Conclusion

Abstract

The involvement of governments in the condition of the homeless, or the vagrant poor as they have usually been pejoratively described in history, has varied from occasional sympathetic support to the more familiar response of punitive legislative action. We have seen how repeatedly through the centuries emergent disciplinary laws were directed against the vagrant poor and phased closely with an increase in their number. This increase has itself similarly been strongly related to wider social, economic, political or demographic changes. There is clear indication that official responses to people without resources or a home have been neither haphazard nor accidental. As a matter of routine, governments have legislated to constrain the spatial movement of a diverse range of people usually sharing the characteristic of being homeless but bundled together for legal purposes under the catch-all appellation ‘vagrant’.

It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a man wretched; many men have died; all men must die … but it is to live miserable we know not why; to work sore and yet gain nothing; to be heart-worn, weary yet isolated, unrelated, girt in with a cold universal laissez-faire.

Thomas Carlyle.¹