Working The Tramp Racket

New York, 1895

Two Views of the Way It Is Done in This County.

"A special deputy sheriff in Jamaica met six tramps on the corner of Washington and Fulton street, took them to a saloon, treated them to beer, bought them a pint of whisky, took them before a Justice of the Peace and had them committed to the county jail for 30 days each. Then one of the tramps treated."

The above information comes to THE FARMER in a communication from a citizen of the village.

The Brooklyn Eagle of Sunday, in a long article on the tramp abuse, had this characteristic bit of information relative to how the game is worked in Jamaica:

"There are several tramps who strike the place as soon as cold weather sets in. All of them know the constable and to make sure that he is still to be found they inquire with the familiarity of an old friend for his residence. One of these fellows I questioned and asked if he knew the constable. 'Oh, yes, I know him,' the fellow replied, 'he takes me down every year and takes care of my bank book while I am stopping with the sheriff.' The idea of a tramp having a bank account struck me as somewhat ludicrous, so I questioned the fellow as to his sincerity. He assured me that he was thoroughly in earnest; that he earned a few dollars extra during the warm weather and was putting it aside for future use."


(From Monday's New York Herald.)

"The constables of Queens county are paying a bounty for tramps. Every tramp they capture and take to prison represents fees to these officials of from $5 to $8, and they have hit upon the expedient of 'dividing commissions' with the tramps, the same as a life insurance agent allows his clients a rebate.

"Tramps who surrender get from $1.50 to $2.50 per head from the constable, who receives from $5 to $8 from the county and, of course, make a good thing out of it. During the summer the tramps do a little work now and then and save money, but in the winter there is nothing to be earned, and they want to be where it is warm. Then they begin negotiations through some middleman for their surrender to the constable who allows the highest scalp money."

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 1, 1895, p. 2.

Disgraceful

New York, 1895

Three Hundred Prisoners in the Jail.

FOUR-FIFTHS ARE TRAMPS.

Liberated in Gangs Before Sentence Has Expired.

TO MAKE ROOM FOR OTHERS.

Are Justices Bribed to Send Vagabonds to Jail?

SHERIFF DOHT'S SHARP GAME.

Trying to Make the County Pay for Deputies' Badges that He Sells for $5 Apiece and Pockets the Money.

SOME OTHER IMPOSITIONS.

A disgraceful state of affairs has arisen in this county since Henry Doht became Sheriff.

Tramps have been taken out of the county jail, appointed deputy sheriffs, invested with the badge of office, armed with revolver and club, and sent to Maspeth and Ridgewood to do duty as policemen.

The county has been charged, and has paid, $3 per day for the services of these tramps as peace officers. Sheriff Doht broke the law when he liberated these vagabonds. He disgraced civilized methods when he made them officers of the state. What right had he to charge the county for the services of convicts?

Here is another disgraceful state of things. There are 300 or more prisoners in the county jail. That is 200 more than the jail can properly accommodate. Four-fifths of the number are tramps. Certain Justices of the Peace are making as many as 50 commitments a month. They show as much ardor in crowding the jail as if they were getting an extra fee. It was once the practice in this county for a certain Sheriff to give justices a private fee of 50 cents for each tramp committed. We have no proof that that is being done now, but never were so many tramps committed as now.

Only the other day the Sheriff, it is alleged, turned a lot of tramps and disorderly persons out of the jail before their terms had expired. Some had been in jail but a few days, it is said. Some had been sentenced from Jamaica. They came right back to this town, and sought to be committed over again. Doubtless the same thing happened in other towns. No doubt many of them were recommitted. Why should Sheriff Doht turn these prisoners out to let in others? He broke the law when he did so.

It costs $8 to $12 for each tramp committed. If the tramps that to-day are committed for 30 days should be let go one week hence, and should then be recommitted for another 30 days, and this practice should be continued, the county would be robbed of thousands of dollars. It does seem as if this is what is being done.

The late Grand Jury in the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Judge Bartlett presiding, made an investigation of the jail, and presented the following strong condemnation of some things that astonished them. The organs that are bribed by patronage to make excuses for the Sheriff and abuse THE FARMER will have trouble to get around this. The Grand Jurors say:

COURT HOUSE, Queens County, Jan. 28, 1895.

To Honorable Willard Bartlett, Presiding Judge:

DEAR SIR — We, the undersigned Grand Jurors, drawn and empanelled to serve at a Court of Oyer and Terminer held at the Queens County Court House, Long Island City, Jan. 7, 1895, do make the following presentment as to the sanitary condition, management, &c., of the county jail, as instructed by the court and as the law directs:

First — We have carefully gone through the jail and inspected the different wards, cells, corridors, kitchen and yards, and find them in as clean and good sanitary condition as the over-crowded condition of the jail will allow, and do so report.

