Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 141, vol. III, September 11, 1886

No. 141.—Vol. III.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1886.
Towards the middle of last July, the people of Liverpool were surprised by the advent of a large band of Greek gypsies, ninety-nine in number, whom the London train had left stranded on a vacant space of ground beside the railway station. Though spoken of as ‘Greek’ gypsies, they were really from all parts of the Græco-Turkish corner of Europe, and some even from Smyrna and its neighbourhood. But they preferred to be regarded as Greeks, and all of them spoke the modern Greek tongue. They had come to Liverpool, intending to take an early steamer to New York; but their progress was here suddenly arrested; and their stay in Liverpool proved to be of longer duration than had been anticipated by themselves or by others. From their first squatting-ground beside the station they had early been removed to a secluded corner at Walton, within the grounds of the Zoological Gardens. But how long they must yet remain there, and what was to be done with them, seemed difficult problems.
It was not the fault of these strange emigrants that they thus halted on the outward verge of Europe. They had honestly paid their way hither from their Mediterranean home, and they had enough money among them to pay for their passage across the Atlantic. But at this point America interfered. Ready as she once was to welcome all immigrants with open arms, America has become less hospitable of recent years. She has excluded the Chinaman, for racial reasons; and now she is drawing the line at the ‘pauper,’ of whatever race, because of his poverty. It is not many years since Longfellow apostrophised Driving Cloud , ‘chief of the mighty Omawhaws,’ telling him it was in vain that he and his meagre tribe ‘claimed the soil for their hunting-grounds,’
While down-trodden millions
Starve in the garrets of Europe, and cry from its caverns that they, too,
Have been created heirs of the earth, and claim its division!