Gipsy Life / Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvement

by George Smith

TWO GIPSIES.

“Two Gipsy lads were transported,
Were sent across the great water;
Plato was sent for rioting,
And Louis for stealing the purse
Of a great lady.

“And when they came to the other country,
The country that lies across the water,
Plato was speedily hung,
But Louis was taken as a husband
By a great lady.

“You wish to know who was the lady:
’Twas the lady from whom he stole the purse;
The Gipsy had a black and witching eye,
And on account of that she followed him
Across the great water.”

Smart and Crofton, speaking poetically and romantically of Gipsy life, say as follows:—

“With the first spring sunshine comes the old longing to be off, and soon is seen, issuing from his winter quarters, a little cavalcade, tilted cart, bag and baggage, donkeys and dogs, rom, romni, and tickni, chavis, and the happy family is once more under weigh for the open country. With dark, restless eye and coarse, black hair fluttered by the breeze, he slouches along, singing as he goes, in heart, if not in precise words—

“I loiter down by thorpe and town,
For any job I’m willing;
Take here and there a dusty brown,
And here and there a shilling.

No carpet can please him like the soft green turf, and no

curtains compare with the snow-white blossoming hedgerow thereon. A child of Nature, he loves to repose on the bare breast of the great mother. As the smoke of his evening fire goes up to heaven, and the savoury odour of roast hotchi witchi or of canengri soup salutes his nostrils, he sits in the deepening twilight drinking in with unconscious delight all the sights and sounds which the country affords; with his keen senses alive to every external impression he feels that

“’Tis sweet to see the evening star appear,
’Tis sweet to listen as the night winds creep
From leaf to leaf.

He dreamily hears the distant bark of the prowling fox, and the melancholy hootings of the wood owls; he marks the shriek of the night-wandering weasel, and the rustle of the bushes as some startled forest creature darts into deep coverts; or, perchance, the faint sounds from a sequestered hamlet of a great city. Cradled from infancy in such haunts as these ‘places of nestling green for poets made,’ and surely for Gipsies too, no wonder if, after the fitful fever of town life, he sleeps well, with the unforgotten and dearly-loved lullabies of his childhood soothing him to rest.”

The following is in their own Gipsy language to each other, and exhibits a true type of the feeling of revenge they foster to one another for wrongs done and injuries received, and may be considered a fair specimen of the disposition of thousands of Gipsies in our midst:—“Just see, mates, what a blackguard he is. He has been telling wicked lies about us, the cursed dog. I will murder him when I get hold of him. That creature, his wife, is just as bad. She is worse than he. Let us thrash them both and drive them out of our society, and not let them come near us, such cut-throats and informers as they are. They are nothing but murderers. They are informers. We shall all come to grief through their misdoings.” Not

much poetry and romance in language and characters of this description.

“These Indians ne’er forget
Nor evermore forgive an injury.”

The following is a wail of their own, taken from Smart and Crofton, and will show that the Gipsies themselves do not think tent life is so delightful, happy, and free as has been pictured in the imaginative brain of novel writers, whose knowledge has been gained by visiting the Gipsies as they have basked on the grassy banks on a hot summer day, surrounded by the warbling songsters and rippling brooks of water, as clear as crystal, at their feet, sending forth dribbling sounds of enchantment to fall upon musical ears, touching the cords of poetic affection and lyric sympathy:—“Now, mates, be quick. Put your tent up. Much rain will come down, and snow, too—we shall all die to-night of cold; and bring something to make a good fire, too. Put the tent down well, much wind will come this night. My children will die of cold. Put all the rods in the ground properly to make it stand well. The poor children cry for food. My God! what shall I do to give them food to eat? I have nothing to give them. They will die without food.”

My object in this part will be to deal with the Gipsy question in a hard, matter of fact way, both as regards their present condition and the only remedy by which they are to be improved. No one believes in the power of the Gospel more than I do as to its being able to rescue the very dregs of society from misery and wretchedness; but in the case of the Gipsies and canal-boatmen they cannot be got together so as to be brought under its influence. Their darkness, ignorance, and flitting habits, prevent them either reading about Jesus or being brought within the magic spell of the Gospel. When once the Gipsy children have learned to read and write I shall then have more faith in the power of God’s truth reaching the hearts of the Gipsies and producing better results.

