For a week in February, 1909, the Hamilton Spectator sent one of its reporters out to investigate what it termed “the tramp element” which was becoming problematic in the city at the time.
Dressed as a hobo, the reporter spent considerable time with the local “vag” population, learning about their methods of panhandling. The reporter also stayed at some of cheap lodging houses which tramps in Hamilton frequented.
The first installment of the Spectator's series of articles on the tramp problem appeared on February, 26, 1909. Ironically, this was the day after the shooting death of Ethel Kinrade, whose murder, at first, was widely rumored to have been perpetrated by a member of the Hamilton's transient population.
In 1909, the city of Hamilton was widely recognized by professional tramps as a haven for hobos. Unlike many other cities in Canada and the United States, the local authorities in Hamilton were considered to be lax in their treatment of “vags” and the city's population was viewed as being charitably inclined.
The reporter's initial investigations led him to three of the larger lodging houses in the city – the Bethel Mission, 124 King William Street, at Mary street, The People's Lodging House, 51 Merrick street, at York, and the Workingman's Home, 46 Jackson street east. At these places, transients could obtain meals at 5, 10 or 15 cents each.
While admitting that cheap lodging houses would always be needed for those too weak physically or mentally to work, the reporter felt that some of the proprietors actively encouraged the existence of professional tramps, noting that these places were “infested with all the filth, disease and vermin that such spots could gather through contact with men who, through laziness and pure cussedness of spirit, hardly know what the word bath means, who nearly always sleep with their shoes on, and who, in fact, slip through each day and night with an minimum amount of energy and labor possible. Wrecks who would sell soul and honor for a glass of beer or whiskey, and to whom the satisfaction of that great craving for alcohol is even greater than cleanliness and self-respect.”
The Bethel Mission was considered the best of the cheap lodging houses. Capable of handling one hundred and nineteen people, the Bethel Mission was located in a very dilapidated building, directly across from #3 police station. The beds were very small and rundown. The sheets and pillowcases were, according to the reporter, “in keeping with the surroundings, (looking like they had been) badly damaged by fire and water in some conflagration.
The rooms at the Bethel Mission were small, partitioned off , cubby holes, just large enough to hold a single iron bedstead and room to undress. The partitions were six feet high and covered on top with wire netting.
At the Bethel Mission, the meals sold for as little as five cents each, for which the lodger got two slices of bread and a cup of tea. Meat only appeared on the 10 and 15 cent menu.
The quality and quantity of food provided was so low that the proprietors made good profits from their kitchen operation. With the only expenses being the wages of a cook and the 'food' provided, the proprietors made between 15 to 20 per night. Other than the cook, the only other paid employee was a porter who served the meals and, presumably, “looked after” the rooms.
The clientele of the Bethel Mission were usually penny poor, so that the method by which they paid for their bed and meal was the use of lodging house tickets. The down and out person would be given a stack of these tickets and be sent out to the residential areas of the city.
The ticket would contain a space for the date, the name of the lodging house, a line where the person who signed their name would pledge to pay the Bethel Mission for one meal and one bed.
The ticket for the People's Lodging House included the motto, “Help those who cannot help themselves,” and a biblical quotation, Let your light so shine before men, that they, seeing your good works, may glorify your Father which is in Heaven.” The ticket for the People's Lodging House also included the admonition, “This cannot be commuted or transferred.”
Despite this warning, the practice of bartering these tickets was widespread. An experienced vag would spend an evening securing as many ticket commitments as possible, and then would resell them at reduced prices to those who actually had a little hard cash which had usually been procured by begging on the streets.”The Spectator reporter noted that the goal of this entrepreneurship was little disguised, “with cash in hand , it is custom to repair to the nearest tavern.”
The Workingman's Home, on Jackson street was the most respectable of the city's lodging houses, if only for the fact that it was necessary to ring the doorbell to be admitted, which the man from Spec noted was “a custom not in vogue at the other places.”
An innovation at the Workingman's Home was the use of iron cots, placed on top of each other, which the reporter were “in the shape of double deckers or old-fashioned bunks.” When the reporter attempted to try one of the beds to see how comfortable it might be, he was warned not to try “by an old soldier with his years of service over, now aged and fit for little but a healthy consumption of alcohol.” The reporter accepted his advice.
The worst lodging house conditions were at the People's Lodging House, Ed Leonard proprietor. The house had recently been visited twice by the city health inspector who had sternly ordered a clean up.
The house was located exactly at the sharp corner where Merrick and York streets met, and had entrances from both streets. The People's Lodging House included a general store, in which, the Spec man noted, “is gathered a nondescript collection of miscellaneous articles.”
Beside the “store” was the kitchen where the chef and second cooks turned out servings which the reporter labeled as “appetizing dainties.” On the day the reporter was present he noticed that there were “two pieces of fat pork in a granite pot over the gas stove,” and that “the odor from the sizzling pots, mingled with the general smell of the place, was almost unbearable.”