Second — We also find that there are now confined within said jail nearly THREE HUNDRED PRISONERS, committed either for criminal offences or vagrancy. Fully four-fifths are able-bodied vagrants. We find it the practice of the town constables to arrest them, take them before a justice, who commits them to the County Jail for terms varying from thirty days to six months, where they are boarded and lodged at a weekly expense of three dollars per head to the county. When their term expires the same process of commitment is repeated at a cost to the county of about $8 for each commitment. To keep this army in good health, the Supervisors of the county provide crude rock for them to break into fragments, suitable for builders or roadmakers' uses, which, when duly prepared, is sold for a less sum per cubic yard than the crude rock cost the county delivered at the yard.

Third — In view of the fact that this county is now taxed heavily for the purpose of building new roads and repairing those already constructed; also for building and repairing the various county institutions, and the average taxpayer has to labor hard and practice the closest economy to meet this tax, while these lazy drones are reposing in this public hive in idleness, it is the opinion of this body that the board of Supervisors should devise some measures to correct this growing evil, and to provide some employment whereby vagrants may be made to contribute to their own support, and benefit the county, and if not within their powers to do so, to try and devise some legislation that would cover the ground, clear this county of this horde of tramps, who terrorize the inhabitants during the summer months, and then have to be supported by this county during the winter months in idleness.

JAMES MALCOLM, Foreman.
JOHN T. WOOLLEY, Clerk.

What the Grand Jury say about the stone breaking abuse is precisely what THE FARMER said several weeks ago. The Grand Jury might have gone farther and stated that very much of the broken stone was stolen from the county. Contractors who got the stone said they had paid certain Supervisors for it. The Supervisors denied it. The county never got a dollar for the stone.

At the last meeting of the board of Supervisors a bill was presented for audit for making Deputy Sheriffs' badges. The county has no right to pay such a bill. Sheriff Doht sells badges to Deputy Sheriffs at $5 apiece and puts the money in his pocket. If the county must pay for making the badges, then the profits, about $4.60 on each badge, should accrue to the county. No other sheriff ever sought to make the county pay for his badges. The bill should be thrown out.

If the badges were needed for the tramps who were made policemen, the county should not pay the bill. The Sheriff charged the county $3 per day for the services of these convicts, therefore the Sheriff should pay the badge bill.

Sheriff Doht has had a bill audited in his favor for $3,000 for the services of deputies at Ridgewood and Maspeth during a part of the strike on the city railroads. If some tax-payer would bring an action to restrain the payment of this bill the court would knock a big chunk out of it. The sum of $3 per day is charged for the service of these deputies. It is a notorious fact that most of them received but $2.50 a day. The sheriff is not entitled to a profit of 50 cents a day on each deputy. He is simply entitled to have what he pays out returned to him, and to be personally compensated for his services.

In another matter the county was made to pay $194 for services to the sheriff that the county was not liable for at all. The sheriff got the benefit of it personally. The tax-payers are being imposed upon unlawfully and unreasonably, and the Supervisors should make a stand against it.

We see it stated in the Long Island City Star that the Sheriff wants the board of Supervisors to pay out of the public treasury for an inside watchman, an outside watchman, and a jail keeper. There is not a jail in the state of New York where the Sheriff does not pay these expenses himself. In Mr. Norton's time two watchmen were employed for a time, and later but one, and the county paid them, but it was all wrong, and THE FARMER said so at the time. Sheriff Norton did not ask the county to pay his jail keeper, nor has any other Sheriff ever asked such a favor. As well might the county pay the Under Sheriff, and the Chief Clerk, and it may come to that, under Mr. Doht.

The board of Supervisors should stand as a barrier between the tax-payers and the greed of the Sheriff's office.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 8, 1895, p. 1.

Tramps As Policemen

New York, 1895

The Sheriff Throws Open the Doors of the County Jail.

THE FARMER has received information of a serious kind respecting Sheriff Doht. It is to the effect that after the Deputy Sheriffs went on strike for $3 a day, Sheriff Doht took a number of tramps out of their cells in the County jail, made them Deputy Sheriffs, and sent them to do duty as officers at Maspeth and Ridgewood. THE FARMER prints the information for what it is worth.


(From Tuesday's Brooklyn Eagle.)

The strike for more pay by Sheriff Doht's special deputies, who were appointed for service in protecting the trolley cars in Queens county and were detailed to duty at Ridgewood takes a ridiculous turn when it is asserted that the sheriff is selecting men from the vagrant cells in the jail to act as deputies. Three men who took a train for the field of action wearing deputy sheriff badges were recognized as vagrants who had recently been sent to jail by Judge Wallace of Rockville Centre. The fellows, who were thinly clad, were heard to remark that it would be necessary for them to fight to keep warm.


(From the New York Sun.)

The deputy sheriffs employed by Sheriff Doht of Queens county to protect the Ridgewood power house and depot of the Brooklyn, Queens County and Suburban road joined the strikers last night and took their night sticks with them. The regular pay of a deputy sheriff is $3 a day.

The railroad company paid the men yesterday and gave them only $2 a day. The day force quit, and when the night force under Capt. Baker heard of it they said they'd quit too. Sheriff Doht read the riot act to them without avail.


