Homelessness, Drifting
Ahbez, Eden
Ahbez is known as the First Hippy. His life story is unclear but one version has him born in 1908 (another after World War I) to a large and poverty-stricken family in Brooklyn. He and his ... [more]
Astor, Joshua
Astor is the birth son of Joe "Gannex" Kagan, friend of the British prime minister Harold Wilson, but was adopted aged three by his step-father, Michael Astor, MP (one of the weal... [more]
Bellwood, James Charles
Bellwood was born James Charles Robertson to an unmarried Maori woman and a European salesman. He was fostered or adopted by the Bellwood family of Christchurch, who emotionally and physica... [more]
Dahlberg, Edward
Dahlberg was the son of a married hairdresser who had been kicked out of the house before he was born by her husband for being unfaithful. He and his older brother were sent to a Jewish orp... [more]
Davies, William Henry
Davies' father died when he was a child and when his mother remarried he was adopted by his paternal grandparents. He emigrated to America when he was 22 and spent years wandering around th... [more]
Genet, Jean
Genet's early life seems shrouded in confusion. The three sources looked at present three different stories: One gives his birthdate as 19 December, that he was abandoned by his parents... [more]
Griffis, Joseph
Griffis was born to a white father, a famous scout, and a mother who was half Osage (there is some dispute about this, but Griffis apparently believed he was a Native American, always ident... [more]
Martinson, Harry Edmund
Martinson was born in Jämshög in southern Sweden. His father died when he was six, and his mother abandoned her seven children to emigrate to America. The rest of his childhood was spent in... [more]
McQueen, Steve
Steve McQueen's father abandoned the family in Indiana when he was less than a year old. His mother then gave him into the care of an uncle, a farmer in Missouri, where he lived until he wa... [more]
Melville, Herman
Melville was born into a comfortably well-off merchant family in New York, but his father went bankrupt and insane, and died when he was 12 (other sources say 14), leaving his mother a wido... [more]
Roach, Archie
Roach was one of the thousands of Aboriginal children stolen from their parents by the Australian government in an attempt to assimilate them into white society (see Australian Aboriginal ... [more]
