In 19th century Britain little was done to understand and document the lives and experiences of people who didn’t have a home. People with criminal convictions, however, were recorded in detail, even if their only convictions were for being homeless or ‘vagrant’. While records like this can give us names and even photographs of people we know to have been homeless, the lack of other information can alter our perception of their lives and character.
The Victorians didn’t see much historical value in records like this. Most of the records of the inmates at Newcastle Gaol were destroyed when the prison was demolished, with only some of those for the year 1873 surviving.