It illuminates the profound dichotomy in the American attitude to the loser – and particularly towards the mobile casual worker, needed and romanticised yet hated and feared because of his non-conformism. It examines the violent antagonism towards migrants unions and also the hobo’s creation of his own legend to compensate for his rough and lonely life. Glorified by poets and lyric writers as the one surviving free man, the hobo is revealed in Mr Allsop’s fascinating portrait as being an inevitable by-product of the American system, the inhabitant of a strange and separate world. It is a harsh, turbulent and often disturbing story that Mr Allsop documents; but it is an important and extremely vivid one’. A prize catch for the type of hobo who would indubitably have been a pop groups agent in other times and circumstances’. The governor of Kansas, L D Lewelling issued what became known as the, ‘ Tramps Charter’, in the Daily Capital, in 1893 and is remarkable enough to study in full here. Above all, it confirmed the right of Americans to walk over the land freely if they chose, that it was not the crime it was being treated as if you happened to be poor. You might well think that the constitution had guaranteed that right long ago? Modern times And yet as we know the frontier is closed, they got to the sea and inhabit everything in between and if the train started that journey it was certainly the car and the aeroplane that finished it off. Allsop contends that the hobo still represents the last vestige of wild freedom however illusory that might be – or at least that was his thought in 1967, and who is to say it is not still relevant in a film like, ‘ Nomadland’, wherein the central character chooses to live the life she does. Apparently. Allsop was a regular reporter for the BBC current affairs programme Tonight during the 1960s. He was also Rector of Edinburgh University and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

Ashbrook, Kate. "Legg, Rodney Frank". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/103950. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Why…. should the hobo be noticed? Yet he does enter into the anxieties and preoccupations of the others. Machine culture brought unparalleled ease of convenience to the better off American. Deliverance from frontier drudgery came, nature was whipped and overcome, but to be replaced by another wilderness, that of the apparatus of mass production, mass living, mass organisation, at the heart of which lingers the fear that something irreplaceable and unique has been extinguished’. The simplest plan, probably, where one is not a member of the Humane Society (or perhaps the human race?) is to put a little Strychnine or Arsenic in the meat or other supplies furnished the tramp.’ Having been told that he was probably not a BBC type (which in those days meant not public school), Michelmore began doing freelance radio work for the BBC. His first paid job was on Design for Dancing, with Geraldo and his orchestra. He scripted it for eight guineas. He was also hailed as “Britain’s first radio square-dance caller”. Kenneth Allsop (29 January 1920 – 23 May 1973) was a British broadcaster, author and naturalist. Early life

Early life

The American hobo tradition is essentially different to the British ‘tramp’ because the hobo life is not first and foremost driven by deficit, loss or deprivation – although there are elements of all these to be found amongst the various hobo traditions’. Go west young man At 44 years old, Kenneth Allsop height not available right now. We will update Kenneth Allsop's Height, weight, Body Measurements, Eye Color, Hair Color, Shoe & Dress size soon as possible. Allsop’s writing style can be florid and overwritten as Terry Potter correctly points out in a Letterpress Project article, It scarcely credits that the suggestion was made in the 1878 Newburyport Herald that the problem could be solved by placing the pauper in a cistern that filled with water such that a reasonably active man could pump it out and thus not drown. If the hobo chose to work (no suggestion seems to have been made as to whether they were able) they would be able to pump and survive – if not they would die. No sign of any cruel and unusual punishments there then – as if indeed punishment was in any way merited.

He was part of a pool of pioneering talent, which included Huw Wheldon, from the Arts Council, and Alasdair Milne, of the BBC TV talks department at Lime Grove, for whom Michelmore worked on the magazine programme Highlight. His interviewees included the writer André Maurois, Louis Armstrong and Spike Milligan. The descriptions of this heterogeneous group of people often resort to characterising them as sub-human, as in this 1876 London Times comment (and yes they were choosing to comment on things American), Allsop has also been accused of being something of an amateur sociologist – which by definition he was – although that does not make many of his conclusions necessarily less valid. There is, and Potter agrees, a great deal to enjoy in the book with its far-ranging sweep encompassing the move west, the growth of the railways, the rise of agri-business, the heyday of Unionism and the desperate and scarcely believable methods used by the employers to maintain the status-quo so hugely in their favour. It also examines a good number of myths whilst bringing things up to date by talking to present day (well 1960’s) hobos and itinerants. Potter identifies a fundamental Allsop premise that, Ultimately this wide-ranging thought-provoking book with its occasional flaws and irritations is well summed up by the blurb on the front cover, Freedom?

