ABSTRACT
The Royal Commission on the county constabulary in 1839 disclosed how lodging houses had become the urban bases from which criminals would launch predatory forays into the surrounding countryside. There was also concern about the lodging houses as a medium for corrupting youngsters into vice and crime. The numbers of tramps known to the police in England and Wales in the 1860s hovered around 33,000 to 36,000, and the total of 'known tramps' lodging houses in 1868 was 5,648. Though the police naturally put the best face on their efforts and achievements, for example, in virtually eliminating lodging houses as epidemic-sources, independent observers were less than complimentary. The 1851 Act was to be administered by the police in the Metropolitan Police area, and elsewhere by local sanitary authorities. In the early years of the Shaftesbury Act enforcing authorities, both metropolitan and provincial, claimed great progress in clearing disease-nests, lime washing, reducing overcrowding and improving the moral tone.
