Their food is of the coarsest description, and their only luxury is drink.

It is not easy to say how they live; the living is picked up, and what is got is frequently shared; when they cannot find 3d.

for their night's lodging, unless favourably known to the deputy, they are turned out at night into the street, to return to the common kitchen in the morning.

From these come the battered figures who slouch through the streets, and play the beggar or the bully, or help to foul the record of the unemployed; these are the worst class of corner-men, who hang round the doors of public- houses, the young men who spring forward on any chance to earn a copper, the ready materials for disorder when occasion serves.

They render no useful service; they create no wealth; more often they destroy it."[3] Next comes B, a thicker stratum of some 100,000, or 111/2 per cent., largely composed of shiftless, broken-down men, widows, deserted women, and their families, dependent upon casual earnings, less than 18s.