The following letter has been handed to me by the uncle, to show what a little, dark-eyed Gipsy girl of twelve years of age can do. Notwithstanding all its faults it is a credit to the little beauty, especially if it is taken into consideration that she has had no father to teach her, and she has chiefly been her own schoolmaster and mistress. She is the only one who can read and write in a large family. Her books have been sign-boards, guide-posts, and mile-stones, and her light the red glare of a coke fire. I give the letter to show two things; first, that there is a strong desire among the poor Gipsy children for education; second, that there is that mental calibre about the Gipsy children of the present generation that only requires fostering, handling, educating, and caring for as other children are to produce in the next generation a class of people of whom no country need be ashamed. They will be equal to stand shoulder to shoulder with other labouring classes.

(Copy of envelope.)

“JOB CLATAN
“Char bottomar
“at ash be hols in
“Darbyshere.”

(Copy of letter.)

“febury 18 1880.

“Dear uncel and Aunt

“I wright these few li to you hoping find you all well.

“Fanny Vickers as sent you a rose father and Mother as sent there best love to you I think it is very strang you have never wrote it is Twenty year if live till may it is a strang thing you doant com to see her She is stark stone blind and lives with son john at gurtain I hope and trust you will send us word how you are getting Fanny mother

is not only a very poor crater somtimes Mother often thinks she should often like to see your bazy and joby you might com land see us in the summer if we had nothing elce I ca il find them something to eat if mother never see you in this world she is hopining to see you in heaven so no more from your afexenen brother and sister Vickers good buy * * * * Kiss all on you * * * *”

In speaking of the Gipsies in Scotland sixty years ago, Mr. Deputy-Sheriff Moor, of Aberdeenshire, says as follows:—“Occasionally vagrants, both single and in bands, appear in this part of the country, resorting to fairs, when they commit depredations on the unwary.” Sir Walter Scott, Bart., says of the Gipsies:—“A set of people possessing the same erratic habits, and practising the trade of tinkers, are well known in the Borders, and have often fallen under the cognisance of the law. They are often called Gipsies, and pass through the country annually in small bands, with their carts and asses. The men are tinkers, poachers, and thieves upon a small scale,” and he goes on to say that “some of the more atrocious families have been extirpated.” Mr. Riddell, Justice of Peace for Roxburghshire, says:—“They are thorough desperadoes of the worst class of vagabonds. Those who travel through this county give offence chiefly by poaching and small thefts. All of them are perfectly ignorant of religion. They marry and cohabit amongst each other, and are held in a sort of horror by the common people.” Mr. William Smith, the Baillie of Kelso, and a gentlemen of high position, says:—“Some kind of honour peculiar to themselves seems to prevail in their community. They reckon it a disgrace to steal near their homes, or even at a distance if detected. I must always except that petty theft of feeding their shilties and asses on the farmers’ grass and corn, which they will do whether at home or abroad.” And he further says, “I am sorry to say, however, that when checked in their licentious appropriations they are much addicted both to threaten and to

execute revenge.” Mr. Smith always visited the Gipsies upon one of the estates of which he had the charge, consequently he would be likely to know more about them than most people. A number of other gentleman confirmed these statements. By comparing these remarks with the statements of Mr. Harrison in a letter published in the Standard last August, backing up my case, it will be seen that the Scotch Gipsies if anything have degenerated. Mr. Harrison’s letter will be found in Part II.

Much has been said and written with reference to their health and age. For my own part I firmly believe that the great ages to which they say they live—of course there are many exceptions—are only myths and delusions, and another of their dodges to excite sympathy. From the days of their debauchery, and becoming what are termed under a respectable phrase for Gipsies, “old hags,” they seem to jump from sixty to between seventy and eighty at a bound. I was talking to one I considered an old woman as to her age only a day or two ago, and she said, with a pitiful tone, “I am a long way over seventy,” and I asked her if she could tell me the year in which she was born, to which she replied that she “was sixteen when the good Queen was crowned.”

