Remembering Thomas Parker: The homeless veteran whose prison death in 1933 led to the reform of the Vagrancy Act

‘A Rogue and a Vagabond’

On a summer's night, just after midnight on 31 May 1933, a 34-year-old man was ‘sleeping out’ on the main road from Coleshill to Coventry in the West Midlands. Police Constable Robinson of the Warwickshire Constabulary later stated that he found the man fast asleep ‘under the boiler of a steam roller’.

After waking him, Robinson asked why he was there. The question was a pointed one. As a police officer, Robinson would have been familiar with the Vagrancy Act, a century old law passed in 1824, which stated that:

Under the terms of the Act, people fitting this description could be arrested and confined for ‘vagrancy'.

The Vagrancy Act (1824), Section 4

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When the man replied simply that ‘he had no money’, Robinson brought him into Coleshill Police station. He was charged with ‘sleeping out without any visible means of subsistence’ and brought before two magistrates. He explained that his name was Thomas Parker and that he been on his way to Tamworth in search of employment. When he found it was too late to keep traveling he chose to spend the night on the roadside.

Unmoved, the magistrates sentenced Parker to 14 days imprisonment with hard labour. He was taken the same night to HM Prisons Winson Green (now HM Prison Birmingham).

What happened to Thomas Parker in prison became a matter of considerable controversy. During processing, a prison officer noted that he was ‘surly, sulky, and despondent, but not violent’. He was examined by the Prison Medical Officer who passed him as fit for A1 (physically demanding) labour.

The following day (1 June), the Prison Chaplain noted that Parker was ‘suffering from a sense of injustice and seemed very annoyed he was in prison’. He also showed signs of claustrophobia and was unwilling to shut his cell door when told to by guards. That evening he began shouting ‘I want to get out a free man: I’ve committed no crime: I want to go out’.

On his second day in prison (2 June), Parker became more unsettled and confrontational. Two prison officers reported him for ‘insolence’ and he was ‘awarded... three days close confinement’.

While being escorted to the ‘punishment’ cell by three warders, Parker resisted and, according to the guards, ‘took a flying leap down the stairs’. Prison staff claimed they did not notice any serious injuries from this fall. They picked Thomas up at the foot of the stairs and dragged him ‘backwards with his heels along the floor’ into the ‘silent cell’.

15 minutes later (at 11:40 pm on 2 June), a warder observed Parker through a peephole ‘lying in a huddled position on the floor’. Getting no response from the prisoner he called for the Medical Officer, who confirmed that Parker was dead.

An autopsy was carried out by Dr Francis Lamb, who judged that Thomas Parker was killed by a ‘meningeal haemorrhage following a violent injury in the region of the right ear’. A pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsby, was appointed by the Home Office to review the forensic evidence. He believed that in absence of any other external injuries the cause of Parker’s death was more likely a fall than a violent blow. The coroner’s jury, influenced by these findings, gave a verdict of ‘accidental death’ on 13 June 1933. 

Death of an ex-guardsman

This decision could easily have been the last word on Parker. However, the inquest jury also heard from Thomas’ sister, Rachel Newell, who gave a humanising account of her brother. Her testimony included details of what his life was like before his arrest.

Born in Nottingham in 1899, after leaving school Parker worked in the Bulwell coal mines but spent much of his early adult life in military service.

During the outbreak of the First World War, he eagerly enlisted in the Northumberland Fusiliers but was quickly discharged for being underage. At 19, he was conscripted into the Sherwood Foresters (or the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment) and served in Ireland before being demobilised in March 1920. After the war he joined the Grenadier Guards, spending 12 months in Turkey in the mid-1920s.

Thomas Parker’s military service record

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In the early 1930s, around three million people (about a quarter of the insured workforce) were out of work. On his return to civilian life, Parker also struggled to find stable employment. He moved between mining, road labour, and periods of unemployment. From September 1932, he was living in Bagthorpe Workhouse before leaving the following summer without accommodation or employment.

Edward Spears puts Parker’s case before Parliament

Details of Parker’s military background, his struggles with unemployment, and his untimely end in prison were quickly circulated in the press.

Newspaper headlines on Thomas Parker's death

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His story caught the eye of another veteran of the First World War, retired Brigadier-General and Conservative MP, Edward Louis Spears (1886–1974). Spears felt a connection to the ex-guardsman and strongly believed he was the victim of injustice.

Parker’s case came to light at the time of Ramsay MacDonald’s national government (1931–35). At the time, both Spears and his political ally Winston Churchill were backbench MPs and increasingly vocal critics of the coalition government. In the weeks and months following the inquest, Spears used ‘private notice’ questions (which allowed MPs to question the government without prior scheduling) to quiz the the Secretary and Undersecretary of State in the House of Commons about what he saw as the shameful circumstances surrounding Parker’s death.

Later, in his private correspondence with the Home Secretary, Spears wrote that he suspected foul play. He believed one of the warders likely struck Parker with his truncheon before he was dragged to the solitary cell. Though he suspected a cover up, Spears also acknowledged that he had no way of proving this or of overturning the verdict of the coroner's jury. In the Commons, although Spears raised questions about whether Thomas had received sufficient medical attention, he stopped short of directly blaming prison staff for Parker’s death.

[…] although the question of a blow with a fist was raised, it seems to have occurred to no one to discuss a blow with a truncheon. Yet such a blow fits in perfectly with the medical evidence and would certainly explain the whole tragedy.
There are one or two other curious points about the medical evidence […]

Spears did, however, use his parliamentary speeches to condemn the two magistrates who convicted Parker. He also strongly denounced the terms of the Vagrancy Act. In an impassioned speech to the House of Commons on 30 June 1933, he expanded on the inequalities of the legislation, stating:

Spears’ intervention kept Parker’s story in the press for several weeks. His opposition to the Vagrancy Act also earned him the support of veterans’ societies and the Howard League for Penal Reform.

