Victorian Attitudes

Abstract

By the beginning of the nineteenth century the vagrancy laws had become exceedingly complex. When coupled with the settlement laws they could become an impenetrable costly legislative jungle for local law officers. Few magistrates were fully aware of the extensive powers at their disposal. Legislation could be interpreted by those with skill so as to cover an exceptionally wide range of travelling people. Should a knowledgeable JP set his mind to it, any poor person moving outside their own parish could be charged with vagrancy on one or another of many pretexts. Flogging was still a possibility. This involved an offender being stripped to the waist and whipped by a constable ‘till his body be bloody’. The settlement and removal laws had considerable bearing on much of the confused administration of the poor laws in general and vagrancy law in particular. Half way through the century John Revans was to recall the evidence examined during the 1830s by the Poor Law Commissioners when he was their Secretary. He satisfied himself that ‘every one’ of the evils of poor law maladministration could be traced directly to the 1662 settlement and removal laws.² During the nineteenth century there were to be over 70 Parliamentary Bills relating to aspects of this hated legislation. In the 50 years between 1828 and 1878 there were eight Parliamentary Select Committees, both in the Commons and the Lords, appointed to examine and report on the settlement and removal of the poor.

The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread’.

Anatole France

Alfred Doolittle: ‘I am one of the undeserving poor, that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means he is up agen middle class morality all the time. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for not giving me anything.’^l