ABSTRACT
Child vagrants were at some times the local homeless, sticking to a particular neighbourhood; or at other times long-distance rovers, variously seasonal migrants hop-and pea-picking, gipsies and tinkers, and the unfortunate dependants of adult nomadic beggars. For them it was a life of ‘dossing’ in the fields and streets, the common lodging-houses and brothels, or the casual wards (that is, the overnight wards) of the workhouses. Children formed a conspicuous proportion of the tramp population of mid-Victorian Britain. The Judicial Statistics for 1868/9 indicate that of the 33,000 or more tramps known to the police in England and Wales 17 per cent were under 16. In 1876 Dr Barnardo reckoned that 6,0007,000 out of the 27,000 or so dossers in London’s registered common lodging-houses were under 16. They appeared less commonly in the casual wards, though; in the period 1866-80 under-16s formed between 1 in 13 and 1 in 17 of the workhouse transients.1