(From Tuesday's Brooklyn Times.)

Yesterday afternoon forty of the special deputies on duty at the Maspeth stables on Grand street decided to go out. They marched to the County Court House in Long Island City and presented their grievances before the sheriff, complaining that the pay was too small for the number of hours' work. The men were getting $2.50 per day. They demanded $5 for every day and night they were on duty. The men said they had been kept on duty twenty-four hours at a time, and wanted pay for that time.

Sheriff Doht declined to accede to the men's demands, and stripped them of their clubs and badges of authority. Some refused to give up the badges until they were paid for the work already done, and were unmoved by the sheriff's threats to imprison them.

Officer Gildersleeve was around Hempstead village last night in search of twenty deputies to fill the places of those who struck for $5 a day at Maspeth. He had numerous applications, but when they learned of the mission only six were willing to take the positions. The amount offered was $2.50 per day and meals.

If it is true that the tramps in the county jail were taken out, invested with police authority, and sent to Maspeth to preserve the peace, it is easy to understand why the officers showed so much sympathy with the strikers that the railroad company notified Sheriff Doht that he would be held personally accountable for damage to the company's property.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 1, 1895, p. 12.

Practical Trick of Tramp

1910

Money He Received on Leaving Smallpox Hospital Is Declined by Restaurant Proprietor

"I have not come to solicit alms, madam," he said to the restaurant proprietress; "I have just called to make a small purchase, and, at the same time, to show to you man's inhumanity to man, and what a cold, hard world it is in which we live. In the meantime, would you kindly put me up a nice beef sandwich, with a plentiful supply of mustard, etc., for which I will tender the equivalent in coin of the realm?

"As I was saying — thank you, madam, that will do admirably — 'tis a cold, cruel world. For instance, these few bronze coins, with which I am about to pay you for my sandwich, represent my worldly goods, and they were given with a niggardly hand this morning on my leaving the smallpox hospital.

"What! You won't accept them? Nor take the food back? I may take them and go? Thank you, madam; I wish you a good morning!"

One Cure For Vagrancy

1900

Policeman's Simple Scheme to Make Door-Sleepers Move On

The New York police force is credited with being one of the best in the world, but at least one member of it is a genius born for greater things. He has invented a method for ridding his beat of vagrants and doorstep sleepers.

This officer is attached to the Church street station, and patrols in the neighborhood of Washington street and the Battery, where cheap lodging houses, small beer saloons, "labor agencies," and the genuine "Weary Willie" luxuriantly abound, so he has almost daily opportunity to test his invention.

The vagrant is not particular where he sleeps, so that it costs nothing, and doorways are favorite lodging places. It was a sleeper in one of these that received a never-to-be-forgotten shock the other day. He was asleep in the doorway of a saloon, with his head thrown back against the jamb and his legs sprawled over the pavement. "Watch me make him more on," said the inventor. His hand went under his coat-tails, and it looked as if he were going for his gun in deadly earnest.

A spectator stood petrified, waiting to see a bloody tragedy enacted, but the bluecoat pulled out a small vial, and leaning over the sleeper, poured some of the contents on his thick, reddish mustache. The effect was electrical. With a wild snort and a gurgling gasp the hitherto inert figure sprang into the air and clawed at his mouth and throat; the tears streamed out of his eyes, which were distended with terror, and he stood gasping and making horrible faces and still clawing frantically at his mouth and throat, while the policeman smiled grimly and waited for the customary denouement. It came in a moment.

As soon as the terrorized doorstep lodger had recovered enough of his breath to permit his moving he started hurriedly up Washington street, sans coat, sans hat, sans everything but a consuming desire to put as much distance between himself and that door as possible.

The policeman laughed heartily as he watched the rapidly retreating figure. "I'll bet he don't come back here again," he said. That dose'll last him for a month. Ammonia's a great thing. It's better than insect powder, and it saves making arrests. That fellow is not only obeying the move-on ordinance, but the dose sobered him up, to boot." — New York Mail and Express.

As Straight Men See Him

1909

The Dead-Beat is Probably the Most Despised Creature That Walks the Earth

No man is wholly free from sin, but so many lesser evils are tolerated that a man should hesitate long before becoming a dead-beat.

Criminals are despised and abhorred, but to the dead-beat all that is coming, as well as the contempt of his fellow men. There is something at once so mean and so little in taking advantage of the confidence which comes with friendship that the hand of every man is turned against a dead-beat as soon as his reputation is well established.

The dead-beat may fondly imagine he is living easy and making money without work, and, of course, he takes no account of the confidence he violates and the hardships he inflicts on others. But, that aside, he really has a harder time than the man who is honest and fair. He is compelled to move a good deal, and peace of mind he knows not. Like other types of crooks, he doesn't prosper, and his finish is more unpleasant than the beginning. — Atchison Globe.


