ABSTRACT
Before closing the observations with, regard to the multifarious duties in which Police Officers are, as a rule, engaged to something of the experience of the habits and practices of that portion of the community known as tramps or wayfarers. Police officers were often employed in this capacity during the period, in an effort to make relief less attractive to vagrants. The duty involved assessing claimants for welfare who came to the Police Station, and issuing them with tickets for entry to the casual ward of the workhouse if deemed ‘deserving’. Jones claims that by the late 1860s ‘police cynicism on this point had reached a stage where they were willing to treat all wayfarers as scroungers and potential criminals’. In a report compiled by the Metropolitan Police in 1870, 90 per cent of those applying for relief were believed by the police ‘to have never worked’ and to lead ‘an idle and dissolute life’.
