Several years ago, one of my students came to class and proudly held up a charge notice that he had received the previous night. He had been arrested under Section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which prohibited rough sleeping. Having had a bit too much to drink he had sat down on the pavement and when he was unable to get up in response to a police constable’s request, he was promptly arrested under the terms of the Act. The reason he was so keen to show me the charge sheet was that we had been discussing the very same Act the previous week in my class on nineteenth-century London – a case of the present and the past eliding much to the amusement of the other students.
When the Vagrancy Act was first passed in 1824, it was intended to address a very different problem than inebriated students sleeping on the streets and incapable of moving on. Just a few years earlier, the artist and engraver, John Thomas Smith, had published an illustrated book that he called Vagabondiana – or anecdotes of mendicant wanderers through the streets of London. Beggars, he noted, had become so common that Parliament was considering legal means to prevent them wandering the streets of the capital. However, he pointed out that many of these so-called beggars were honest folk trying to make a living on London’s streets: disabled or discharged sailors and soldiers, blind musicians, crossing sweepers, boot lace and match sellers – individuals who for one reason or another were forced to make a living on London’s streets.
While Smith’s more sympathetic view of these honourable beggars pointed to a benign view of poverty, the tide had already begun to turn against the poor, and a harsher and more punitive approach was gaining popularity, reflected not just in the passage of the Vagrancy Act in 1824 but also in reform of the old poor law and its transformation into a more punitive system of relief under the term of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.
The 1824 Vagrancy Act, which has recently been fully repealed, was designed to give the authorities power to prevent begging in the streets and rough sleeping but over time it became used to cover a much broader range of offences. It classified individuals either as an “idle and disorderly person”, a “rogue and vagabond”, or an “incorrigible rogue”. The first group included unlicensed pedlars, prostitutes behaving indecently and begging in public. Rogues and vagabonds included those who had a previous conviction under the Act, persons collecting charity under false pretences and those who slept out on the streets when alternative shelter was available. The last group were those who had already been prosecuted as a rogue and vagabond. The Act gave the police powers to stop and search those considered to be loitering with intent to commit a crime in a public space, and the penalties imposed for infringing the Act could include a fine or up to one year imprisonment.
The terms of the Act gave police wide powers to deal with what they considered to be public nuisances and these could be extremely broad. For example, in addition to dealing with beggars and rough sleepers, authorities also used the Act to prosecute fortune tellers who used “subtle craft and other devices” to deceive the public – and this could include even companies seeking to sell astrological forecasts from offices or through the newspapers. More controversially in the 1970s and early 1980s, section 4 of the Act was used to stop and search persons suspected of loitering with intent to commit a crime – known as SUS (short for ‘suspected person’) – and this was particularly used by the police against black and ethnic minority communities in London and other cities.
In recent years, as societal views about homelessness and begging changed, changes in the legislation were introduced to address the diverse sets of issues that over time had become included under the Act and subsequent amendments. The criminalisation of rough sleeping under section 4 of the Vagrancy Act had long been a source of concern, and homeless charities, such as Crisis, were vocal critics that called for its repeal. In the 1980s Parliament had considered removing this section but in the absence of other suitable legislation, decided against it, though by then the powers given police to arrest rough sleepers was rarely used. The term “incorrigible rogue” was finally removed from the statute books in 2013 and prosecutions for rough sleeping – controversial even in the 1930s – had become even more so by the 2000s. In recent years it was extremely rare for anyone to be prosecuted for rough sleeping and yet on very public occasions, including royal weddings, rough sleepers were still moved on by police using powers available to them under the Vagrancy Act. Vociferous protests against the use of SUS led to its demise. Prosecutions for begging, which came under section 3 of the Act, had similarly dwindled falling from 1,776 in 2010 to 301 by 2023, and many police forces chose not to enforce it in the areas under their jurisdiction.
The 1824 Vagrancy Act, passed at a time of growing public anxiety that came to favour punitive prevention of poverty, has now been fully repealed. After over 200 years on the statute books, repeal of the Act on 29 June 2026 was long overdue. Its use had dwindled and different approaches and attitudes now prevail concerning the main objectives of the Act. Social awareness has shifted and far more efforts are now made into providing social support and the prevention of homelessness. That poverty continues to be such a pressing issue, however, remains a challenge for our times but in the meantime, the fact that individual begging and rough sleeping are no longer to be criminalised can only be welcomed.
