foot apart, breathing into one another's face, with our
naked limbs constantly touching, and rolling against one
another whenever 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, than a
sharp ache as the hardness 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
manage 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 been so long away from women that he
had almost forgotten 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 squalid, 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 unwashed. 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 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 small-
pox, and took no notice of our general condition. A young
medical 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 panic 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
directed 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 getting lost
among the desolate north London slums. Our meal tickets
were directed to a coffee-shop in Ilford. When we got
there, the little chit of a serving-maid, having seen our
tickets and grasped that we were tramps, tossed her head
in contempt and for a long time would not serve us.
Finally she slapped on the table two "large teas" and four
slices of bread and dripping-that is, eightpenny-worth of
food. It appeared that the shop habitually cheated the
tramps of twopence or so on each ticket; having tickets
instead of money, the tramps could not protest or go
elsewhere.
XXVIII
PADDY was my mate for about the next fortnight, and, as
he was the first tramp I had known at all well, I want to
give an account of him. I believe that he was a typical
tramp and there are tens of thousands in England like him.
He was a tallish man, aged about thirty-five, with fair
hair going grizzled and watery blue eyes. His features
were good, but his cheeks had lanked and had that greyish,
dirty in the grain look that comes of a bread and margarine
diet. He was dressed, rather better than most tramps, in a
tweed shooting jacket and a pair of old evening trousers
with the braid still on them. Evidently the braid figured in
his mind as a lingering scrap of respectability, and he took
care to sew it on again when it came loose. He was careful
of his appearance altogether, and carried a razor and
bootbrush that he would not sell, though he had sold his
"papers" and even his pocket-knife long since.
Nevertheless, one would have known him for a tramp a
hundred yards away. There was something in his drifting
style of walk, and the way he had of hunching his
shoulders forward, essentially abject. Seeing him walk,
you felt instinctively that he would sooner take a blow