1900

Deadly Blunderbusses of Guatemala

Down in Guatemala the favorite weapon of the native bandits and desperadoes is a sawed-off muzzle-loading shotgun of the blunderbuss pattern, and when they run short of buckshot they sally out to the railroad and steal a few dozen seals, which are simply disks of soft lead about the size of quarters. Pounded into rough balls, they make projectiles by the side of which a Dumdum is an angel of mercy, and when one of their blunderbusses goes off it generally kills everything in sight except the man directly behind it.

A Snap For Bums

Chicago, 1908

A city newspaper has started a movement to provide meals and lodgings for unemployed single men, without pay or price. Without questioning the free advertising the paper may get from it, the course is very ill advised and should be stopped, as it will mean the assembling of every hungry "bum" and "hobo" in the country who will hasten to Chicago where they may be provided with a good living without work.

Anyone can guess the answer to this; it will mean robberies, holdups and all kinds of crime perpetrated by these lazy and irresponsible tramps, who will avail themselves of the kind invitation of the paper.

The city relief committee proposes giving unemployed men work on the streets, each day's work to be paid for a ticket entitling those who work to three days' board and lodging, the two days may be used in hunting for work, and the committee will see to it that vagrants who will not seek employment will be arrested, and compelled to move on. This may seem hard hearted, but it is the only way the people of the city can be protected against the horde of bums who will flock to the city to avail themselves of the soft snap this paper is offering them.


1900

On A Clear Day Pigeons Can See Forever

It doesn't always pay the supercilious doctor to cut his patients.

Words are the blossoms and deeds are the fruits.

The clothing of a growing boy refuses to grow with him.

On a clear day a pigeon can see 200 miles.

Eccentric Tramp Character Dead

1914

"Johnny" Wire Wealthy, But Dressed and Lived as a Tramp

York, Pa., Jan. 24. — "Johnny" Wire, one of the most familiar figures of York county, died here.

He was known over the county as "the rich tramp." Wire was possessed of a fortune, but dressed as an ordinary tramp, wandering from place to place over the country and walking many miles to get a free meal from some of the farmers.

His brother died some time ago leaving an estate of several hundred thousand dollars. Wire was about seventy years old.


Superstitions of Miners

As a man of perilous occupation, the miner has many superstitions. One widespread belief is that to introduce a rabbit into a mine is to court disaster, and many stories are current of catastrophes heralded by the appearance of a white rabbit to the men who were doomed to die. He would be a bold miner, too, who would whistle at work for whistling is a direct invitation to disaster, and though miners are cleanly folk, very few ever wash the small of their back, lest the roof should fall on them.

Overworked Brewery Employees

1886

To the ordinary tramp, who has to obtain his supply of beer by pouring stale stuff from beer kegs in front of saloons into empty tomato cans, from which he quaffs, and runs chances of having the ragged tin cut a hair lip for him, it would seem that the brewery employees, who are allowed unlimited beer free of cost, have a soft thing.

And yet those men, who can drink beer all day without being compelled to put up the regulation nickel, struck for less hours of work and higher wages. To read the accounts in the papers of the amount of beer the workmen about a brewery drink during the day, the reader does not wonder that the men are overworked and asked a reduction of hours.

It is said that some of the men drink forty glasses of beer per day. Considering that they have to walk nearly a block to the extreme end of the brewery yard, where a gentlemanly agent of the brewing company waits upon them without price, it will be seen that considerable valuable time is lost, besides the wear and tear on the men. Of course the brewery employees are able-bodied men, or they could not stand the strain.

Forty glasses of beer put into a stomach in ten hours would seem to be hard enough work for any one man, if he did nothing else. Then the necessity of walking forty blocks and returning to work, makes eighty blocks per day of pedestrian exercise. This of itself is enough to make an ordinary man tired, if he did not have to carry in his overworked stomach forty glasses of beer.

From the statistics it is plain that the brewery laborers are the most overworked of any class of citizens, and something should be done for them. It may be outside the province of the humane society to step in and protect those men, but certainly there should be some organization that can stand between those men and overwork. What is the matter with the temperance societies, in taking hold of this grievance? If the temperance societies are true to their motto, of "Faith, Hope and Charity," they will see a chance to do a great work.

Let each society detail enough of its members to man a brewery, and do all the work. This would leave the regular employees with nothing to do but walk back and forth between the places where the temperance apostles are at work, and the place where the beer is given away. The temperance people could work for nothing, for Charity; they could have Faith that the regular brewery men would draw their salary all right; and Hope they would have a good time.

If the temperance people kick on this idea, it is possible the brewers might employ temperance men to make the beer and do the work, discharge the old employees who strike, and thus save oceans of beer. But if it is impracticable to employ temperance people, and the brewers feel that things must go right along as before, they can save at least the time that the men lose in marching on the beer keg forty times a day, and save the wear and tear on the men, by a simple device which The Sun will suggest.

Each man could be provided with a coil of hose, the small rubber hose such as is used on infants' nursing bottles. A reel could be fixed on the back of each laborer, containing enough of the small rubber pipe to reach from a central tank of beer to any part of the brewery, with a spring, so that when the pipe is uncoiled, and the laborer returns toward the tank, the slack will be taken up on the reel. A nozzle could be arranged near the mouth of the overworked laborer, so that he could take his sustenance at any moment, wherever he happened to be.

