Veterans and the Vagrancy Act of 1824 by Aly Renwick

In 1870, over 150 years ago, a popular Broadside, ‘Poetry of the Pavement’, carried a poem called ‘The Hulks’, with this introduction: “The Hulks are old vessels kept for the convenience of imprisoning disobedient sailors, who presume to have a conscience opposed to the destruction of foreigners who have no wish on their part to interfere with the private affairs of other countries. But a warrior should never think, and if he keeps a conscience, he must soon learn to surrender it to the call of duty (which means the doing of acts contrary to his inclinations, and which may therefore be defined as unnatural morality), or he will soon feel the reason why.”

This was followed by the poem ‘The Hulks’:

The youth now leaves his home, his work, his friends;

All social happiness on earth he ends,

And learns assassination as a trade,

Which does his Christian feelings deep degrade.

Conscience at last will claim the power to speak,

And now for conscience brave, for duty weak,

In calm refusal to engender strife,

He earns with conscience clear the hulks for life.

Awake – free trade! and teach us better things;

Show earth is for the people, not for kings;

Show man should send his produce to exchange,

Not armies over other lands to range,

And claim possession through success in war.

Free trade! we ask that you at once restore

The Nation’s sense of justice, and disperse

Kings, Priests, and Warriors, every nation’s curse.

The Broadside was part of a public discussion about the Army and Navy in Britain, during which concerns were sometimes expressed about the probity of the seemingly never ending wars and warfare, as well as concerns about how soldiers and sailors were being treated. At that time many young male civilians were often coerced, or duped, into joining the armed forces. Also, the Army and Navy frequently turned to the press-gang – and later conscription – to force individuals to ‘take the King’s shilling’.

This resulted in increasing numbers of civilians being turned into soldiers and sailors against their will. Once in barracks or on ship, these new servicemen were immediately exposed to a totally undemocratic military-system. And subjected to harsh laws and extreme punishments, like flogging, for the slightest hint of disobedience.

The way sailors were being treated led to two major Royal Navy mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797, but these were both put down violently with many of the mutineers being hanged, flogged or imprisoned. While the mutinies alarmed the authorities and a few concessions were made, the ill-treatment of rank-and-file sailors and soldiers mostly continued. Back in Civvy Street, veterans received little reward for their service, or help for disabilities, and no assistance for settling back into civilian life.

In those days there was almost continuous warfare, due to the standing of the country as a global superpower. This was combined with an ever expanding Britain Empire and government critics often claimed that those in power were cynically regarding the countries’ soldiers and sailors as ‘cannon-fodder’. To be used to ‘do or die’ in the many conflicts then ongoing across the world.

After the wars, which were often brutal and inhumane, the streets back home were usually filled with discharged veterans. Many of these were wounded, either physically or psychologically, who received little, or no, help. With the authorities even targeting them, because they often regarded discharged servicemen as an internal threat to social order.

The soldiers and sailors had been trained to use ultimate force against their opponents and some veterans, back in Civvy Street, were prone to resort to this implanted violence – especially if provoked, or challenged. Henry Mayhew, who at that time wrote many articles about the poor, described some veterans from the Crimea War (1853-6) who were now trying to survive in Civvy Street:

“The first, or soldier proper, has all the evidence of drill and barrack life about him; the eye that always ‘fronts’ the person he addresses; the spare habit, high cheekbones, regulation whisker, stiff chin … He carries his papers with him, and when he has been wounded or seen service, is modest and retiring as to his share of glory … The second sort of soldier-beggar is one of the most dangerous and violent mendicants. Untameable even by regimental discipline, insubordinate by nature, he has been thrust out from the army to prey on society and is dangerous to meet with after dark on a lonely road.”

In Britain, 30 years before Mayhew’s article, the Vagrancy Act of 1824 had claimed to: ‘act for the punishment of idle and disorderly persons, and rogues and vagabonds’. Actually, it was enacted mainly to deal with the events that were occurring in England following the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-1815, because of the large numbers of soldiers and sailors that had been discharged with no job, or accommodation, and with no help to sort themselves out for life outside of the Army, or Navy. Even after they were discharged, veterans often found they were persecuted by the powers that be, who had sent them off to war in the first place.

When the 1824 Vagrancy Act was introduced, veterans, as well as being feared, were also considered a problem by the authorities. While the Act had decreed to act against ‘rogues and vagabonds’ it specifically targeted injured veterans by stating that: ‘Every person wandering abroad, and endeavouring by the exposure of wounds or deformities to obtain or gather alms … shall be deemed a rogue and a vagabond’. Thus soldiers and sailors who had fought for their country – and suffered wounds in battle – were criminalised on their return home.

The 1824 Vagrancy Act, which also made it an offence to ‘sleep on the streets’ or ‘to beg’, is still in force. A study in 1994 by the homeless charity, Crisis, into the people living on the streets in London, found that: ‘Around one-quarter of all single homeless people have served in the forces’. Twenty-nine per cent of the ex-service people interviewed said they were suffering from nerves, depression and stress and forty-one per cent of them had spent time in prison.

These were mainly veterans of Northern Ireland and the Falklands, with a few from World War 2, Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden and the Gulf War. They were soon to be joined by others from Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Sharon Hartles, who is a member of the Open University’s Harm and Evidence Research Collaborative, wants to see the Vagrancy Act 1824 repealed. She stated about the Act:

“Since its enactment, the Vagrancy Act 1824 has been controversial. This piece of legislation was constructed to specifically target the most vulnerable members of society. Wounded soldiers, who returned from the Napoleonic Wars, and found themselves homeless, jobless and penniless, were relabelled as ‘rogues and vagabonds’ and charged for exposing their wounds and deformities as a means to ‘obtain or gather alms’. Under the guise of social order, soldiers were criminalised for merely trying to survive; in a country that abandoned them after sending them to war to protect it.”

A failed attempt was made in 1981 to decriminalise begging and homelessness, by seeking to repeal Section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act. Almost a decade later, in 1990, the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO) undertook to do a survey of Vagrancy Act prosecutions and found that in 14 magistrates courts in 1988, in Central London alone, 1,250 prosecutions under the Act had been dealt with. Some of these would probable have included a number of the homeless veterans included in the Crisis report of 1994.

Two-hundred years ago soldiers and sailors were recruited, trained and then utilised as ‘cannon-fodder’ in almost constant, far-away conflicts – and after discharge cast away, denigrated and often prosecuted by those that had deployed them. For veterans some things never change, because we now know that homeless and wounded veterans of today are still being targeted and arrested under the 1824 Vagrancy Act. Two-hundred years after the Act was first implemented to criminalise veterans from the Napoleonic Wars.

Today, more and more veterans are realising that we can’t rely on the Westminster politicians, or the MoD, for any help with the problems that come to some who have served. With official help ranging from slight to non-existent, especially for the homeless, or for those who have ended up serving time in the HM Prison System, veterans are having to rely mainly on charities, or lobby groups, often set up by fellow ex-forces members. Click on the YouTube Video link below, to view Dire Straits performing their song for veterans: ‘Brothers in Arms’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dBRQvXe91g

Article by Aly Renwick, who co-founded Veterans In Prison with Jimmy Johnson. Aly served for 8 years in the British Army (1960-8).