The following case, related to me by the tradesman himself, at Battersea—a sharp, quick, business gentleman, who boasted to me that he had never been sold before by any one—will show faintly how clever the Gipsy women are at lying, deception, and cheating:—Three pretty, well-dressed Gipsy women went into his shop one day last summer, and said that they had arranged to have a christening on the morrow, and as beer got into the heads of their men, and made them wild, which they did not like to see on such occasions, they had decided to have a quiet, little, respectable affair, and in place of beer they were going to have wine, cakes, and biscuits after their tea; and they ordered some currant cake, several bottles of wine, tea, sugar, and other things required on such occasions, to the amount of two pounds fourteen

shillings. The Gipsies asked to have the bill made out and the goods packed in a hamper. And while this was being done the Gipsies said to the tradesman: “Now, as we have ordered so much from you, we think that you ought to buy a mat or two and other things of us.” Without consulting his wife, he agreed to buy one or two things, to the amount of eleven shillings, which the tradesman had thought would have been deducted from their account; but the Gipsies thought differently—and here was the craft—and said, “We don’t understand figures. You had better pay us for the mats, &c., and we will pay you for the wine.” The tradesman, who was thrown off his guard, paid them the eleven shillings. With this they walked out of his shop, saying that they would take the bill with them, and send a man with the money and a barrow for the wine, cake, &c., in a few minutes, which they did not, but left the tradesman a wiser but sadder man for spending eleven shillings in things he did not require; and his remarks to me were, “No more Gipsies for me, thank you. I’ve had quite plenty of Gipsies for my lifetime.”

Cases have been known when the Gipsy women have gone among the farmers’ cattle and rubbed their nostrils with some nastiness to such an extent as to cause the cattle to loathe their food. The Gipsy in the lane—who of course knows all about the affair—goes to the farmer and tells him he can cure his cattle. This is agreed upon. All the Gipsy does is to visit the cattle secretly and slyly, and rub off the nastiness he has put on. The cattle immediately begin to eat their food, and the Gipsy gets his fee. They kill lambs by sticking pins into their heads.

Tallemant says that near Peye, in Picardy, a Gipsy offered a stolen sheep to a butcher for one hundred sous, or five francs; but the butcher declined to give more than four francs for it. The butcher then went away; whereupon the Gipsy pulled the sheep from a sack into which he had put it, and substituted for it a child belonging to his tribe. He then ran after the butcher, and said, “Give me

five francs, and you shall have the sack into the bargain.” The butcher paid him the money, and went away. When he got home he opened the sack, and was much astonished when he saw a little boy jump out of it, who in an instant caught up the sack and ran off. “Never was a poor man so hoaxed as this butcher.” When they want to leave a place where they have been stopping they set out in an opposite direction to that in their right course. The Gipsies have a thousand other tricks—so says one of the Gipsy fraternity named Pechou de Ruby. Paul Lacroix says that when they take up their quarters in any village they steal very little in its immediate vicinity, but in the neighbouring parishes they rob and plunder in the most daring manner. If they find a sum of money they give notice to the captain, and make a rapid flight from the place. They make counterfeit money, and put it into circulation. They play all sorts of games; they buy all sorts of horses, whether sound or unsound, provided they can manage to pay for them in their own base coin. When they buy food, they pay for it in good money the first time, as they are held in such distrust; but when they are about to leave a neighbourhood they again buy something, for which they tender false coin, receiving the change in good money. In harvest time all doors are shut against them, nevertheless they contrive, by means of picklocks and other instruments, to effect an entrance into houses, when they steal linen, clocks, silver, and any other movable article which they can lay their hands upon. They give a strict account of everything to their captain, who takes his share. They are very clever in making a good bargain. When they know of a rich merchant living in the place, they disguise themselves, enter into communication with him, and swindle him, after which they change their clothes, have their horses shod the reverse way, and the shoes covered with some soft material, lest they should be heard, and gallop away. Grellmann says:—“The miserable condition of the Gipsies may be imagined

from the following facts: many of them, and especially the women, have been burned, by their own request, in order to end their miserable existence; and we can give the case of a Gipsy, who, having been arrested, flogged, and conducted to the frontier, with the threat that if he re-appeared in the country he would be hanged, resolutely returned after three successive and similar threats at three different places, and implored that the capital sentence might be carried out, in order that he might be released from a life of such misery.” And he goes on to say that “these unfortunate people were not even looked upon as human beings, for during a hunting party the huntsmen had no scruple whatever in killing a Gipsy woman who was suckling her child, just as they would have done any wild beast which came in their way.” And he further says that they received “into their ranks all those whose crime, the fear and punishment of an uneasy conscience, or the charm of a roaming life continually threw in their path; they made use of them either to find their way into countries of which they were ignorant, or to commit robberies which would otherwise have been impracticable. They were not slow to form an alliance with profligate characters, who sometimes worked in concert with them.”