Of course a hundred men with hose reels on their backs would look odd at first, but the oddity would soon wear off. Some may think that the employees of a brewery should pay for their beer, the same as bakers pay for the bread in a bakery where they work, shoemakers pay for their shoes, and journeymen tailors pay for their clothes, but this would be plainly a violation of the constitution of the United States. The strike of the brewery laborers has shown that they are the beat treated of any class of laborers in the country. The only thing the public wonders at is that the brewing companies have not been compelled by their employees to give them a house and lot and horse and buggy each. — Peck's Sun.

Real Gratitude — Guilty Man Happy With Not-Guilty Verdict

1914

When Blaine was a young lawyer and cases were few, he was asked to defend a poverty-stricken tramp accused of stealing a watch. He pleaded with all the ardor at his command, drawing so pathetic a picture with such convincing energy that at the close of his argument the court was in tears and even the tramp wept. The jury deliberated a few minutes and returned the verdict "not guilty." Then the tramp drew himself up, tears streaming down his face as he looked at the future "plumed knight" and said: "Sir, I have never heard so grand a plea. I have not cried before since I was a child. I have no money with which to reward you, but (drawing a package from the depths of his ragged clothes), here's the watch; take it and welcome." — Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph.


New Idea for Belting

Those who buy belting for machinery will not have to worry about the price of leather in the years to come if a certain sort of belting which is being manufactured by a firm in Connecticut proves to be a success. The new product is called flexible steel belting and is really a step further than the chain and sprocket idea. The belting is made in a complicated series of links and can be used on all pulleys of from two inches in diameter to the largest size. It has been designed especially for service where atmospheric conditions are bad for leather and rubber belts.

The Pestiferous Corner Loafer

Chicago, 1910

A week's attendance at any police court will convince anyone that the curse of the town is the loafer, the professional "out of work" cuss who pretends to be hunting a job, and hunts well that the job may not overtake him.

He manages to live off of some one. If foolish relatives do not supply him with a living, he makes it by his wits, with the help of a brace and bit and a "jimmy" and friends (?) who through fear, or by influence will take the stand to testify to his character, hence he escapes and the community suffers. He can always find a way around the vagrancy laws, and like the poor, he is always with us.

Lost to all sense of shame or decency, he lives off a mother, brother or sister's work, or even a woman's shame, anything but work by his own hands. The health department is great on prescribing remedies for all sorts of evils, and we sincerely wish they would tackle this job of getting rid of the pestiferous loafer.

—Suburbanite Economist, Chicago, Aug. 19, 1910, p. 1.

Note: The typesetting on this editorial had some of the words and portions of lines switched around, and apparently some words left out. I patched it up to make it make sense. The question mark (?) after "friends" is as in the original, which may have been someone in the typesetting department with a bad manuscript wondering what was going on with the context. I think it's questioning whether the loafer's friends are really friends. But with the botched up text, the "com-" from community is hooked on to "friends" and someone might be saying, "What???"

She's Worth $1,000 a Pound

1909

She's Worth $1,000 a Lb.

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Because she was jilted and lost twenty-five pounds weight in consequence, Miss Luella Lowstetter wants $25,000 damages — $1,000 for each pound lost. She is a school teacher of the fashionable suburb of Sheraden. Her suit is against Prof. Earl W. Reed, principal of the school. Miss Lowstetter asserts that Professor Reed jilted her in a most humiliating fashion after she had agreed to marry him and had got her trousseau ready. She and her attorney said in court today that she lost at least twenty five pounds owing to worry over her jilting, and that the wedding clothes would not fit her now.


Eskimo Is a Cannibal

ST. JOHNS, Newfoundland — Tragedy in the far North formed the burden of the news brought to port by the Hudson Bay Company's steamship Adventure, which arrived with the crew of the lost Dundee whaler Paradox. The crew told of an Eskimo, who driven to cannibalism by starvation, ate his child and after shooting several neighbors who attempted summary punishment, fled into the trackless wilderness of ice.


Tramp Heir to $25,000

William Close, who ran away from his Baltimore home when he was 16 years old, was found — a typical tramp — in a lodging house in Chicago Thursday night and informed that he had fallen heir to a fortune of $25,000 left him by his father. The next morning he started for Baltimore with Attorney J. D. Goldboro of that city, who has been searching for the prodigal for two years. Close, attired in a new suit of clothes, bathed and barbered, ascribed all his troubles to drink and declared he was determined to reform.

Wicked Humor — A Great Satire On The Ways of Tramps

1878

A Sarcastic Mendicant

"I'm very hungry," said a haggard tramp, with very red eyes, as he stood obsequiously at the side entrance of a Court street house. "Won't you please, ma'am, be so good as to give me a little something to eat? Anything will do — odds and ends — cold or warm — it don't matter, for I'm not one of them high-toned fellers."

