Down and Out in Paris and London (21 page)

shake at the door, we made off. ‘Well,’ said somebody as

soon as we were out of hearing, ‘the trouble’s over. I thought

them—prayers was never goin’ to end.’

‘You ‘ad your bun,’ said another; ‘you got to pay for it.’

‘Pray for it, you mean. Ah, you don’t get much for noth-

ing. They can’t even give you a twopenny cup of tea without

you go down on you—knees for it.’

There were murmurs of agreement. Evidently the tramps

were not grateful for their tea. And yet it was excellent tea,

as different from coffee-shop tea as good Bordeaux is from

the muck called colonial claret, and we were all glad of it. I

am sure too that it was given in a good spirit, without any

intention of humiliating us; so in fairness we ought to have

been grateful—still, we were not.

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XXVII

At about a quarter to six the Irishman led me to the

spike. It was a grim, smoky yellow cube of brick, stand-

ing in a corner of the workhouse grounds. With its rows

of tiny, barred windows, and a high wall and iron gates

separating it from the road, it looked much like a prison.

Already a long queue of ragged men had formed up, waiting

for the gates to open. They were of all kinds and ages, the

youngest a fresh-faced boy of sixteen, the oldest a doubled-

up, toothless mummy of seventy-five. Some were hardened

tramps, recognizable by their sticks and billies and dust-

darkened faces; some were factory hands out of work, some

agricultural labourers, one a clerk in collar and tie, two

certainly imbeciles. Seen in the mass, lounging there, they

were a disgusting sight; nothing villainous or dangerous,

but a graceless, mangy crew, nearly all ragged and palpably

underfed. They were friendly, however, and asked no ques-

tions. Many offered me tobacco—cigarette ends, that is.

We leaned against the wall, smoking, and the tramps be-

gan to talk about the spikes they had been in recently. It

appeared from what they said that all spikes are different,

each with its peculiar merits and demerits, and it is im-

portant to know these when you are on the road. An old

hand will tell you the peculiarities of every spike in Eng-

land, as: at A you are allowed to smoke but there are bugs

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Down and Out in Paris and London

in the cells; at B the beds are comfortable but the porter is

a bully; at C they let you out early in the morning but the

tea is undrinkable; at D the officials steal your money if you

have any—and so on interminably. There are regular beat-

en tracks where the spikes are within a day’s march of one

another. I was told that the Barnet-St Albans route is the

best, and they warned me to steer clear of Billericay and

Chelmsford, also Ide Hill in Kent. Chelsea was said to be

the most luxurious spike in England; someone, praising it,

said that the blankets there were more like prison than the

spike. Tramps go far afield in summer, and in winter they

circle as much as possible round the large towns, where it

is warmer and there is more charity. But they have to keep

moving, for you may not enter any one spike, or any two

London spikes, more than once in a month, on pain of be-

ing confined for a week.

Some time after six the gates opened and we began to file

in one at a time. In the yard was an office where an official

entered in a ledger our names and trades and ages, also the

places we were coming from and going to —this last is in-

tended to keep a check on the movements of tramps. I gave

my trade as ‘painter’; I had painted water-colours—who has

not? The official also asked us whether we had any mon-

ey, and every man said no. It is against the law to enter the

spike with more than eightpence, and any sum less than

this one is supposed to hand over at the gate. But as a rule

the tramps prefer to smuggle their money in, tying it tight

in a piece of cloth so that it will not chink. Generally they

put it in the bag of tea and sugar that every tramp carries,

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or among their ‘papers’. The ‘papers’ are considered sacred

and are never searched.

After registering at the office we were led into the spike

by an official known as the Tramp Major (his job is to su-

pervise casuals, and he is generally a workhouse pauper)

and a great bawling ruffian of a porter in a blue uniform,

who treated us like cattle. The spike consisted simply of a

bathroom and lavatory, and, for the rest, long double rows

of stone cells, perhaps a hundred cells in all. It was a bare,

gloomy place of stone and whitewash, unwillingly clean,

with a smell which, somehow, I had foreseen from its ap-

pearance; a smell of soft soap, Jeyes’ fluid and latrines—a

cold, discouraging, prisonish smell.

The porter herded us all into the passage, and then told

us to come into the bathroom six at a time, to be searched

before bathing. The search was for money and tobacco,

Romton being one of those spikes where you can smoke

once you have smuggled your tobacco in, but it will be con-

fiscated if it is found on you. The old hands had told us that

the porter never searched below the knee, so before going

in we had all hidden our tobacco in the ankles of our boots.

Afterwards, while undressing, we slipped it into our coats,

which we were allowed to keep, to serve as pillows.

The scene in the bathroom was extraordinarily repulsive.

Fifty dirty, stark-naked men elbowing each other in a room

twenty feet square, with only two bathtubs and two slimy

roller towels between them all. I shall never forget the reek

of dirty feet. Less than half the tramps actually bathed (I

heard them saying that hot water is ‘weakening’ to the sys-

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Down and Out in Paris and London

tem), but they all washed their faces and feet, and the horrid

greasy little clouts known as toe-rags which they bind round

their toes. Fresh water was only allowed for men who were

having a complete bath, so many men had to bathe in water

where others had washed their feet. The porter shoved us to

and fro, giving the rough side of his tongue when anyone

wasted time. When my turn came for the bath, I asked if I

might swill out the tub, which was streaked with dirt, be-

fore using it. He answered simply, ‘Shut yer—mouth and get

on with yer bath!’ That set the social tone of the place, and I

did not speak again.

