The Great Unwashed, by the Journeyman Engineer, Author of 'Some Habits and Customs of the Working Classes'

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ... TRAMPS AND TRAMPING. A VERY prevalent notion of a tramp is that of a dirty, ragged, garotter-like fellow who lurches about the country, sometimes making a show of selling some trifling article, but oftener begging in a style that almost amounts to stealing--who occasionally turns up at police-courts as a casual pauper charged with tearing his clothes, and may at times be seen skulking under the trees in Hyde Park attired in a manner that is much more filthy and indecent than picturesque. But this is not the working man's idea of a tramp. For such as them he has no consideration, since he regards them--and, upon the whole, I think justly regards them--as pests to society--fellows who are too idle and dissolute to work, and too cowardly to commit any crime for which they might happily be sent from their country, for their country's good. A tramp, as understood among the working classes, is simply a working man "on the road" in quest of work, and travelling on foot for the allsufficient reason that he has not the means of paying for railway or other conveyance, but having, as a rule, the wherewith to provide himself with a crust during the day and a humble place in which to lay his head at night. The professional mendicant species of tramp tells you, in one of his favourite ballads, "In the days when I was hard up, not very long ago, I suffered what can only the sons of misery know; Eelations, friends, companions, they all turned up their nose, And rated me a vagabond for want of better clothes." But in a general way the working man when on tramp experiences no such treatment as this. Of course there are in the working classes, as in other ranks of life, men who, wrapping themselves in the mantle of personal prosperity, avoid as unclean, or...