"My husband has forbidden me to encourage idleness by giving away any more provisions," replied the lady of the house. " He says you fellows have a sort of Free Masonry way of letting others know every house at which you have been fed, and it is sure to bring a troop of lazy vagabonds upon us who would starve before they'd lift a hand to work. So you will have to move on and get your breakfast some place else."

"But I'm not a vagabond, ma'am; I'm a hard-working, industrious man. I came up on a boat from Memphis to see my sick mother who lives out near Camden, and isn't expected to live. I was robbed on the boat of every cent I had and all my clothes, while I was in bed. The captain gave me these old things. I don't like to beg, but Camden is a good stretch from here, and I can't walk it on an empty stomach. Think of the outstretched arms of a poor sick mother toward her absent child, and put wings on my feet with a few cold potatoes. I'm just at that point where I can eat 'em without salt."

"I can't do it. They all have a story about like that. The last man I fed had to go to Columbus inside of twenty-four hours to save an innocent man from hanging, but two days afterward I saw him down town so drunk he couldn't hold his mouth shut."

"Well, I never drink. If I hadn't been robbed I could show you my Murphy ribbon that I've worn till it's raveled into strings. Long years ago I swore at my mother's bended knee — the same one who moans on her couch of pain because I'm not with her — that I would never touch the blighting cup, and I hain't, from that time up to this minute. Can't you help me to get there in time to comfort her declining hours with the joyful tidings that I have been steadfast through all temptation, by giving me the cold grub you had intended to dump into the garbage box? I'm awful hungry."

"I can't help it. I must obey my husband — his orders were positive," said the woman, snappishly.

"Well, you're the most extraordinary woman I ever saw if you do. But say, can't you give me the paper the beefsteak was brought home in, to chew as I go along. It may fool my stomach for awhile and make it brace up by thinking something better will be along presently. You'll do that much toward easing a fond parent's anxious heart, won't you?"

"No, I won't."

"Well, then give me a newspaper and let me sit by the fire and read the advertisement of a meat market, and show me the place where it tells all about provisions. Even that would give me a feast — for the imagination — which has been about the extent of my living lately. You won't believe it, maybe, but it's a fact, that all the nourishment I've had for two days is the bill of fare painted on the outside of the Fifth-street restaurant. Can you think of that and keep your stale bread on the inside of your cupboard?"

"Yes, I can; and I want you to make yourself scarce without any more palaver, or I shall send my boy to call a policeman," exclaimed the indignant woman.

"Even the photograph of a chicken would be some comfort," said the man, by way of banter, as he moved off, "and if you don't use soap in your dishwater a few potatoes sliced up in it would be regular barbecue for me." — Cincinnati Breakfast Table.

The Queen of Tramps

1878

The Bangor (Me.) Commercial says: Mrs. Mary Merriman is a respectable appearing woman of thirty, is not bad-looking, and has every appearance of being upright and of good character. She is, however, without doubt, the queen of female tramps, and can discount the great majority of male tramps.

She was born in St. Albans, in this state, and her folks were farmers. She has since lived in Hermon with her brother, Joseph Merriman, who does a good deal of trading in this city. Three years ago this fall she took it into her head to see the country, and started out with neither scrip nor staff, but a good pair of thick shoes. She walked across the country, braving all kinds of weather, and finally brought up in Clinton, Iowa, when she took the back track and returned to this city.

Two years ago she decided to start out again, and this time selected a long tour. She walked through portions of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and on to Washington, where she remained a few days, and "did the capital," and then made a bolt for Savannah, Ga., where she remained a short time. Then on she went again, doing the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Iowa, Indiana, and finally got round to Kansas City. Here she stopped awhile and earned a new tramping outfit. Again she started, this time with the intention Of crossing the plains to California, but finally stopped when told by many persons that it would be very unsafe for her to think of attempting it alone. She then started on a return trip, walking from Kansas City to Chicago, thence to Detroit, doing Niagara Falls, and crossing to Canada, thence to New York and through Massachusetts, arriving at her home in Hermon a little more than a week ago.

She says she averages twenty-six miles a day. She says when she gets tired and out of clothes she finds no trouble in getting a few days' work, and in this manner enjoys her life.

Pittsburg Boy Takes Boating Bet, Threatened by Tramp

1897

IN A SKIFF

A Pittsburg Boy Made a Trip to This City.

He Made the Trip In Eighty Hours Actual Working Time and Thereby Wins His Expenses and a $25 Wager—Exciting Experience Enroute.

There arrived in the city Wednesday a couple of young men—John Phin and Godfrey Nelson by name—who have led an exciting life for the past two weeks.

The pair left Pittsburg just two weeks ago Wednesday in a small pine skiff, and one of them—Nelson— rowed the entire distance—four hundred miles—to the Portsmouth wharf. It appears that the young men are employed in one of the Pittsburg rolling mills. They belong to an athletic club, and a wager was recently made that Nelson could not row from Pittsburg to Portsmouth in eighty-five hours, actual working time. If he succeeded in doing it he was to receive his expenses and $25. He took up the offer and two weeks ago started on his trip. Phin came along to represent the club and see that he did not shirk his work and tie onto a passing boat. They covered ground rapidly, and when they rounded into the wharf here the actual rowing time was just eighty hours. They immediately wired the result to their friends in Pittsburg. They spent the morning here and left this afternoon for Cincinnati. They expect to return to Pittsburg on one of the packets the first of the week.