A century ago it was somewhat romantic, and answered very well as a contrast to civilisation, to see a number of people moving about the country, dressed in beaver hats and bonnets, scarlet cloaks and hoods, short petticoats, velvet coats with silver buttons, and a plentiful supply of gold rings. The novelty of their person, with dark skin and eyes, black hair, and their fortune-telling proclivities, and other odd curiosities and eccentricities, answered well for a time as a kind of eye-blinder to their little thefts and like things; but that day is over. Their silver buttons are all gone to pot. Their silk velvet coats, plush waistcoats, and diamond rings have vanished, never more to return with their present course of life; patched breeches, torn coats, slouched hats, and washed gold rings have taken their

places, and ragged garments in place of silk dresses for the poor Gipsy women. The Gipsy men “lollock” about, the women tell fortunes, and the children gambol on the ditch banks with impunity, nobody caring to interfere with them in any way. This kind of thing, as regards dash and show, is to a great extent passed, and those men who put on a show of work at all, it is as a general thing at tinkering, chair-mending, peg-splitting, skewer-making, and donkey buying. The men make the skewers and sell them at prices varying from one shilling to two shillings per stone; the wood for the skewers they do not always buy. A friend of mine told me a couple of months since that the Gipsies had broken down his fences with impunity, and had taken five hundred young saplings out of his plantation for this purpose. Chairs are bottomed at prices ranging from one shilling and upwards. Some of them do scissor-grinding, for which they charge exorbitant prices. Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart., of Coleorton Hall, told me very recently that one of the Boswell gang had charged him two shillings for grinding one knife. Some of the women, who are not good hands at fortune-telling, sell artificial flowers, combs, brushes, lace, &c. The women who are good at fortune-telling can make a good thing out of it, even at this late day, in the midst of so much light and Christianity, and they carry it out very adroitly and cleverly too. Two or three months ago I was invited by some Gipsy friends to have tea with them on the outskirts of London. They very kindly sent for twopenny worth of butter for me, and allowed me the honour of using the only cup and saucer, which they said were over one hundred years old. The tea for the grown-up sons and daughters was handed round in mugs, jugs, and basins. The good old man cut my bread and butter with his dark coloured hands pretty thin, but the bread for his sons and daughters was like pieces of bricks, which, with pieces of bacon, he pitched at them without any ceremony, and as they caught it they, although men and women,

kept saying “Thank you, pa,” “Thank you, pa,” and down it went without either knives or forks, or very little grinding. We were all sitting upon the floor, my table being an undressed brick out of some old building, and it was with some difficulty I could keep the pigs that were running loose in the yard from taking a piece off my plate, but with a pretty free use of my toe I kept sending the little grunters squeaking away. After tea I felt a little curious to know what was in the big old Gipsy dame’s basket, for I had an idea one or two hair-brushes, combs, laces, and other small trifles which lay on the top of a small piece of oilcloth covering the inside of the basket had, by their greasy appearance, done duty for many a long day. I told the old Gipsy dame that I was going home the next day, and should like to take a little thing or two for my little ones at home, as having been bought of a Gipsy woman near London. The sharp old woman was not long in offering me one or two of her trifles that lay on the top of her basket, but these I said were not so suitable as I should like. “Had she nothing more suitable lower down as a small present?” After a little fumbling and flustering she began to see my motive, and said, “Ah! I see what you are after. I will tell you the truth and show you all.” She turned the oilcloth off the basket, underneath of which were “shank ends” of joints, ham-bones, pieces of bacon, and crusts. “These,” she said, “have been given to me by servant girls and others for telling their fortunes, really lies, and I have brought them here for my children to live upon, and this is how we live.”

Fortune-telling is a soul-crushing and deadly crying evil, and it is far from being stamped out. A hawker’s licence, about the size of one of these pages, covers a life-time of sin and iniquity in this respect. A basket with half-a-dozen brushes, combs, laces, a piece of oilcloth, and a pocket Bible, is all the stock-in-trade they require, and it will serve them for a year. They generally prophecy good. Knowing the readiest way

to deceive, to a young lady they describe a handsome gentleman as one she may be assured will be her “husband.” To a youth they promise a pretty lady with a large fortune. And thus suiting their deluding speeches to the age, circumstances, anticipations, and prospects of those who employ them, they seldom fail to please their vanity, and often gain a rich reward for their fraud.

