The Death of Homelessness in the United States

In 1866, the Republican dominated legislature of Massachusetts passed an act concerning vagrants and vagabonds. The 1860 criminal code had punished beggars along with a motley band of jugglers, tricksters, common pipers and fiddlers,. pilferers, brawlers and lewd persons. AD Stanley writes, Massachusetts was the first of the northern states to enact new rules against beggars.