An Act to Prevent Tramps Infesting or Depredating on Citizens of this State, ch. 198, §§ 1-7, N.C. Pub. Laws 355, 355-56.

"AN ACT TO PREVENT TRAMPS INFESTING OR DEPREDATING ON CITIZENS OF THIS STATE.

The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact:
    SECTION 1. Any person going about from place to place begging and asking or subsisting on charity, shall be taken and deemed a tramp, and shall be punished by imprisonment in the county prison not more than six months: Provided, that any person who shall furnish satisfactory evidence of good character shall be discharged without cost.
    SEC. 2. Any tramp who shall enter any dwelling house or kindle any fire on the highway or on the land of another without the consent of the owner or occupant thereof, or shall be found carrying any firearms or other dangerous weapon, or shall threaten to do any injury to any person or to the real or personal estate of another, shall be punished by imprisonment at the discretion of the court, not to exceed twelve months.
    SEC. 3. Any tramp who shall wilfully and maliciously do any injury to any person or to the real or personal estate of another, shall be punished by imprisonment at the discretion of the court, not to exceed three years.
    SEC. 4. Any act of begging or vagrancy by any person unless such are well known objects of charity, shall be evidence that the person committing the same is a tramp within the meaning of this act.
    SEC. 5. Any person upon a view of any offence described in this act shall cause the said offender to be arrested upon a warrant and taken before some justice of the peace, or may apprehend the offender and take him before a justice of the peace for examination, and on his conviction shall be entitled to the same fee as a sheriff.
    SEC. 6. This act shall not apply to any female or minor under the age of fourteen years, nor to any blind person.
    SEC. 7. This act shall be in force from and after its ratification.
Ratified the 12th day of March, A. D. 1879."

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Laws and Resolutions of the State of North Carolina, Passed by the General Assembly at Its Session of 1879, Begun and Held in the City of Raleigh, on Wednesday, the Eighth Day of January, A. D. 1879: To Which Are Prefixed a Register of State Officers, Members of the General Assembly, Judiciary, a List of Commissioners of Affidavits, and State Constitution (Raleigh, NC: The Observer, 1879), 355-356. Chapter 198—An Act to Prevent Tramps Infesting or Depredating on Citizens of this State, §§ 1-7. Ratified March 12, 1879.