Kmflett's Blog

Cold Nights, Rough Sleeping as a ‘lifestyle choice’ & Winter night shelters

This week has seen a series of cold nights where many will be concerned about how much heating their residence is costing. But for others a combination of a cost of living crisis and a housing crisis means that the issue is to find somewhere to shelter from the cold on the streets.

In London the Mayor has made provision for night shelters on freezing nights, reflecting an understanding that despite what Suella Braverman once claimed rough sleeping is not a lifestyle choice.

The late socialist historian Raph Samuel wrote about Comers and Goers in the Victorian City (in H J Dyos and Michael Wolff Volume 1) and not so much has changed in the last 150 years.

One area he noted was the then newly constructed Thames Embankment which was designed by Bazalgette and built from 1862. Samuel notes that ‘its character was reinforced by the shelters built at either end (The Salvation Army’s Penny Sit Up at Blackfriars and the Morning Post’s Embankment Home at Millbank); by charitable distributions of food (such as the Eustace Miles Food Barrow at Cleopatra’s Needle, and by the nightly distribution of relief tickets underneath the Craven St arches (2000 men were assembling their nightly in October 1908). The ‘lynx eyed Metropolitan Police’(as they were defined by General Booth) after attempting to drive the tramps away, were by 1910 treating the Embankment as a ‘kind of corral’ where large numbers of tramps were conveniently assembled under the direct observation of law and order’