Yet, thankfully, at the same time papers such as the Weekly Worker, The National Labor (sic) Tribune and the Topeka Daily Capital offered a more considered view. It does seem that few if any of these outrageous ideas were ever put into practice – but they do reveal some of the attitudes of the times. There was little thought that the industrial system had put these men in the position in which they were found, the belief being that in fact, they were too lazy to work and that they were in some way sub-human.

Kenneth Allsop died in 1973 and until now he has been nothing more than a dim memory in the head of a then 17-year-old – sandwiched somewhere in between the urbanity of Cliff Michelmore and the visually wonderful Fyfe Robertson in the world of journalism and newscasting on BBC’s long gone, ‘ Tonight’, programme. Allsop seemed to have one of those quintessentially English faces, memorable and yet handsomely unremarkable at the same time – hardly the face of someone who would be talking to and writing about hoboes and tramps on a 9000 mile trip around America. He was though a man of several talents, broadcaster, author, naturalist and prototype conservationist.He is a member of famous Writer with the age 44 years old group. Kenneth Allsop Height, Weight & Measurements Allsop tells us that a punk, lamb or ‘preshun’ (apprentice) is a young male, many of whom were victims of what he terms a ‘ white slave traffic’. He is a low browed, blear-eyed, dirty fellow, who has rascal stamped on every feature of his face in nature’s plainest handwriting’. It’s a dog’s life At BFN he used his initiative to fill radio air time free. He played Little John in a production of The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Geraint Evans as Blondel and Bryan Forbes as Will Scarlet. Open to almost any idea, the network boasted satirical shows, pop and more serious music and reportage. He was an obvious choice as a guest in the first series of the long-running naturalist radio programme Sounds Natural on BBC Radio 4 on 24 May 1971. Death and legacy

In fact he became a regular presenter from the Hamburg end of the programme Forces Favourites (subsequently, in peacetime, Two Way Family Favourites), in which service people in Germany had records played for their families in Britain, and vice versa. Jean Metcalfe presented the London end, and, soon after their first meeting, Michelmore and Metcalfe became engaged. In 1949 he left BFN; the couple married the following year and had two children. Allsop, a WW2 veteran, wrote Adventure Lit Their Star when he was a cub reporter in the late 1940s. The story revolves around a young RAF pilot recovering from TB. He joins forces with two young lads to foil the attentions of a dastardly egg-collector, who is intent on stealing the eggs of these very rare birds. One irony that Allsop points out is that these same men built the means by which their travels were achieved – the railway and the history of the hobo or travelling man are very much entwined. At various times men were welcome to ride the rails and at others, they were actively and brutally discouraged. The idea of a flexible mobile labour force, that did so much to build the American behemoth, is therefore nothing new – today it might masquerade under the title ‘transferable skills’ whilst getting ‘on your bike’ to look for work.Allsop, Kenneth (1958). The Angry Decade; A Survey of the Cultural Revolt of the Nineteen Fifties . London: Peter Owen Ltd. Rather than discuss the book cover to cover it might be illustrative to concentrate on two chapters, the first being the 10th – ‘A little Strychnine or Arsenic’ –wherein the author recounts some of the attitudes of the times which range from poisoning the hobo with the aforementioned to some surprisingly liberal arguments from the mid-western press. There are those who argue that Allsop is quotation happy and occasionally it may be true though not a view I share. It is true to say that whilst he publishes a bibliography his attributions are a bit scattershot and not always rigorously academic. He does find some good material though such as an article in the 1887 Chicago Tribune which suggested, we can only hope tongue in cheek, that, This chapter then, presents a balanced account of the polarised and extreme views that hobo’s provoked – and can only ring very loud bells for our own generation as we look at how we treat the poor and disenfranchised. Sometimes I found Allsop ’s prose a bit mannered and long-winded and, of course, much of it is now dated and what was then a ‘modern’ American psychology is now a historical curiosity’. Keeping The Barbarians At Bay: The Last Years Of Kenneth Allsop, Green Pioneer' by David Wilkinson (2013)