History Main / StreetUrchin

* ''KindlingAshes'': Giselle is an orphan who lies in an alley. Her introduction is a gold smuggling job in a sewer.

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* Lyra from ''HisDarkMaterials'' is a rare voluntary example: she was born and raised among the posh, wealthy nobility of Oxford and knows every single licentiate in the Jordan College, but being a LittleMissBadass, she spends her days fighting against the kids from the other neighborhoods, stealing stuff from the docks, and climbing and sneaking around Jordan College during the night.

* The title character of Disney's ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}'' is, more or less, a slightly more grown-up version, and both in the full-length features and the series many young children are shown starving on the streets of Agrabah.
** S'interesting because the original Aladdin depended on his mum for ''everything'' and was a shiftless wastrel living off her right up until he got the genie to rely on instead, and even then had her present his request to marry the princess after spying on her in the bath. Disney rightly decided that would make a terrible movie and wrote her out.
*** The Sorceror even picked him to dupe because he so clearly had no character or will to make anything of himself.
*** In the Disney version, he picked him specifically because the cave of wonders singled him out as a "diamond in the rough", but Jafar was all too keen to sacrifice Aladdin for his scheme because in his mind, who would miss one more vanished street rat?

* ''DreamCatcher'' has Daemon, though for how long he's been one is a mystery.

* Detective Erin Lindsay on ''Series/{{ChicagoPD}}'', prior to Sergeant Voight and his wife taking her in at age 16.

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* Garret, protagonist of ''{{Thief}}'', used to be one. He got recruited into the order of the Keepers when he tried to pickpocket one (an impressive feat, considering they are masters of stealth).

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* The ''Literature/EndersGame'' series has the ''Shadow'' POVSequels that star Bean. The first novel includes Bean's backstory, which reveals how he grew up in a street urchin gang, amoungst other, rival gangs. The leader who picked him up was named Poke, the cross-dressing kind of street urchin. Revealing this information was part of how Achilles had taken over control of her gang. Card got pretty graphic with his depections of street urchin life. The swollen bellies of hunger and just how much a meal counts, and the long-term emotional abnormality you get from trying to be self-sufficient so young. As badly as his heroes {{Angst}} about their selfish natures, his antagonists seem to revel in those same flaws.

* ''Literature/OliverTwist'', anyone?
* When SherlockHolmes needed info from the street, he could always count on the Baker Street Irregulars, a gang of street urchins who have eyes and ears ''everywhere'' on the streets of London.
* In Ben Kane's Literature/TheForgottenLegion, Romulus befriends a street urchin named Mattius.

* Vin from ''{{Mistborn}}'' by Brandon Sanderson was a street urchin who survived in relative physical and psychical health only because of her yet undeveloped but useful awesome magical talent.

* Bean of the ''[[EndersGame Ender]]'' series was one, as revealed in ''Ender's Shadow''. His friend Poke was the cross-dressing kind, though everyone knew she was a girl.
** Everyone knew ''after Achilles took her gang out from under her.'' It was one of his techniques for undercutting her. She just wasn't hardened enough to survive. After all, she didn't leave Bean to die after getting his 'good idea' out of him.
** Card got pretty graphic here. The swollen bellies of hunger and just how much a meal counts, and the long-term emotional abnormality you get from trying to be self-sufficient so young were both interesting.
* Briar of ''TamoraPierce'''s Literature/CircleOfMagic series.
** And all the kids he deals with in the aptly named ''Street Magic''. Evvy later got her own book.
** ''Briar's Book'' also had street kids in the opening, before it became a magical-epidemiology-procedural drama.

* Nan from MercedesLackey's ''[[ElementalMasters The Wizard of London]]'' is a good example of one.

* Briar of ''TamoraPierce'''s CircleOfMagic series.

* ElChavoDelOcho

* ''OliverTwist'', anyone?

* Commander Shepard from ''MassEffect'', if one chooses the [[MultipleChoicePast Earthborn Pre-Service History.]]

* ''[[LloydAlexander The Westmark Trilogy]]'' has the girl Mickle and the sister-and-brother duo Sparrow and Weasel.

* In the NeonGenesisEvangelion manga, a young Ryouji Kaji grows up among a gang of war orphans; of course, since this is Evangelion, it all eventually ends in terrible tragedy.

* Flinx from AlanDeanFoster's [[HumanxCommonwealth Pip and Flinx]] series. Not only is Flinx an orphan who lived on the streets, as an adult after being adopted he takes some under his wing that fit the definition perfectly.

If the character seems perfectly happy with their lot in life and practically seems to thrive on the streets, then you have yourself TheArtfulDodger. If this character grows up into a hardened survivor and is proud of his hungry years, you've got a SatisfiedStreetRat.

* In ''Manga/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaVivid'', this was Chantez's lot in life until Sister Schach [[DefeatMeansFriendship befriended her]] then [[HappilyAdopted raised her as a knight in training]] in the [[SaintlyChurch Saint Church]].