A young lady in Gloucestershire allowed herself to be deluded by a Gipsy woman, of artful and insinuating address, to a very great extent. This lady admired a young gentleman, and the Gipsy promised that he would return her love. The lady gave her all the plate in the house, and a gold chain and locket, with no other security than a vain promise that they should be restored at a given period. As might be expected, the wicked woman was soon off with her booty, and the lady was obliged to expose her folly. The property being too much to lose, the woman was pursued and overtaken. She was found washing her clothes in a Gipsy camp, with the gold chain about her neck. She was taken up, but on restoring the articles was allowed to escape.

The same woman afterwards persuaded a gentleman’s groom that she could put him in possession of a great sum of money if he would first deposit with her all he then had. He gave her five pounds and his watch, and borrowed for her ten more of two of his friends. She engaged to meet him at midnight in a certain place a mile from the town where he lived, and that he there should dig up out of the ground a silver pot full of gold covered with a clean napkin. He went with his pickaxe and shovel at the appointed time to the supposed lucky spot, having his confidence strengthened by a dream he happened to have about money, which he considered a favourable omen of the wealth he was soon to receive. Of course he met no Gipsy; she had fled another way with the property she had so wickedly obtained. While waiting her arrival a hare started suddenly from its resting-place and so alarmed him that he as suddenly took

to his heels and made no stop till he reached his master’s house, where he awoke his fellow-servants and told to them his disaster.

This woman, who made so many dupes, rode a good horse, and dressed both gaily and expensively. One of her saddles cost thirty pounds. It was literally studded with silver, for she carried on it the emblems of her profession wrought in that metal—namely, a half moon, seven stars, and the rising sun. Poor woman! her sun is set. Her sins have found her out. Fortune-tellers die hard without exception, so I am told by the Gipsies themselves.

Some time ago a gentleman followed several Gipsy families. Arriving at the place of their encampment his first object was to gain their confidence. This was accomplished; after which, to amuse their unexpected visitant, they showed forth their night diversions in music and dancing; likewise the means by which they obtained their livelihood, such as tinkering, fortune-telling, and conjuring. That the gentleman might be satisfied whether he had obtained their confidence or not, he represented his dangerous situation, in the midst of which they all with one voice cried, “Sir, we would kiss your feet rather than hurt you!” After manifesting a confidence in return, the master of this formidable gang, about forty in number, was challenged by the gentleman for a conjuring match. The challenge was instantly accepted. The Gipsies placed themselves in a circular form, and both being in the middle commenced with their conjuring powers to the best advantage. At last the visitor proposed the making of something out of nothing. This proposal was accepted. A stone which never existed was to be created, and appear in a certain form in the middle of a circle made on the turf. The master of the gang commenced, and after much stamping with his foot, and the gentleman warmly exhorting him to cry aloud, like the roaring of a lion, he endeavoured to call forth nonentity into existence. Asking him if he could do it, he answered, “I am not strong

enough.” They were all asked the same question, which received the same answer. The visitor commenced. Every eye was fixed upon him, eager to behold this unheard-of exploit; but (and not to be wondered at) he failed! telling them he possessed no more power to create than themselves. Perceiving the thought of insufficiency pervading their minds, he thus spoke: “Now, if you have not power to create a poor little stone, and if 1 have not power either, what must that power be which made the whole world out of nothing?—men, women, and children! that power I call God Almighty.”

I have been told that the dislike they have to rule and order has led many of them to maim themselves by cutting off a finger, that they might not serve in either the army or the navy; and I believe there is one instance known of some Gipsies murdering a witness who was to appear against some of their people for horse-stealing; the persons who were guilty of the deed are dead, and in their last moments exclaimed with horror and despair, “Murder, murder.” But these circumstances do not stamp their race without exception as infamous monsters in wickedness.

The following is a remarkable instance of the love of costly attire in a female Gipsy of the old school. The woman alluded to obtained a very large sum of money from three maiden ladies, pledging that it should be doubled by her art in conjuration. She then decamped to another district, where she bought a blood-horse, a black beaver hat, a new side-saddle and bridle, a silver-mounted whip, and figured away in her ill-obtained finery at the fairs. It is not easy to imagine the disappointment and resentment of the covetous and credulous ladies, whom she had so easily duped. With the present race of our gutter-scum Gipsies the last remnant of Gipsy pride is nearly dead—poverty, rags, and despair taking the place.