Mr. Nelson, who is a very pleasant gentleman, said to a Times reporter that the trip was a pleasant one and at times exciting. At a point near Marietta a tramp endeavored to take possession of the boat and was for dumping Nelson and his partner in the river. Nelson pulled a gun and bluffed the fellow off, however. They also had some trouble with shanty boatmen. Nelson has been tramping about the country for several years in the summer time and working in the Pittsburg mills in the winter. He is an expert oarsman and a fine walker.

—The Portsmouth Times, Portsmouth, OH, July 17, 1897, p. 1.

Box Car Tourist (Tramp, Hobo) Selling Stolen Plunder

Reno, 1905

TRAMP SELLS STOLEN PLUNDER IN RENO

A gentleman of the road, or rather a box car tourist, giving his name as Frank Kilzer, arrived in Reno yesterday and began selling shirts and other clothing at different residences in the city. He offered his goods at a very low price and consequently suspicion was aroused. The matter was reported to the police and the man was arrested just after completing a sale of some shirts.

He was taken to the police station and put through the "third degree" and in a short time confessed to stealing all the goods from a box car on the Southern Pacific road. He claimed, however, that he had been assisted in the work by two other hoboes and that they had taken most of the plunder. He is now in jail pending a further investigation into his crime.

—Daily Nevada State Journal, Reno, NV, Feb. 1, 1905, p. 4.

Girl Tramp Likes Road's Philosophy

1915

Pretty, Convent Bred and of Good Family, Irene Lane Prefers "Freedom"

St. Louis, Mo., (special) — An attractive girl with every indication of education, but with hair cut close to her head and a strange masculine carriage and manner of speaking has provided an interesting study for the police of this city. She gives her name as Irene Lane, admits that her real name, if known would "astonish the east" and boasts of the fact that she is and has been for more than a year a "tramp." Not a common tramp, but an associate of the leaders of the tramp world.

"Miss Lane" was arrested on Monday by a policeman who saw her running near the railroad tracks. She was dressed in feminine attire for the first time in many months, and as she jumped over the railroad ties, ran up a coal pile and dragged herself quickly up by the handles of a freight car the policeman decided that there was something strange about the matter and decided to investigate.

"Miss Lane" went to police headquarters without complaint, and when there amazed the police officials with her description of the life she had been living and of the philosophy which she had developed in her contact with "the road."

She explained that she was a convent graduate and readily convinced her questioners of it. Tired of teaching school and instructing class after class of foreign pupils in the use of English she said, she had made an arrangement with a young man of her acquaintance who was in ill health to take "a fling about the country in the open." He became discouraged after a few weeks, she explained.

—The Bayard Advocate, Bayard, Iowa, January 7, 1915, page 7.

Hoboes Start "Wild West"; Capture Train

1920

Hoboes Start "Wild West"

Deputies Have Exciting Chase After Seven Tramps Who Refuse to Pay Fare

LOS ANGELES, Neb. 25.—After a day of "Wild West" activity, started by the report that a gang of hobos had held up and "captured" a Southern Pacific freight train outside of Mojave, and a series of gun plays and thrilling automobile chases by officers, seven men were lodged in the county jail on the charge of evading railroad fare.

The seven were nabbed by deputy sheriffs after they left the freight train at Saugus. Three of the seven jumped from the train before it arrived at the station, and made a temporary escape by boarding a passing truck. They were chased by the officers to San Fernando, and there taken into custody at the point of sawed-off shotguns.

At least twenty men were in the gang when the brakeman of the train, W. S. Brown of Los Angeles, discovered them, he told Deputy Sheriffs Bell and Couts. Just before the train arrived in Saugus the majority of the gang, which included armed men, became suspicious of the reception that awaited them there, and boarded a freight train bound in the opposite direction.

The men refused to leave, and, when he threatened to put them off, offered resistance.

"You just try to put us off," one of the bunch called out, pulling a revolver from his pocket. Another gun was flashed, and then the brakeman was told that the train was "captured," and informed that he'd better go on to Los Angeles, the officers say.

An account of the situation was telegraphed to Los Angeles, and the Sheriff's office was notified, Deputies Couts and Bell were called from their homes and with Driver Arthur Cabbage were sent ahead to Saugus to meet the train.

The deputies nearly lost their prisoners when the county car, speeding toward Saugus, broke down a few miles from its destination. A passing automobile had to be commandeered, and the officers arrived in Saugus just in time to organize a posse.

With Constable Collins and the volunteers the officers "covered" the train when it pulled into the station, and told the men on it "to stick 'em up." Only four hobos came out of their hiding places, hands high up in the air. The officers realized that several had escaped, and soon learned that some of the gang boarded a truck a few miles outside of Saugus.

