---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 34 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/34/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 34. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/34/"
---

# Down and Out in Paris and London

*George Orwell*

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> Title: Down and Out in Paris and London
Date of first publication: 1933
Author: George Orwell (1903-1950)
Date first posted: Mar. 14, 2018
Date last updated: Mar. 14, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20180314

> This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Howard Ross
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> GEORGE ORWELL

> _Down and Out_
    _in Paris and London_

> O scathful harm, condicion of poverte!
       CHAUCER

> PENGUIN BOOKS

> First published by Victor Gollancz 1933

> Copyright 1933 by Eric Blair

> [The end of _Down and Out in Paris and London_ by George Orwell]

## 34. Chapter XXXIV

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/34/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/34/#p-N

[¶0] The next morning, our money being at an end, Paddy and I set out for the
spike. We went southward by the Old Kent Road, making for Cromley; we
could not go to a London spike, for Paddy had been in one recently and
did not care to risk going again. It was a sixteen-mile walk over
asphalt, blistering to the heels, and we were acutely hungry. Paddy
browsed the pavement, laying up a store of cigarette-ends against his
time in the spike. In the end his perseverance was rewarded, for he
picked up a penny. We bought a large piece of stale bread, and devoured
it as we walked.

[¶1] When we got to Cromley, it was too early to go to the spike, and we
walked several miles further, to a plantation beside a meadow, where one
could sit down. It was a regular caravanserai of tramps—one could tell
it by the worn grass and the sodden newspaper and rusty cans that they
had left behind. Other tramps were arriving by ones and twos. It was
jolly autumn weather. Near by, a deep bed of tansies was growing; it
seems to me that even now I can smell the sharp reek of those tansies,
warring with the reek of tramps. In the meadow two carthorse colts, raw
sienna colour with white manes and tails, were nibbling at a gate. We
sprawled about on the ground, sweaty and exhausted. Someone managed to
find dry sticks and get a fire going, and we all had milkless tea out of
a tin 'drum' which was passed round.

[¶2] Some of the tramps began telling stories. One of them, Bill, was an
interesting type, a genuine sturdy beggar of the old breed, strong as
Hercules and a frank foe of work. He boasted that with his great
strength he could get a navvying job any time he liked, but as soon as
he drew his first week's wages he went on a terrific drunk and was
sacked. Between whiles he 'mooched', chiefly from shopkeepers. He talked
like this:

[¶3] 'I ain't goin' far in — Kent. Kent's a tight county, Kent is. There's
too many bin moochin' about 'ere. The — bakers get so as they'll throw
their bread away sooner'n give it you. Now Oxford, that's the place for
moochin', Oxford is. When I was in Oxford I mooched bread, and I mooched
bacon, and I mooched beef, and every night I mooched tanners for my kip
off of the students. The last night I was twopence short of my kip, so I
goes up to a parson and mooches 'im for threepence. He give me
threepence, and the next moment he turns round and gives me in charge
for beggin'. "You bin beggin'," the copper says. "No I ain't," I says,
"I was askin' the gentlemen the time," I says. The copper starts feelin'
inside my coat, and he pulls out a pound of meat and two loaves of
bread. "Well, what's all this, then?" he says. "You better come 'long to
the station," he says. The beak give me seven days. I don't mooch from
no more — parsons. But Christ! what do I care for a lay-up of seven
days?' etc. etc.

[¶4] It seemed that his whole life was this—a round of mooching, drunks and
lay-ups. He laughed as he talked of it, taking it all for a tremendous
joke. He looked as though he made a poor thing out of begging, for he
wore only a corduroy suit, scarf and cap—no socks or linen. Still, he
was fat and jolly, and he even smelt of beer, a most unusual smell in a
tramp nowadays.

[¶5] Two of the tramps had been in Cromley spike recently, and they told a
ghost story connected with it. Years earlier, they said, there had been
a suicide there. A tramp had managed to smuggle a razor into his cell,
and there cut his throat. In the morning, when the Tramp Major came
round, the body was jammed against the door, and to open it they had to
break the dead man's arm. In revenge for this, the dead man haunted his
cell, and anyone who slept there was certain to die within the year;
there were copious instances, of course. If a cell door stuck when you
tried to open it, you should avoid that cell like the plague, for it was
the haunted one.

[¶6] Two tramps, ex-sailors, told another grisly story. A man (they swore
they had known him) had planned to stow away on a boat bound for Chile.
It was laden with manufactured goods packed in big wooden crates, and
with the help of a docker the stowaway had managed to hide himself in
one of these. But the docker had made a mistake about the order in which
the crates were to be loaded. The crane gripped the stowaway, swung him
aloft, and deposited him—at the very bottom of the hold, beneath
hundreds of crates. No one discovered what had happened until the end of
the voyage, when they found the stowaway rotting, dead of suffocation.

[¶7] Another tramp told the story of Gilderoy, the Scottish robber. Gilderoy
was the man who was condemned to be hanged, escaped, captured the judge
who had sentenced him, and (splendid fellow!) hanged him. The tramps
liked the story, of course, but the interesting thing was to see that
they had got it all wrong. Their version was that Gilderoy escaped to
America, whereas in reality he was recaptured and put to death. The
story had been amended, no doubt deliberately; just as children amend
the stories of Samson and Robin Hood, giving them happy endings which
are quite imaginary.

