Customer Reviews

Tramping With Tramps; Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life (Patterson Smith Reprint Series in Criminology, Law Enforcement, and Social Problems)

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Tramping with Tramps is the recollection of a young man who tramped around the world, mostly in the United States, studying how hobos dressed, talked, begged and otherwise lived in the latter 19th century.

The book's problem, from my point of view, is credibility. He makes generalities that seem real, but at least this more modern reader is left wondering how much of it he made up. For instance, his tramps seem to live routine lives of existence, getting two to three meals a day, places to sleep, clothes to wear and are reasonably clean. It seems, though, that many of today's hobos -- "homeless," we call them now -- are unfit mentally. There is no sign of mental illness in this book.

Readers not looking for sociological truth may appreciate the book more than I did.

I'd be more comfortable with a wholly anecdotal book -- here's what the author did and saw.