“Another one, who told me that he had been twenty-five years on the road, said that he could not endure to sleep alone. (He was a pedlar, openly of cheap religious books and secretly of the vilest pamphlets and photographs).  He had ‘done time’ and he said the greatest punishment to him was not being able to have a ‘make’ who would submit to penetration, though he was not particular what form the sexual act took.  Another fine young man, whom I chanced to meet the very day he had been released from a long sentence in prison for burglary and with whom I passed a night of incessant and almost brutal intimacy, said his punishment was seeing men always about him and being unable to have connection with them.  Another and very powerful influence in ‘tramps’ toward homosexuality is that, in the low lodging houses they are obliged to frequent, a single bed is perhaps double to one with a bedmate whom perhaps he has never seen before, and especially in hot weather, when the rule is nakedness.

“My sexual desires being for the male invert I have come most in contact with them and have found that they form much the larger class.  Among harvesters and seafaring tramps it is seldom you find a ‘dandy’ such as I was considered, and as such I was eagerly courted, and any suggestion of intimacy on my part quickly responded to.  As regards the use of young boys for homosexual indulgence, it is not common as it is too dangerous, though I have known boys, especially those belonging to vans or gypsies, to prostitute themselves, always for money.

“On one occasion I saw a boy who created quite an outburst of lust of homosexual nature.  The incident took place in a small seafaring town in Scotland one evening before a Fair was to be held.  It occurred in a low public house where a number of very rough and mostly drunken men were assembled.  A blind man came in led by an extremely pretty but effeminate-looking youth of about 17, wearing a ragged kilt and with bare legs and feet.  He had long, curling, fair hair which reached to his shoulders and on it an old bonnet was perched.  He also wore an old velveteen shooting jacket.  All eyes were turned on the pair and they were quickly offered drinks.  A remark was made by one man that he believed the youth was a lassie.  The boy said, ‘I will show you I am a laddie,’ and pulled up his kilt, exposing his genitals and then his posterior.  Boisterous laughter greeted this indecent exposure and suggestion, and more drinks were provided.  The blind man then played his fiddle and the boy danced with frequent recurrences of the same indecencies.  He was seized, kissed, and caressed by quite a number of men, some of whom endeavored to masturbate him, which he resisted, but performed it for them.  After the closing time came, I and about ten or twelve men all occupied the same room; the old man continued to play, and the youth, stark naked, continued to dance and suggested we others should do so, and an erotic scene took place which was only closed to view by the ‘boss’ who was present putting out the lamp.