No Fixed Abode

A History of Responses to the Roofless and the Rootless in Britain

By: R. Humphreys

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Hardcover | 2 August 1999 | Edition Number 1

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Hardcover
240 Pages

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21.6 x 14.0 x 1.75

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The plight of Britain's homeless today is shown to be strikingly similar to that of the roving vagrant and vagabond of history. Through the centuries the number of rootless people has fluctuated wildly, with varying proportions of hardened petty criminal, social scrounger and bereft innocent. Official attitudes contributed to the portrayal of the indigent traveller as someone who consistently verged on criminality and was blameworthy for their own miserable condition. Over the centuries emergent laws persistently repressed the alleged threats of the unruly vagrant while largely ignoring causal factors like economic fluctuation, bad harvests, disease and war. Monitoring historical legislative change contributes to the debate concerning the disturbing inconsistency of there being so many homeless people existing on the fringe of modern democracies. Without this historical association of economic, social and political change, it is easy to ignore the past and seek simplistic explanations based entirely on current events.

Industry Reviews

'Humphreys' survey can be recommended as a comprehensive modern summary of long-term national responses to vagrancy.' - Pamela Horn, The Local Historian

'Humphreys is to be congratulated for attempting this overview. It (No Fixed Abode) should be required reading for policy makers and a copy ought to be sent post haste to the Social Exclusion Unit of the Cabinet Office'. - Dr A.J. Kidd, Economic History Review

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Paperback

Published: 1st January 1999

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List of Figures	p. ix
List of Tables	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xii
Abbreviations	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Early Vagrancy Legislation	p. 16
Tudor Response to the Travelling Poor	p. 31
The Travelling Poor in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries	p. 56
Victorian Attitudes	p. 78
Vagrancy around the World Wars	p. 113
Homelessness and the Welfare State	p. 137
Conclusion	p. 167
Notes	p. 181
Bibliography	p. 203
Index	p. 211
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

No Fixed Abode

A History of Responses to the Roofless and the Rootless in Britain

At a Glance

Hardcover

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

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Other Editions and Formats

Paperback

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