different, each with its peculiar merits and demerits, and
it is important to know these when you are on the road.
An old hand will tell you the peculiarities of every spike
in England, as: at A you are allowed to smoke but there
are bugs 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 beaten 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 being 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 intended 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 money, 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, 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 supervise 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 appearance; 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 confiscated 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 re-
pulsive. 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 system), 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, before 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, a hot water pipe, and nothing else whatever.
I looked round the cell with a vague feeling that there was
something missing. Then, with a shock of surprise, I
realised 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 stuffy, 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