The article reviews "Criminal: An Untold Story of Homelessness, Resistance and Survival," an installation at London's Museum of Homelessness. The show features works by Romany Gypsy poet and artist Gemma Lees, including a caravan installation with china decorated with hostile Sun newspaper headlines about Gypsy and Traveller encampments, and festive bunting printed with historical state proscriptions against nomadic communities dating from the Egyptians Act of 1530 to the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. The exhibition, set largely in the garden of the museum's new home at Finsbury Park's Manor House Lodge, explores how homeless people and nomadic communities have been criminalized over 400 years.
The exhibition matters because it arrives at a time of record homelessness in London, with over 13,000 people sleeping rough in 2024-2025—a 63% rise over a decade. The Museum of Homelessness itself functions not only as a museum but also as a community support hub and cold weather shelter. The show highlights the enduring impact of archaic laws like the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which criminalizes sleeping rough and begging, and critiques binary notions of "deserving" versus "undeserving" that continue to shape public attitudes. It delivers a powerful, rage-making commentary on systemic marginalization.