Gipsies of the old type are not strangers to pawnbrokers’ shops; but they do not visit these places for the same

purposes as the vitiated poor of our trading towns. A pawnshop is their bank. When they acquire property illegally, as by stealing, swindling, or fortune-telling, they purchase valuable plate, and sometimes in the same hour pledge it for safety. Such property they have in store against days of adversity and trouble, which on account of their dishonest habits often overtake them. Should one of their families stand before a judge of his country, charged with a crime which is likely to cost him his life, or to transport him, every article of value is sacrificed to save him from death or apprehended banishment. In such cases they generally retain a counsel to plead for the brother in adversity. Their attachment to the horse, donkey, rings, snuff-box, silver spoons, and all things, except the clothes, of the deceased relatives is very strong. With such articles they will never part, except in the greatest distress, and then they only pledge some of them, which are redeemed as soon as they possess the means.

It has been stated by some writers, that there is hardly a Gipsy in existence who could not, if desired, produce his ten or twenty pounds “at a pinch.” Some of those who work, no doubt, could; but it is entirely erroneous, as many other statements relating to the Gipsies, to imagine that the whole of them are as well off as all this. Smith tells us that there is not one in twenty who can show one pound, much less twenty. A Gipsy named Boswell travelled about in the Midland counties with a large van pretty well stocked with his wares, and everybody, especially the Gipsies, thought he was a rich man; but in course of time it came to pass that he died, which event revealed the fact that he was not worth half-a-crown. No class of men and women under the sun has been more wicked than the Gipsies, and no class has prospered less. By their evil deeds for centuries they have brought themselves under the curse of God and the lash of the law wherever they have been.

“To our foes we leave a shame! disgrace can never die;
Their sons shall blush to hear a name still blackened with a lie.”

Their miserable condition, the persecution, misrepresentation, and the treatment they are receiving are due entirely to their own evil-doing—lying, cheating, robbing, and murder bring their own reward. The Gipsies of to-day are drinking the dregs of the cups they had mixed for others. The sly wink of the eye intended to touch the heart of the innocent and simple has proved to be the electric spark that has reached heaven, and brought down the vengeance of Jehovah upon their heads. The lies proceeding from their bad hearts have turned out to be a swarm of wasps settling down upon their own pates; their stolen goods have been smitten with God’s wrath; the horses, mules, and donkeys in their unlawful possession are steeds upon which the Gipsies are riding to hell; and the fortune-telling cards are burning the fingers of the Gipsy women; in one word, the curse of God is following them in every footstep on account of their present sins, and not on account of their past traditions. Immediately they alter their course of life, and “cease to do evil and learn to do well”—no matter whether they are Jews or barbarians, bond or free—the blessing of God will follow, and they will begin to thrive and prosper.

Smoking and eating tobacco adds another leaden weight to those already round their neck, and it helps to bow them down to the ground—a short black pipe, the ranker and oftener it has been used the more delicious will be the flavour, and the better they will like it. When their “baccy” is getting “run out,” the short pipe is handed round to the company of Gipsies squatting upon the ground, without any delicacy of feeling, for all of them to “have a pull.” Spittoons are things they never use. White, scented, cambric pocket-handkerchiefs are not often brought into request upon their “lovely faces.” They prefer allowing the bottom of the dresses the honour of appearing before his worship “the nose.” Nothing pleases the

Gipsies better than to give them some of the weed. I saw a poor, dying, old Gipsy woman the other day. Nothing seemed to please her so much, although she could scarcely speak, as to delight in referring to the sins of her youth, of a kind before referred to, and no present was so acceptable to her as “a nounce of baccy.” She said she “would rather have it than gold,” and I “could not have pleased her better.” I doubt whether she lived to smoke it. I think I am speaking within the mark when I state that fully three-fourths of the Gipsy women in this country are inveterate smokers. It is a black, burning shame for us to have such a state of things in our midst. In nine cases out of ten the children of drunken, smoking women will turn out to be worthless scamps and vagabonds, and a glance at the Gipsies will prove my statements.

