ABSTRACT
Homelessness, like poverty, has always existed in Britain. 1 All the major categories of people found on British streets today (e.g. alcoholics, single people, the mentally ill) have been present at least since medieval times (Cope 1990). The only real changes that have occurred during that time coincided with the elimination of leprosy in Britain around the fourteenth century, the diminution of rural migrants in the nineteenth century, the removal of orphans from the streets during the Victorian era and finally the end of the need for widows, the elderly, the very poor and families to live on the streets when the welfare state was introduced.