It was then that a second chase was started. The truck was overtaken near San Fernando and the three men on it taken into custody. The seven prisoners will be held for further investigation.

—The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 25, 1920, page 3.

England's Hoboes Are Super-Tramps

1913

ENGLAND'S HOBOES ARE SWELLS

SUPER-TRAMP NO COMMON BO

LONDON, March 1. -- England has discovered that among the 60,000 tramps that adorn her countryside are some sure-enough aristocrats who, patriots believe, would take a lot of beating.

England, in fact, claims to have evolved the super-tramp; a hobo who is shared and manicured as carefully as a west end "nut," and whose dandyism lacks nothing but spats and a crease down his trousers. One such Beau Brummel of the turnpike -- whose cash capital considered on one cent -- leaned against the dock rail of a London police court in an attitude of Piccadilly grace, the other day, and smiled languidly while a police sergeant recited from his note book as follows:

"I found upon the prisoner, your worship, the following articles:

"Razor in case, leather back shaving mirror, shaving brush (badger hair), tablet of Windsor soap, bone nailbrush, case of needles, spool of cotton, thimble, table knife, dessert spoon."

Referring to this case, a Scotland Yard inspector with whom the writer talked, declared that searching an English tramp was "like dipping into a lucky back," and instanced a woman named Willis, who was arrested for vagrancy a short time ago. To the outward eye, she simply was a homeless woman, without money, food or property, but closer examination revealed a leather belt under her waist to which were attached, with a neat row of hooks, an equipment of knives and forks, a collapsible frying pan, changes of clothing, needlework, a purse containing $6.80 and a bag of food.

This outfit, moreover, said the Scotland Yard man, was not luxurious but primitive compared with the portables carried by many British "wearies." One connoisseur is known who brews exquisite China tea under Surrey hedges, while there is another known to the brotherhood as "the doctor," whose luggage include a beautiful little medicine chest which he hides in thick grass or under a heap of stones before he knocks for admission to the nearest "casual ward."

Some British hoboes are ardent collectors. They collect everything except work. The police at Kingston-on-Thames discovered a tramp a while ago, who was traveling about with a handsome kit-bag. They found in it, among other things, 61 lead pencils, four pairs of spectacles, two table knives, three linen collars, three boxes of matches, a looking glass, a tooth brush, two pairs of laces, a handsome magnifying glass, and a silver-mounted pipe.

The owner of this collection proudly denied that he was a peddler, declaring indignantly that he had "never fallen so low." Money he had none, but every now and then a tramp is discovered in possession of a sum that none of us would be sorry to have to his credit in the bank.

One such Monte Cristo among hoboes was Patrick Halloran, who, after touring the beauty spots of Ireland for 35 years, was discovered at Midleton, in County Cork, with $575 in his possession, all in golden half-sovereigns. This money was neatly piled up in two tin canisters on a wheelbarrow which Halloran had been pushing before him for many years. He had a collapsible kitchen and a collapsible bed on his wheelbarrow, too!

Then there was a queer character, known as the "eccentric duchess," who sought the aid of the police at Kettering to find shelter for the night. This "duchess" was as tattered and torn as the man in "The House That Jack Built," and her personal baggage consisted of only two brown paper parcels. When these were opened however, 344 bright sovereigns worth $5 each flowed out on the inspector's desk among the pens and ink and memoranda.

--Nevada State Journal, Reno, Nevada, March 3, 1913, page 3.

Four-Legged Chicken Hatched, Freak May Be Exhibited

1911

THIS CHICKEN A QUADRUPED.

Stands on Two Legs While it Scratches With the Other Two.

Chicken stories are like snake stories: some of them are untrue. This one is true and can be verified by those who are skeptical.

Gus Yuckenberg, of South Sixth street, has some Black Minorcas of which he is exceptionally proud and it is an egg from a setting of this favorite breed that produced the freak.

The chicken has a body just like any normal chicken but it has more than the usual allowance of legs, having four instead of just two. It is indeed a strange sight to see the chicken standing on two legs and scratching with the other two which have but two claws. The extra pair of legs are just behind the two normal legs and are of the same length. Yukenberg is thinking of putting the chicken on exhibition. The chicken otherwise is perfectly normal and healthy and was latched on Decoration Day.



Tramp Resisted Arrest

Although Indiana is particularly free from tramps this year, an occasional hobo drifts into town, and is promptly ordered by the police to skedaddle. One of them came to town on Monday and was seen by Chief of Police Keller Harris, who promptly ordered him to leave or go to work on the streets. It was thought he had left. Instead, he took on a heavy load of the fluid that cheers and went to sleep along the railroad near School street. Chief Harris found him and was bringing him to jail, when the tramp resisted with might and main. The officer used his club which had much to do with subduing the pugilistic proclivities of the tramp, and he was finally landed in jail.

—Indiana Evening Gazette, Indiana, Pennsylvania, June 6, 1911, page 1.