The man in the Romton cell
The tramp the narrator was locked in with for his first night in a casual ward: a fitter three years out of work, whose wife left him when the job did.
In George Orwell's account, the company of women. He tells Orwell he has been so long without it that he has almost forgotten what they are like, and Orwell takes that sentence as the text for a later chapter on a tramp's enforced celibacy.
The book
At a glance
- Orwell's cell mate on his first night in a casual ward
- Never given
- Fitter, out of work three years
- Chapter XXVII
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeCasual wards put two men in a cell, and George Orwell had no mate on his first night at Romton, so he was put in with another solitary man: a thin, scrubby-faced fellow with a slight squint. The cell was eight feet by five by eight high, stone, with a barred window high in the wall and a spyhole in the door. It held six blankets, a chamber-pot and a hot-water pipe, and nothing else. Orwell asked where the beds were, and the other man was surprised at the question; this was one of the spikes where you sleep on the floor, and he assumed Orwell would have got used to that by now. They rolled their coats against the pipe, put one blanket under them because it was not warm enough to spare the rest, and lay a foot apart. The doors were locked at seven and opened at eight the next morning.
Sleep came in ten-minute stretches. At about midnight the man made sexual advances to Orwell, in a locked and pitch-dark cell. Orwell describes him as a feeble creature and says he managed him easily, and that there was no going back to sleep afterwards. They spent the rest of the night smoking and talking, and the man told him his history: a fitter, out of work three years, whose wife left him promptly when the job went. He said he had been so long away from women that he had almost forgotten what they were like, and that homosexuality is general among tramps of long standing. Orwell returns to that remark in Chapter XXXVI and builds an argument on it, citing a London County Council night census which counted roughly ten destitute men for every destitute woman.
In the morning the men were lined up naked in the passage for a doctor's inspection. The other man's chest was covered in a red rash, and Orwell, who had spent the night a few inches from him, fell into a panic about smallpox. The doctor looked and said it was under-nourishment. The inspection was designed to detect smallpox and nothing else, and a medical student walked down the line with a cigarette in his mouth without asking anyone whether he was well or ill.
How the book draws them
- How the book describes himThin and scrubby-faced, with a slight squint, noted as the two of them were shut in the cell together.
- The morning line-upThe men were lined up naked in the passage for the doctor, and Orwell's description of what a tramp's clothes conceal is the bluntest in the book: flat feet, pot bellies, hollow chests, sagging muscles, nearly everyone under-nourished, two men wearing trusses, and faces unshaven and creased from a sleepless night. In the wash-house the men cleaned their faces, their feet, and the greasy strips of cloth called toe-rags that they wound round their toes.
- The cellEight feet by five, stone, with a spyhole in the door, six blankets, a chamber-pot, a hot-water pipe and no beds. He was surprised that Orwell expected any.
- The nightTwo men a foot apart on a stone floor under one blanket, sleeping in ten-minute stretches. At about midnight he made sexual advances to Orwell, who was awake for the rest of it.
- What he had beenA fitter, out of work three years. His wife left him as soon as the job went, and he had been on the road since.
- What he said about the roadThat he had almost forgotten what women were like, and that homosexuality is general among tramps of long standing.
- The rashAt the morning inspection his chest was covered in it. The doctor said under-nourishment, not smallpox, which was the only thing anyone was looking for.