Vagrancy is the condition of wandering homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants usually live in poverty and support themselves by travelling while engaging in begging, scavenging, or petty theft. In Western countries, vagrancy was historically a crime punishable with forced labor, military service, imprisonment, or confinement to dedicated labor houses.
John Everett Millais' The Blind Girl, depicting vagrant musicians
A woodcut from c.1536 depicting a vagrant being punished in the streets in Tudor England
The Pass Room at Bridewell, c. 1808. At this time paupers from outside London apprehended by the authorities could be imprisoned for seven days before being sent back to their own parish.
Caricature of a tramp
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. The general category includes disparate situations, such as living on the streets, moving between temporary accommodation such as family or friends, living in boarding houses with no security of tenure, and people who leave their domiciles because of civil conflict and are refugees within their country.
Homelessness
The Bowery Mission in New York City, c. 1800s
German illustration of a homeless mother and her children in the street, before 1883
A homeless man living in a sewer, Vienna, Austria, c. 1900
