ABSTRACT
Vagrancy covered a multitude of sins and misfortunes and the vagrancy laws was a ragbag of minor offences, many of which can equally well be seen as survival strategies for the poor, and were so seen by some contemporaries, but which were nevertheless illegal. The possibility of meaningful statistical analysis of crime trends before the Victorian period is questioned by contributors in Gatrell et al. and Oberwittler advances a cogent argument for scepticism even in the case of capital crime. Oberwittler has analyzed five surviving justices' notebooks but finds poor law offences and vagrancy a very small part of their work. DRO Midsummer 1747 petition of inhabitants of Lowbarrow were probably more cases than appear of assault and threats by vagrants that never reached court because the perpetrators escaped. Public disorder often involved vagrants as well as locals, especially when it arose at fairs: one's noticed vagrancy law invoked in dealing with a riotous bull baiting in Dorset.
