report.

  • Great Britain. Departmental Committee on Vagrancy.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    law was extended to persons belonging to the criminal classes against whom actual felony could not be proved, e.g., persons found in possession of house- breaking implements (23 Geo. III., ch. 88) and suspected persons and reputed thieves frequenting public places with a felonious intent (39 and 40 Geo. III., ch. 87, s. 12 ; 51 Geo. III., ch. 119, s. 18). 18. By the beginning of last century the vagrancy law had become ex- tremely complicated and it is probable that few magistrates were fully aware of the extensive powers they possessed under it. Fencers, bear-wards, play-actors not authorised by law, minstrels, jugglers and persons wandering abroad and pretending to be in search of harvest work or pretending to be gipsies or wandering in the habit or form of Egyptians were still rogues and vagabonds under 17 Geo. II., ch. 5. The recognised form of warrant for whipping a vagrant still required the constable to strip the offender naked from the middle upwards and publicly to whip or cause him to be whipped till his body be bloody. * An end-gatherer, i.e., one who collected or bought any ends or refuse of woollen goods, was liable to be dealt with as an incorrigible rogue under Acts passed for the encouragement of woollen manufacturers. Under section 23 of 17 Geo. II., ch. 5, anyone who knowingly gave a rogue or vagabond lodging or shelter and refrained from handing him over to a constable was liable to a penalty of not less than 10s. nor more than 40s., or in default one month in the house of correc- tion. There were also a number of very elaborate provisions with regard to passes for vagrants when discharged from prison.^ 19. In 1821 a Select Committee of the House of Commons considered the laws as to vagrants. They were mainly concerned with the system of passing vagrants to their place of settlement, which had developed great abuses. The Committee recommended that the existing system should be abolished, and longer periods of imprisonment given for vagrancy offences. As a result of this Report, the existing legislation was in 1822 repealed en bloc by the Act 3 Geo. IV., ch. 40. Mr. Chetwynd, in moving for leave to bring in the Bill, stated that during the preceding 300 years, 49 Acts of Parliament had been passed, of which 27 were still in operation ; he remarked also that in Wiltshire and an adjoining county as much as £2,587 had been spent from county funds in one year in passing vagrants. On the Second Reading it was remarked that £100,000 had been expended in all on this purpose during 1821. The object of the BiU was to remove the necessity for this expenditure and to consolidate the law, omitting all unnecessary and obsolete enactments. Another reason urged in Parliament was that there was at that time a danger of the vagrancy laws becoming part of the Poor Law. The Bill also considerably reduced the powers of magistrates with regard to vagrants, reducing the maximum term of detention from 7 years' transportation to 2 years' imprisonment, and not allowing whipping except by order of a court of quarter sessions. As finally passed the Act was only to continue in force till 1st Sept. 1824, and in that year another Bill was introduced which became the present Vagrancy Act (5 Geo. IV., ch. 83). Vagrancy Act, 1824. 20. The Vagrancy Act, 1824, which is entitled An Act for the punishment of idle and disorderly persons and rogues and vagabonds, in that part of Great Britain called England, repealed all former statutes on the subject. Under it, persons committing vagrancy offences are liable to punishment either as idle and disorderly persons, or as rogues and vagabonds, or as incorrigible rogues.J Later statutes have provided that persons committing certain offences shall be deemed to come within one of the divisions mentioned, and * See Burn's Justice of the Peace (ed. 1814), vol. v. p. 610. The whipping of women was abolished by 32 Geo. III., ch. 45, s. 3. t The history of these provisions is given fully in Mr. H. G. Codd's report to the Poor Law^ Commissioners of 1834 published in the Appendix [E] to their Report [H.C. 44]. An extreme instance of the results of the system is mentioned on page 18 of the formor report. A widow with five children charged with ' sleeping out' was committed to prison for 14 days and was at the expiration of that period to be passed on to her place of settlement. It was calculated that the party would take five weeks to reach their destination, while receiving 5s. a day during their journey from the public purse. X Th:se three divisions of offenders were first established by the Act of 13 Geo. II., ch. 24.
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