Brigadier General Spears: […] In May of this Year Parker was destitute. He had been in the workhouse and was tramping to Tamworth in search of work. He had no money. On the way to Tamworth night came on, and he went to sleep by the side of the Coventry road. For the sake fo shelter and warmth, he crept under a steam roller. Now in this country that is a crime. The police arrested him. I have often slept in the open, but I have never been arrested, simply because I did not happen to be poor and destitute. This man’s crime was his extreme poverty. I say to myself, “This man Parker was an ex-soldier, just as I am. He may have been a better soldier than I was, for all I know. In any case, he volunteered to go to war, whereas I was sent. He did his duty, he was honest, and but for the mercy fo God, it is Lewis Spears not Thomas Parker who might have been standing in that dock.” […]

Reforming the vagrancy law

Responding to mounting political pressure over the summer of 1933, the Home Secretary, Sir John Gilmour, promised Parliament he would consider reforming Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act.

In July, the Home Office compiled annual figures on the number of imprisonments for rough sleeping. These revealed that Parker’s experience was not unique. In 1931, 1,632 individuals were found to have been prosecuted for rough sleeping, with nearly a third convicted and sent to prison.

Details of results of proceedings for 1932 have not yet been tabulated but during 1931, the 1632 persons proceeded against were dealt with as follows:-

Charged withdrawn or dismissed 288

Found guilty: -
Dismissed under Probation Act 548
Released on recogs. With or without supervision 200
Convicted and fined 44
Convicted and sent to prison or cells without option 483
Institution for defectives or otherwise dealt with 49
[Subtotal] – 1,324
Proceedings not brought to a conclusion 20
(Army absconders, adjourned sine die, etc.)
(1,353 Males and 279 Females). 1,632

This was followed by a survey of Chief Constables in August 1933. Many were opposed to altering the wording of the Vagrancy Act, which they acknowledged granted them sweeping powers for detaining and interrogating people they suspected of committing petty crimes. The Chief Constable of Warwickshire, E.R.B. Kemble, for one, explained that Section 4 of the Act was a ‘provision of utmost value when made use of with intelligence and common-sense'.

Similarly, an editorial piece in the English legal journal Justice of the Peace also warned against changing the Act arguing that it was:

While some in authority were clearly nervous about changing the terms of the Act, the Home Secretary had to balance this against what he called the ‘strength of feeling’ in favour of reform. Following the uproar surrounding Parker’s death, Gilmour decided to moderate the law. In December 1933, he was corresponding closely with Scotland Yard and informed Parliament he was searching for the ‘exact legal words’ to use.

Although progress was slower than Spears would have liked and full repeal of the Vagrancy Act was not on the table, by 1934 it was clear that he would soon see the law changed.

Finally, in March 1935, Spears was permitted to introduce a private member’s bill to amend the Vagrancy Act:

In the Commons, the Bill received ‘universal support’ including from Churchill, Home Secretary Gilmour, and the leader of the Labour Party, George Lansbury. The House of Lords were also unanimously in favour of the legislation, which became law after gaining royal assent on 6 June 1935.

The Act to Amend Section Four of the Vagrancy Act (1935)

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From Partial Reform to Full Repeal

The Act to Amend Section Four of the Vagrancy Act (1935) removed wording concerning persons with ‘no visible means of subsistence’. In its place, the law required that rough sleepers should be offered shelter before any prosecution could take place. Only if they refused the offer of temporary accommodation or caused ‘damage to property’ could they be committed to prison.

Although a relatively minor change, the amendment was significant as it protected people experiencing homelessness from being arrested simply because they were destitute. This led to a significant reduction in the annual rate of imprisonments for rough sleeping. For Edward Spears, the reform represented a measure of justice for Thomas Parker, whose death had exposed the unfairness of a law that conflated poverty with criminality.

Yet the 1935 Act did not bring the story to an end. The Vagrancy Act itself remained and campaigners continued to argue that rough sleeping should never be treated as a criminal offence. In 2016, the formation of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ending Homelessness renewed calls for repeal, supported by charities including Crisis and St Mungo's.

Momentum increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed the multiple vulnerabilities people experiencing homelessness faced during a public health emergency. In 2022, Parliament legislated for repeal through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, and in 2026 the Vagrancy Act was finally abolished.

Nearly a century after Parker’s death in Winson Green Prison, the law that led to his arrest for rough sleeping was consigned to history.

Records used in this article and reading list

• From our collection

  YHL/PO/PU/1/1824/5G4n278

  Title

  The Vagrancy Act (1824), Section 4

  Date

  1824

• From our collection

  WO 439/69850

  Title

  Thomas Parker’s service record

  Date

  Around 1918

• From our collection

  HO 45/15852

  Title

  The inquiry into the death in prison of John Thomas Parker

  Date

  1933–1934

• From our collection

  HO 45/16294

  Title

  Bill to amend the Vagrancy Act

  Date

  1933–1935

• From our collection

  YHL/PO/PU/1/1935/25and26G5c20

  Title

  The Act to Amend Section Four of the Vagrancy Act (1935)

  Date

  1935

Further reading

• Max Egremont, Under Two Flags: The Life of Major-General Sir Edward Spears (Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 1997).
• Joe Harmer, Policing Compassion: Begging, Law and Power in Public Spaces (Bloomsbury Publishing: Oxford, 2019).
• Keith Laybourn, Britain on the Breadline: A Social and Political History of Britain Between the Wars (Allon Sutton, Gloucester, 1990).