When we had finished bathing, the porter tied our clothes

in bundles and gave us workhouse shirts—grey cotton

things of doubtful cleanliness, like abbreviated nightgowns.

We were sent along to the cells at once, and presently the

porter and the Tramp Major brought our supper across

from the workhouse. Each man’s ration was a half-pound

wedge of bread smeared with margarine, and a pint of bitter

sugarless cocoa in a tin billy. Sitting on the floor we wolfed

this in five minutes, and at about seven o’clock the cell doors

were locked on the outside, to remain locked till eight in the

morning.

Each man was allowed to sleep with his mate, the cells

being intended to hold two men apiece. I had no mate, and

was put in with another solitary man, a thin scrubby-faced

fellow with a slight squint. The cell measured eight feet by

five by eight high, was made of stone, and had a tiny barred

window high up in the wall and a spyhole in the door, just

like a cell in a prison. In it were six blankets, a chamber-pot,

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a hot water pipe, and nothing else whatever. I looked round

the cell with a vague feeling that there was something miss-

ing. Then, with a shock of surprise, I realized what it was,

and exclaimed:

‘But I say, damn it, where are the beds?’

‘BEDS?’ said the other man, surprised. ‘There aren’t no

beds! What yer expect? This is one of them spikes where you

sleeps on the floor. Christ! Ain’t you got used to that yet?’

It appeared that no beds was quite a normal condition in

the spike. We rolled up our coats and put them against the

hot-water pipe, and made ourselves as comfortable as we

could. It grew foully stufiy, but it was not warm enough to

allow of our putting all the blankets underneath, so that we

could only use one to soften the floor. We lay a foot apart,

breathing into one another’s face, with our naked limbs

constantly touching, and rolling against one another when-

ever we fell asleep. One fidgeted from side to side, but it did

not do much good; whichever way one turned there would

be first a dull numb feeling, then a sharp ache as the hard-

ness of the floor wore through the blanket. One could sleep,

but not for more than ten minutes on end.

About midnight the other man began making homo-

sexual attempts upon me —a nasty experience in a locked,

pitch-dark cell. He was a feeble creature and I could man-

age him easily, but of course it was impossible to go to sleep

again. For the rest of the night we stayed awake, smoking

and talking. The man told me the story of his life—he was

a fitter, out of work for three years. He said that his wife

had promptly deserted him when he lost his job, and he had

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Down and Out in Paris and London

been so long away from women that he had almost forgot-

ten what they were like. Homosexuality is general among

tramps of long standing, he said.

At eight the porter came along the passage unlocking the

doors and shouting ‘All out!’ The doors opened, letting out

a stale, fetid stink. At once the passage was full of squallid,

grey-shirted figures, each chamber-pot in hand, scrambling

for the bathroom. It appeared that in the morning only one

tub of water was allowed for the lot of us, and when I arrived

twenty tramps had already washed their faces; I took one

glance at the black scum floating on the water, and went un-

washed. After this we were given a breakfast identical with

the previous night’s supper, our clothes were returned to us,

and we were ordered out into the yard to work. The work

was peeling potatoes for the pauper’s dinner, but it was a

mere formality, to keep us occupied until the doctor came

to inspect us. Most of the tramps frankly idled. The doctor

turned up at about ten o’clock and we were told to go back to

our cells, strip and wait in the passage for the inspection.

Naked, and shivering, we lined up in the passage. You

cannot conceive what ruinous, degenerate curs we looked,

standing there in the merciless morning light. A tramp’s

clothes are bad, but they conceal far worse things; to see

him as he really is, unmitigated, you must see him naked.

Flat feet, pot bellies, hollow chests, sagging muscles—every

kind of physical rottenness was there. Nearly everyone was

under-nourished, and some clearly diseased; two men were

wearing trusses, and as for the old mummy-like creature of

seventy-five, one wondered how he could possibly make his

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daily march. Looking at our faces, unshaven and creased

from the sleepless night, you would have thought that all of

us were recovering from a week on the drink.

The inspection was designed merely to detect smallpox,

and took no notice of our general condition. A young medi-

cal student, smoking a cigarette, walked rapidly along the

line glancing us up and down, and not inquiring whether

any man was well or ill. When my cell companion stripped

I saw that his chest was covered with a red rash, and, having

spent the night a few inches away from him, I fell into a pan-

ic about smallpox. The doctor, however, examined the rash

and said that it was due merely to under-nourishment.

After the inspection we dressed and were sent into the

yard, where the porter called our names over, gave us back

any possessions we had left at the office, and distributed

meal tickets. These were worth sixpence each, and were di-

rected to coffee-shops on the route we had named the night

before. It was interesting to see that quite a number of the

tramps could not read, and had to apply to myself and other

‘scholards’ to decipher their tickets.

The gates were opened, and we dispersed immediately.

How sweet the air does smell—even the air of a back street

in the suburbs—after the shut-in, subfaecal stench of the

spike! I had a mate now, for while we were peeling potatoes I

had made friends with an Irish tramp named Paddy Jaques,

a melancholy pale man who seemed clean and decent. He

was going to Edbury spike, and suggested that we should go

together. We set out, getting there at three in the afternoon.

It was a twelve-mile walk, but we made it fourteen by get-