“You can’t get respectability for two and sixpence,” he said, as though shocked at the enormity of my demand. “Ninepence, or perhaps fourpence, across the river, or six and sixpence here; there’s no choice between.”

There was nothing more to be gained by talking to this guardian of the public, so I walked off, burning with rage and literally longing for a fight. Here was I, in the possession of money and unable to find a bed within three, four, or even five miles of Charing Cross this side of the river. I rebelled at the thought that I was to be cooped in a doss house and I had no wish to return to the casual ward.

I decided to seek information from my own kind, and it being past ten o’clock, I went to the Adelphi Arches already filling up. It is the fashion, nowadays to state that people do not sleep in the streets of London. The Embankment, we are told, has been swept clean of the homeless, while the destitute who used to congregate in the Adelphi, have now migrated to the office under Hungerford Bridge.