Ne'er-do-well

He's just a ne'er-do-well.

At home she behaves well but at school she's a ne'er-do-well.

So they have trooped forth to organize village down-and-outs and ne'er-do-wells into would-be combat units.

Clara's father, a trollish ne'er-do-well who spent most of his time in brothels and saloons, would disappear for days and weeks at a stretch, leaving Clara and her mother to fend for themselves.

The brother who sought me out and would have redeemed me from the power of darkness, but he couldn't; and has robbed himself of joy and comfort in life to keep his ne'er-do-well brother from starvation; who has paid his debts over and taken him out of jail again and again....

Before the 1850s, when women figured most prominently in textile employment, the reasons that caused women to seek paid labor—a ne'er-do-well husband, economic distress of the natal family, or a belief that factory work was a road to self-betterment—often precluded their considering an away-from-home cure.

Think of the scorn with which Nicholas Nicklebys Madame Mantalini treats her ne'er-do-well' husband from whom she insists "on being separated and left to myself...."