Crossing city lines to find work could be criminalized as vagrancy

Evidence

Magistrate: Where do you live? Defendant: Norfolk. Magistrate: What are you doing in Philadelphia? Defendant: Well, I didn’t have any work down there, so I came up here to see if I could find… . … Magistrate (who had been shaking his head): That story’s not good enough for me. I’m going to have you investigated. You’re a vagrant. Three months in the House of Correction. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 515

Categorization

• QUESTION: When was the Philadelphia vagrancy law that punished geographic mobility struck down? The spatial restriction echoes modern anti-camping and urban exclusion laws.
• CANDY: A magistrate jailed a man for three months merely for moving from Norfolk to Philadelphia looking for work—grim but striking.
• XREF: connects to: Vagrancy laws effectively criminalized male unemployment and homelessness — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3285