Much of what we see today is a direct result of "Care in the Community" ~ a far cry from Old Soldiers, out of work and with little option but to travel the byways seeking work where they could find it.
The navy terminology was beached. That was thrown onto the beach with nothing to their name, often disabled but usually too old to work and simply discarded.
The tramp got the name for all the 'tramping' around the countryside looking for work.
As we became a mechanised nation losing thousands of farm labourers, all these people found themselves driven into town, including the 'tramps' that denied work were now reduced to begging.
Their state led to various seaman's missions caring and the notorious Chelsea pensioners establishing an afterlife for some eventually led to people actually thinking about the welfare of all those that served us.
A lot of the ex-servicemen considered any kind of welfare to be charity and would have none of it, preferring to be 'gentlemen of the roads' but eventually the numbers dwindled as military institutions became established and they became replaced by ordinary folk that had been down on their luck and penniless.
It would be fair to say, that there is scant reason to be a tramp today unless one finds it an agreeable lifestyle, and there are some that do. Mostly, there are the workshy, antisocial and misfits on the streets today. But drugs are establishing a new order of destitute and these are a wholly different bunch to their predecessors.
These days they are desperate to raise money to feed habits that would be financially out of reach of most ordinary folk, so have become past masters in separating people from their money in an ever increasing range of imaginative ways from begging to murder.
It is no fun to be on the streets today and there is certainly no comradeship to be found any more.
