Rebellious Vagrants: Fires, Fights and Fisticuffs at the Mansfield Union in the Mid-Late Victorian Period

Abstract

ABSTRACT Often depicted as incorrigible rogues and criminal vagabonds, vagrants played a key role in the distribution of welfare in the nineteenth century. Vagrants were viewed as the archetype of an undeserving poor person. Yet, the same punitive legislation that aimed to deter them, mandated that they should receive some form of indoor workhouse relief. This new study explores the tensions in the didactic problem of vagrancy encounters. Exploration of the reasons behind vagrant rebellion, through covert and overt actions is best suited to a refined case-study analysis of Mansfield poor law union, where an abundance of radical cases have been overlooked and undervalued. This refinement of an under-researched and often misunderstood field of study will identify the poor law rhetoric behind the making of the vagrant criminal and its social realities in the midlands.