Scanning old newspapers, you’d have thought Cincinnati was under siege by unwashed tramps in 1898. Tramps filled the jail in Price Hill. Vigilante mobs chased tramps from Ludlow, Kentucky, and Washinton Park. Tramps set up camp in Avondale, Bond Hill and Winton Place. Tramps were blamed for everything from petty larceny to arson and murder. Whether they were called tramps, or hoboes, or yodums, unhoused and unemployed men were scapegoats for anything Cincinnati complained about.
Cincinnati Police arrested two dozen tramps in Price Hill in August 1898 and the Ninth District jail on Chateau Avenue was full. Six inmates had to be shipped to the First District jail in the West End to make room. Most of the men had been picked up near the Big Four Railroad tracks along State Street as they arrived in town. Among the lot was John Petton, a 14-year-old boy from St. Louis, who ran away from home and had fallen in with a vagabond gang. It was apparently common for groups of tramps to kidnap teenage boys and force them to beg for food. That was the case with Harry Fisher, 15, from Zanesville, who had been grabbed by some tramps and thrown into a boxcar headed for Cincinnati, where he was compelled to knock on doors and plead for morsels.
Another teen runaway, Oscar Kramer, 16, from Columbus, Ohio, was discovered among the tramps occupying a camp in the Bloody Run Valley between Walnut Hills and Avondale. Police raided the camp while looking for another runaway teen from Columbus. Kramer told police that the tramps referred to themselves as “Yodums.” He told the Cincinnati Post [26 October 1898] that the Bloody Run camp had everything the vagrants needed:
“The camp is in a secluded place and is always peopled by from 25 to 50 tramps. It cannot be seen from the road and is in the heart of a heavy woods. The tramps have cooking utensils, and cook and eat there and also wash their clothing. In dry weather they build big camp fires and sleep in the open, but in wet weather they seek shelter in railroad cars that are not far distant.”
The Post reported that police planned to break up the camp because professional thieves used it as a hideout, disguising themselves as common tramps. In other localities, residents broke up hobo camps simply because they didn’t want such folks hanging around. The Post reported [20 September 1898] that Ludlow, Kentucky, employed vigilante tactics to chase tramps out of town:
“A band of insulting tramps, who have been infesting a part of Ludlow, were driven out of the town Monday afternoon by citizens. The hoboes ran for dear life. If they shall return they are threatened with a public whipping. The tramps have been hanging around Ludlow for several days. Monday they applied at several residences for food – the house of Mrs. John Lynch among the number – and when their requests were refused they used vile language.”
Tramps took over the old Ransom homestead in the East End. A gang of tramps occupied the venerable estate and refused to leave according to the Post [28 October 1898]:
“The house is a large roomy old structure on Tusculum Avenue, near Columbia. It was vacated several months ago, and for three weeks has been the rendezvous of the tramps, who forage in the neighborhood and cook their meals over the grate fire in the parlor of the old residence. The women of the neighborhood are afraid to pass the place, and have notified the police to drive off the intruders.”
A large contingent of Over-the-Rhine boys, armed with slingshots, mud balls and cobble stones, chased dozens of tramps out of Washington Park that year. According to the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune [5 October 1898], the tramps’ behavior was repulsive:
“At first, an occasional tramp had cautiously stolen through the gates and shame-facedly occupied an empty bench. He was but the precursor of the hordes of the red-nosed, ragged and ill-savored mob that followed. One of them had finally kissed a little girl with his filthy lips; another had pinched the cheeks of a baby with his dirty fingers; and a third had ogled a sweet-faced nursery maid with his evil eye.”
Around this time, the Cincinnati Zoo did good business selling dogs, especially guard dogs. The Zoo advertised Saint Bernard dogs especially as “docile . . . but a terror to tramps and evil-doers.”
Just who were these men? (And they were almost exclusively men.) The 1890s were essentially one long recession and many tramps were unemployed men who had given up hope of finding work. That was the case with John Winters, who arrived at the Betts Street Hospital on 4 January 1898 with feet so frostbitten they had to be amputated. Winters left Cincinnati for a job in St. Louis that never materialized. Flat broke, he wandered through Illinois and Indiana looking for work and ended up at a hobo camp next to a railroad line. After he fell asleep, the fire went out and his feet were frozen. The railroad brought him home to Cincinnati as a charity case.
Some tramps were deserters from the U.S. Army. That was the case with Charles Frank, Harry Cantington and Ben Canine, swept up in a wholesale corral of tramps at the Baltimore & Ohio railyards in July 1898. The trio had deserted an army base in Tampa while on their way to duty in Cuba. They were sent to Fort Thomas for court martial while the remainder of the arrested were dropped off at the Work House.
Some tramps were seasonally unemployed. “Circus Frank” Doyle was among the tramps housed in the Hammond Street Police Station who told the Post he followed the Robinson Circus around the country in warm weather doing odd jobs but made his home in the “bum room” of the Hammond Street station during the colder months. The police kept that room in the basement available all year round so homeless men could sleep on the floor.
Although they inspired fear and loathing among Cincinnatians, tramps and hoboes were also an ongoing source of comedy. A stock hobo character was de rigueur in most vaudeville acts and the Enquirer carried Frederick Burr Opper’s “Happy Hooligan” comic strip for years along with regular tramp jokes like this one from 23 October 1898:
“First Tramp – When you wuz a boy did you ever expect to be in dis business?
Second Tramp – No; in me childish innocence I t’ought it wuz necessary to work fer a livin’.”
For the tramps though, life was hard and often fatal. Reedy Harris ended up in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital when he was shot while trespassing at Latonia Racetrack. William Dederick was hospitalized when he was struck by a train while sleeping near the tracks at the L&N depot. He was lucky; Dederick’s two companions were killed by the train.
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