ABSTRACT
Vagrancy as a 'crime' is also partially concealed within statistics of arrests for drunkenness offences. As early as 1846 it was being said that the Vagrancy Act was out of keeping with public sentiment. A Whitechapel policeman told the 1906 Vagrancy Committee how, when vagrants were arrested for sleeping out, the JPs invariably discharged them if they promised to go into the workhouse in future, but the promise was subsequently broken. The Judicial Statistics show that overwhelmingly convicted beggars and sleepers out were sentenced to 14 days or less in jail. The 1906 Vagrancy Committee in fact recommended that sleeping out should not be an offence unless some other public nuisance was thereby caused. In fact corporal punishment was very rarely used after 1900 in Vagrancy Act cases, the numbers so sentenced each year could be counted on the fingers of one hand; two were flogged for sleeping out in 1905.