Eternity will reveal their deeds of darkness—murders, immorality, torturous and heart-rending treatment to their poor slaves of women, beastly and murderous brutality to their poor children. There is a terrible reckoning coming for the “Gipsy man,” who can chuckle to his fowls, and kick, with his iron-soled boot, his poor child to death; who can warm and shelter his blackbird, and send the offspring of his own body to sleep upon rotten straw and the dung-heap, covered over with sticks and rags, through which light, hail, wind, rain, sleet, and snow can find its way without let or hinderance; who can take upon his knees a dog and fondle it in his bosom, and, at the same time, spit in his wife’s face with oaths and cursing, and send her out in the snow on a piercing-cold winter’s day, half clad and worse fed, with child on her back and basket on her arm, to practise the art of double-dyed lying and deception on honest, simple people, in order to bring back her ill-gotten gains to her semi-clad hovel, on which to fatten her “lord and master,” by half-cleaned knuckle-bones, ham-shanks, and pieces of bacon that fall from the “rich man’s table.”

The following is a specimen of house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midlands I have visited. In the room downstairs there were a broken-down old squab, two rickety old chairs, and a three-legged table that had to be propped against the wall, and a rusty old poker, with a smoking fire-place. The Gipsy father was a strong man, not over fond of work; he had been in prison once; the mother, a strong Gipsy woman of the old type, marked with small-pox, and plenty of tongue—by the way, I may say I have not yet seen a dumb and deaf Gipsy. She turned up her dress sleeves and showed me how she had “made the blood run out of another Gipsy woman for hitting her child.” As she came near to me exhibiting her fisticuffing powers, I might have been a little nervous years ago; but dealing with men and things in a rough kind of fashion for so many years has taken some amount of nervousness of this kind out of me.

It may be as well to remark here that the Gipsy women can do their share of fighting, and are as equally pleased to have a stand-up fight as the Gipsy men are. One of these Gipsy women lives with a man who is not a thorough Gipsy, who spends a deal of his time under lock and key on account of his poaching inclinations; and other members of this large family are on the same kind of sliding scale, and not one of whom can read or write.

It is not pleasant to say strong things about clergymen, for whom I have the highest respect; nevertheless, there are times when respect for Christ’s church, duty to country, love for the children and anxiety for their eternal welfare, compels you to step out of the beaten rut to expose, though with pain, wrong-doing. In a day and Sunday school-yard connected with the Church of England, not one hundred miles from London, there are to be seen—and I am informed by them, except during the hop-picking season, that it is their camping-ground, and has been for years—one van, in which there are man, wife, young woman, and a daughter of about fourteen years of age; the young woman

and daughter sleep in a kind of box under the man and his wife. In another part of the yard is a Gipsy tent, where God’s broad earth answers the purpose of a table, and a “batten of straw” serves as a bed. There is a woman, two daughters, one of whom is of marriageable age and the other far in her teens, and a youth I should think about sixteen years of age. I should judge that the mother and her two daughters sleep on one bed at one end of the tent and the youth at the other; there is no partition between them, and only about seven feet of space between each bed of litter. In another tent there is man, wife, and one child. When I was there, on the Sunday afternoon, they were expecting the Gipsy “to come home to his tent drunk and wake the baby.” In another tent there was a Gipsy with his lawful wife and three children. One of the Gipsy women in the yard frequently came home drunk, and I have seen her smoking with a black pipe in her mouth three parts tipsy. Now, I ask my countrymen if this is the way to either improve the habits and morals of the Gipsies themselves, or to set a good example to day and Sunday scholars. Drunkenness is one of the evil associations of Gipsy life. Brandy and “fourpenny,” or “hell fire,” as it is sometimes called, are their chief drinks. A Gipsy of the name of Lee boasted to me only a day or two since that he had been drunk every night for more than a fortnight, his language being, “Oh! it is delightful to get drunk, tumble into a row, and smash their peepers. What care we for the bobbies.” They seldom if ever use tumblers. A large jug is filled with this stuff, in colour and thickness almost like treacle and water, leaving a kind of salty taste behind it as it passes out of sight; but, I am sorry to say, not out of the body, mind, or brain, leaving a trail upon which is written—more! more! more! Under its influence they either turn saints or demons as will best serve their purpose. The more drink some of the Gipsy women get the more the red coloured piety is observable in their faces, and when I have been