[¶8] This set the tramps talking about history, and a very old man declared
that the 'one bite law' was a survival from days when the nobles hunted
men instead of deer. Some of the others laughed at him, but he had the
idea firm in his head. He had heard, too, of the Corn Laws, and the _jus
primae noctis_ (he believed it had really existed); also of the Great
Rebellion, which he thought was a rebellion of poor against
rich—perhaps he had got it mixed up with the peasant rebellions. I
doubt whether the old man could read, and certainly he was not repeating
newspaper articles. His scraps of history had been passed from
generation to generation of tramps, perhaps for centuries in some cases.
It was oral tradition lingering on, like a faint echo from the Middle
Ages.

[¶9] Paddy and I went to the spike at six in the evening, getting out at ten
in the morning. It was much like Romton and Edbury, and we saw nothing
of the ghost. Among the casuals were two young men named William and
Fred, ex-fishermen from Norfolk, a lively pair and fond of singing. They
had a song called 'Unhappy Bella' that is worth writing down. I heard
them sing it half a dozen times during the next two days, and I managed
to get it by heart, except a line or two which I have guessed. It ran:

[¶10] Bella was young and Bella was fair
    With bright blue eyes and golden hair,
    O unhappy Bella!
    Her step was light and her heart was gay,
    But she had no sense, and one fine day
    She got herself put in the family way
    By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

[¶11] Poor Bella was young, she didn't believe
    That the world is hard and men deceive,
    O unhappy Bella!
    She said, 'My man will do what's just,
    He'll marry me now, because he must';
    Her heart was full of loving trust
    In a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

[¶12] She went to his house; that dirty skunk
    Had packed his bags and done a bunk,
    O unhappy Bella!
    Her landlady said, 'Get out, you whore,
    I won't have your sort a-darkening my door.'
    Poor Bella was put to affliction sore
    By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

[¶13] All night she tramped the cruel snows,
    What she must have suffered nobody knows,
    O unhappy Bella!
    And when the morning dawned so red,
    Alas, alas, poor Bella was dead,
    Sent so young to her lonely bed
    By a wicked, heartless, cruel deceiver.

[¶14] So thus, you see, do what you will,
    The fruits of sin are suffering still,
    O unhappy Bella!
    As into the grave they laid her low,
    The men said, 'Alas, but life is so,'
    But the women chanted, sweet and low,
    'It's all the men, the dirty bastards!'

[¶15] Written by a woman, perhaps.

[¶16] William and Fred, the singers of this song, were thorough scallywags,
the sort of men who get tramps a bad name. They happened to know that
the Tramp Major at Cromley had a stock of old clothes, which were to be
given at need to casuals. Before going in William and Fred took off
their boots, ripped the seams and cut pieces off the soles, more or less
ruining them. Then they applied for two pairs of boots, and the Tramp
Major, seeing how bad their boots were, gave them two almost new pairs.
William and Fred were scarcely outside the spike in the morning before
they had sold these boots for one and ninepence. It seemed to them quite
worth while, for one and ninepence, to make their own boots practically
unwearable.

[¶17] Leaving the spike, we all started southward, a long slouching
procession, for Lower Binfield and Ide Hill. On the way there was a
fight between two of the tramps. They had quarrelled overnight (there
was some silly _casus belli_ about one saying to the other, 'Bullshit',
which was taken for Bolshevik—a deadly insult), and they fought it out
in a field. A dozen of us stayed to watch them. The scene sticks in my
mind for one thing—the man who was beaten going down, and his cap
falling off and showing that his hair was quite white. After that some
of us intervened and stopped the fight. Paddy had meanwhile been making
inquiries, and found that the real cause of the quarrel was, as usual, a
few pennyworth of food.

[¶18] We got to Lower Binfield quite early, and Paddy filled in the time by
asking for work at back doors. At one house he was given some boxes to
chop up for firewood, and, saying he had a mate outside, he brought me
in and we did the work together. When it was done the householder told
the maid to take us out a cup of tea. I remember the terrified way in
which she brought it out, and then, losing her courage, set the cups
down on the path and bolted back to the house, shutting herself in the
kitchen. So dreadful is the name of 'tramp'. They paid us sixpence each,
and we bought a threepenny loaf and half an ounce of tobacco, leaving
fivepence.

[¶19] Paddy thought it wiser to bury our fivepence, for the Tramp Major at
Lower Binfield was renowned as a tyrant and might refuse to admit us if
we had any money at all. It is quite a common practice of tramps to bury
their money. If they intend to smuggle at all a large sum into the spike
they generally sew it into their clothes, which may mean prison if they
are caught, of course. Paddy and Bozo used to tell a good story about
this. An Irishman (Bozo said it was an Irishman; Paddy said an
Englishman), not a tramp, and in possession of thirty pounds, was
stranded in a small village where he could not get a bed. He consulted a
tramp, who advised him to go to the workhouse. It is quite a regular
proceeding, if one cannot get a bed elsewhere, to get one at the
workhouse, paying a reasonable sum for it. The Irishman, however,
thought he would be clever and get a bed for nothing, so he presented
himself at the workhouse as an ordinary casual. He had sewn the thirty
pounds into his clothes. Meanwhile the tramp who had advised him had
seen his chance, and that night he privately asked the Tramp Major for
permission to leave the spike early in the morning, as he had to see
about a job. At six in the morning he was released, and went out—in the
Irishman's clothes. The Irishman complained of the theft, and was given
thirty days for going into a casual ward under false pretences.