Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution is named as one period in which homelessness increased, within the book’s account of how authorities repeatedly responded to poverty and people without secure homes by tightening legislation. Its significance here is historical and contextual: it belongs to a longer progression in which social change and legal control are presented together.

Historical Context

The account traces anti-begging measures back to the Peasants’ Revolt, which it associates with the first Act against begging in 1381, and then to measures introduced after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1547. It places the Industrial Revolution alongside the Enclosure Acts as a period when homelessness grew and legislation grew with it. Rather than treating the era as an isolated turning point, the narrative folds it into a recurring pattern of increasing homelessness followed by expanded controls.

Legislation and Social Control

The book identifies the 1744 Vagrancy Act as a template for later legislation. It describes how that law classified homeless people through labels such as beggars, vagabonds and rogues, and allowed authorities to arrest people considered suspicious or unable to sustain themselves. The account also notes that local authorities had been bound since 1713 to pay five shillings to anyone who apprehended a person deemed idle or disreputable; it says that this arrangement contributed to abuse, with more than five hundred arrests in one year alone. The 1824 Vagrancy Act is presented as a later continuation of this history, remaining partly in force at the time of the book’s account.

Narrative Significance

The Industrial Revolution’s brief appearance helps place contemporary homelessness within a long history rather than presenting it as a recent or purely individual failure. By setting the era among successive legal responses to people living without secure shelter, the narrative emphasizes how classifications and enforcement developed alongside social hardship. The historical passage thus gives context to the book’s wider attention to homelessness and the rules used to regulate it.