So keen is their resolve not to have their hair cut off that when, as sometimes happens, they are forced into the casual wards through sheer inability to walk, they will come out in the middle of the night rather than agree to have their heads attended to.

Next to the question of hair the matter of feet is the most crucial. Boots are an insoluble problem, for they are always worn out. The most shapeless and terrible apologies for shoes are met with in the doss houses and the street, broken in the soles, bursting out at the sides, with huge cracks across the instep that chafe the skin and set up running sores. The cheapest pair of the most secondhand kind is beyond the means of this type of outcast to purchase, for, as the external condition deteriorates, so the earning capacity dwindles, and the danger of being arrested as a beggar increases. Many of them replenish their footwear from the scourings of dust bins. In the early morning you will often find a furtive figure turning over the refuse of the roadside. Crusts of bread are taken, and all kinds of garbage; but the treasure trove is a shoe, and if a pair is salved from the wreckage, physical contentment is assured.