their journey back to their home parishes, as were certain seasonal workers, such as harvesters. Aside from these exceptions, the act, far from settling once and for all the definition of “beggar,” or of “loiterer with intent,” or of “suspicious character,” left vast leeway for police and magistrates to decide who was, and who was not, legally entitled to occupy public space. It conflated the concepts of idle and of disorderly, eliding unemployment with criminality; and it had the potential to circumscribe the activities of street entertainers and the sort of peripatetic sellers who provided a useful, less expensive alternative to fixed-location retailers. When the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Police of the Metropolis gathered its evidence in 1828, Joseph Sadler Thomas admitted to being unsure whether simply sleeping out in the open constituted an offense under the act. 17 (It did, and was punishable by three months’ hard labor.)
But stints of jail and hard labor could hardly solve the problem. The question of what should be done with the vagrant poor, especially children, preoccupied numerous organizations. Parliamentary Select Committees convened to discuss the destitute in 1816, 1821, and 1828. There was a lively pamphlet debate about the best way to rescue street children and train them for “useful” lives. A variety of philanthropic societies—some harshly disciplinarian, others humane in intention—sprang up, supported by contributions from the wealthy. The London Society for the Suppression of Mendicity (colloquially known among the poor as the Dicity) was founded in 1818; the Children’s Friend Society and the Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy were founded in 1830; and the Nightly Shelter for the Houseless opened in 1822, with asylums in Playhouse Yard, off Golden Lane, and in London Wall. There were specialist charities too, such as the Society for Foreigners in Distress, the Marine Society for destitute former sailors, and the National Guardian Society for those who had formerly been employed as servants. Other bodies named themselves after the specific kind of help given, and in the East End, the Soup Society, the Blanket Association, even a City of London Truss Society attempted to alleviate the suffering of the very poor.
This piecemeal, haphazard charitable giving had two motives: humanity and the need to head off the threat of revolution. What had happened in Paris in 1789 informed much of the activity and behavior of the powerful and the wealthy. The year 1831 saw the formation of the National Union of the Working Classes, a coalition of London workingmen, mainly artisans in the furniture-making and weaving trades, who sought universal male suffrage, the reform of the House of Commons, and the passage of laws to protect the British workingman from exploitation. A number of independent political unions were springing up all over Britain in manufacturing towns and cities. With the shocking news in October 1831 that the House of Lords had thrown out the second attempt to pass the Reform Bill, there was nationwide civil unrest, with three days of rioting in Bristol (the town hall and bishop’s palace were torched) and severe disturbances in Nottingham (the castle was razed), while in the capital the houses of prominent anti–Reform Bill figures were stoned. The newspapers of Monday, 7 November 1831, carried two major domestic stories: the discovery of a possible Burke and Hare case in Bethnal Green; and the suppression of a meeting of a body calling itself the Eastern Division of the Political Union of the Working Classes of the Metropolis—described by the Times as “The Mob.” This rally, which the union itself billed as a “Monster Meeting,” had caused so much alarm that the New Police posted public notices declaring it illegal—many of which were flamboyantly torn down by Londoners supportive of the Radical, pro-Reform cause; however, the union leaders
But stints of jail and hard labor could hardly solve the problem. The question of what should be done with the vagrant poor, especially children, preoccupied numerous organizations. Parliamentary Select Committees convened to discuss the destitute in 1816, 1821, and 1828. There was a lively pamphlet debate about the best way to rescue street children and train them for “useful” lives. A variety of philanthropic societies—some harshly disciplinarian, others humane in intention—sprang up, supported by contributions from the wealthy. The London Society for the Suppression of Mendicity (colloquially known among the poor as the Dicity) was founded in 1818; the Children’s Friend Society and the Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy were founded in 1830; and the Nightly Shelter for the Houseless opened in 1822, with asylums in Playhouse Yard, off Golden Lane, and in London Wall. There were specialist charities too, such as the Society for Foreigners in Distress, the Marine Society for destitute former sailors, and the National Guardian Society for those who had formerly been employed as servants. Other bodies named themselves after the specific kind of help given, and in the East End, the Soup Society, the Blanket Association, even a City of London Truss Society attempted to alleviate the suffering of the very poor.
This piecemeal, haphazard charitable giving had two motives: humanity and the need to head off the threat of revolution. What had happened in Paris in 1789 informed much of the activity and behavior of the powerful and the wealthy. The year 1831 saw the formation of the National Union of the Working Classes, a coalition of London workingmen, mainly artisans in the furniture-making and weaving trades, who sought universal male suffrage, the reform of the House of Commons, and the passage of laws to protect the British workingman from exploitation. A number of independent political unions were springing up all over Britain in manufacturing towns and cities. With the shocking news in October 1831 that the House of Lords had thrown out the second attempt to pass the Reform Bill, there was nationwide civil unrest, with three days of rioting in Bristol (the town hall and bishop’s palace were torched) and severe disturbances in Nottingham (the castle was razed), while in the capital the houses of prominent anti–Reform Bill figures were stoned. The newspapers of Monday, 7 November 1831, carried two major domestic stories: the discovery of a possible Burke and Hare case in Bethnal Green; and the suppression of a meeting of a body calling itself the Eastern Division of the Political Union of the Working Classes of the Metropolis—described by the Times as “The Mob.” This rally, which the union itself billed as a “Monster Meeting,” had caused so much alarm that the New Police posted public notices declaring it illegal—many of which were flamboyantly torn down by Londoners supportive of the Radical, pro-Reform cause; however, the union leaders
Similar Books
