ABSTRACT
The result of the failure of the parish to provide for the Poor contributed largely to the difficulties in the way of dealing with the question of vagrancy, for the administration of the Poor Laws had been perverted to such an extent, that those very laws which ought to have restrained wandering, encouraged it. The able-bodied labourer, who could find no employment at home and whose parish refused him a certificate, was forced to take to the road in his search for work. If his resources failed before he was successful he was forced to turn beggar, pilferer, and sometimes thief, rather than risk being returned to his parish, with the consequence that often, when the chance of steady employment offered itself, he had lost his desire for it and could not shake off the habits of his wandering life. Even if he were apprehended, punished, and returned to his parish, no reformation took place, for the overseers and parishioners did all within their power to induce him to take to the road again. In this way the parishes helped to encourage that restless, improvident spirit, which marked the eighteenth century. The evil of the apprenticeship system, for which there was so little practical redress, also made its contribution to the swarms of vagrants; the runaway apprentices, liable to arrest if caught, comprised a sturdy and lawless element in the vagrant class. Then again there were women, who, having been seduced and deserted, were almost literally driven forth by the parish officers to wander and steal, and to this helpless class should be added the children, who were forced by their parents to beg, or who wandered deserted up and down the roads, like the poor little “vagrant beggar of low statare, browne-hair'd, about twelve years, [who] was openly whipped at Thursfield, for a wandering rogue.” 1