The general sitting room of the People's Lodging House consisted of a stove and benches with a large wash sink in one corner. Two badly damaged wash basins provided the only toilet facilities in the place. The rooms were ark and badly ventilated, yet despite the deplorable conditions, the People's Working Lodge was the most frequented of all the lodging houses in Hamilton.
A week before this particular lodging house was visited by the press, a full-scale fight broke out among the patrons, nearly wrecking the place. “Drunken brawls were not uncommon happenings during the night the reporter stayed at the People Lodging House, particularly one noted wrote about where “a strapping big Scotchman, much the worse of wear and liquor, hooked up with another big hulk of the same size and a fearful two round bout resulted, the mischief maker coming out of the fray in pretty bad shape, the owner of a badly smashed nose, black eye and cut head.”
That same night, another “guest” in a drunken stupor blindly hurled a chair across a room catching an innocent bystander on the wrist. According to the reporter who witnessed the incident, the bystander, a diminutive Englishman, who was one of the few in the establishment who actually had a job. “showed all the gameness possessed by the English,” and despite being held back by a damaged wrist, broke the chair thrower's nose and sent him to bed with two large cuts on his head and wrist.
The denizens of the lodging houses were sad cases for the most, as viewed by the Spec man who noted that “when all moral obligations have ceased, the mind has wilted, hope fled, and liquor is responsible for any passion displayed, trouble is bound to arise.”
According the the information given to the reporter, fully eight out of ten were of English, Scotch or Irish birth, “most of them still clinging to their old country's ideas and speech. Most of them possess a vacant lifeless stare, shiftless to the core, incapable of arousing any energy except when drunk, yet withal, alive to their own interests and well capable of taking care of number one when it is time to get a bed, a bite to eat, and a drop to drink.”
The editorial accompanying the Spectator reporter's investigation began with a reference to the rumor that the previous day's Kinrade murder on Herkimer street was committed by a professional bum. The Kinrade's home was in an area considered “easy pickings” by the tramps. The writer of the editorial lamented the “notoriously sympathetic” attitudes of Hamilton citizens who, he felt, were being exploited to the hilt by what he called “the idle and shiftless” segment of society.
The editorial called for a public agency to deal with “appeals for assistance” from those in need in Hamilton so that individual homes in the city would not be prey to beggars knocking at their kitchen doors pleading for a hot meal.
The second major installment of the Spectator reporter's investigation dealt with the methods of panhandling used by the tramp element.
Upon arrival in Hamilton, the tramp would secure a fistful of lodging house tickets, and would then be directed to the areas of the city most likely to be canvassed successfully.
Hamilton at the time was flooded with tickets which, when signed, could be used either for a bed or a meal, or resold to the lodging house keeper, often for 5 cents cash in exchange for a 25 cent pledge, the pledge which, of course, was always collected.
An energetic tramp could easily summon up two dollars' worth of pledges in one evening:
“The most proficient beggars of the lot have been known to make as much as eleven or twelve dollars a week, which is divided between the favorite lodging house and the salon.”
The tramps generally found out from each other which homes to avoid. Mayor McLaren's residence was definitely taboo, as were any of the policemen's homes, “as the officer of the law generally makes it pretty warm for the caller.” Most of the tramps were generally harmless, but occasionally some were desperate characters.
The Wellington street south area was particularly vulnerable to visits by members of the tramp element as many vags hopped off T. H. & B. freight train cars which had been stopped in that area. One householder was held up by a vag brandishing a revolver. In another case, a vag called at a home and was called into the kitchen to be served a hot meal. Figuring that he had a vulnerable woman at his mercy, this particular hobo attempted a sexual assault. Unfortunately for the tramp, the “girl” was “big and masculine, and grabbing the tough by the coat collar, threw him bodily into the back yard, closing the door in his face.”
In the final installment of the series on the tramp nuisance, the Spectator's young man addressed the suggested remedies which had been proposed to deal with the problem.
Since the articles started to appear, there had been a mass exodus of tramps from the city. The articles, combined with the numerous rumors surrounding the Kinrade murder case, had made Hamilton a very problematic location for “weary Willies.”
In fact, Proprietor Daniels of the Bethel Mission warned his clients to not solicit pledges for the lodging house tickets for a while, saying “don't go out tonight and don't ask any person to sign any tickets for a few days. If any of you haven't the price of a night's lodging, I will overlook it tonight.”
Most took the advice, but one unfortunate vag persisted in his begging rounds. Knocking at one door, he pleaded for the price of a bed and was invited in by the lady of the house. Entering the front hall, he walked directly into the arms of a city policeman who marched him off to the station. Although the tramp had said he was broke and had not eaten in two days, it was found that he had 30 cents cash on him and that his pockets were jammed with “buttered bread and other eatables.”
The reporter pleaded with householders to never give in to the entreaties of tramps:
“This class of men never starve and are really never in want.”