talking to them, or otherwise, they have said, “Amen,” “Bless the Lord,” “Oh, it is nice to be ’ligious and Christany,” as they have closed round me; and with the same breath they have begun to talk of murder, bloodshed, and revenge, and to say, “How nice it is to get a living by telling lies.” Half an ounce of tobacco and a few gentle words have a most wonderful effect upon their spirits and nerves under such circumstances. I have frequently seen drunken Gipsy women in the streets of London. Early this year I met one of my old Gipsy women friends in Garrett Lane, Wandsworth, with evidently more than she could carry, and a weakness was observable in her knees; and when she saw me she was not so far gone as not to know who I was. She tried to make a curtsy, and in doing so very nearly lost her balance, and it took her some ten yards to recover her perpendicular. With a little struggling, stuttering, and stumbling, she got right, and pursued her way to the tent.

In December of last year four Gipsies, of Acton Green, were charged before the magistrates at Hammersmith with violently assaulting an innkeeper for refusing to allow them to go into a private part of his house. A terrible struggle ensued, and a long knife was fetched out of their tents, and had they not been stopped the consequences might have been fearful. They were sent to gaol for two months, which would give them time for reflection. A few days ago two Gipsies from the East End of London were sent to gaol for thieving, and are now having their turn upon the wheel of fortune.

“Whirl fiery circles, and the moon is full:
Imps with long tongues are licking at my brow,
And snakes with eyes of flame crawl up my breast;
Huge monsters glare upon me, some with horns,
And some with hoofs that blaze like pitchy brands;
Great trunks have some, and some are hung with beads.
Here serpents dash their stings into my face,
All tipped with fire; and there a wild bird drives
His red-hot talons in my burning scalp.
Here bees and beetles buzz about my ears
Like crackling coals, and frogs strut up and down
Like hissing cinders; wasps and waterflies
Scorch deep like melting minerals. Murther! Fire!”

Cries the Gipsy, as he rolls about on his bed of filthy litter, in a tent whose only furniture is an old tin bucket pierced with holes, a soap-box, and a few rags, with a poor-looking, miserable woman for a wife, and a lot of wretched half-starved, half-naked children crying round him for bread. “Give us bread!” “Give us bread!” is their piteous cry.

The Gipsy in Hungary is a being who has puzzled the wits of the inhabitants for centuries, and the habits of the Hungarian Gipsies are abominable; their hovels, for they do not all live in tents and encampments, are sinks of the vilest poverty and filth; their dress is nothing but rags, and they live on carrion; and it is in this pitiable condition they go singing and dancing to hell. Nothing gives them more pleasure than to be told where a dead pig, horse, or cow may be found, and the Gipsies, young and old, will scamper to fetch it; decomposition rather sharpens their ravenous appetites; at any rate, they will not “turn their noses up” at it in disgust; in fact, Grellmann goes so far as to say that human flesh is a dainty morsel, especially that of children. What applies to the Hungarian Gipsies will to a large extent apply to the Gipsies in Spain, Germany, France, Russia, and our own country. There is no proof of our Gipsies eating children; but if I am to believe their own statements, the dead dogs, cats, and pigs that happen to be in their way run the risk of being potted for soup, and causing a “smacking of the lips” as the heathens sit round their kettle—which answers the purpose of a swill-tub when not needed for cooking—as it hangs over the coke fire, into which they dip their platters with relish and delight. What becomes of the dead donkeys, mules, ponies, and horses that die during their trafficking is best known to

themselves. No longer since than last winter I was told by some Gipsies on the outskirts of London that some of their fraternity had been seen on more than one occasion picking up dead cats out of the streets of London to take home to their dark-eyed beauties and lovely damsels. Only a few days since I was told by a lot of Gipsies upon Cherry Island, and in presence of some of the Lees, that some of their fraternity, and they mentioned some of their names, had often picked up snails, worms, &c., and put them alive into a pan over their coke fires, and as the life was being frizzled out of the creeping things they picked them out of the pan with their fingers and put them into their months without any further ceremony. I cannot for the life of me think that human nature is at such a low ebb among them as to make this kind of life general. At most I should think cases of this kind are exceptional. Their food, whether it be animal or vegetable, is generally turned into a kind of dirty-looking, thick liquid, which they think good enough to be called soup. Their principal meal is about five o’clock, upon the return of the mother after her hawking and cadging expeditions. Their bread, as a rule, is either bought, stolen, or begged. When they bake, which is very seldom, they put their lumps of dough among the red embers of their coke fires. Sometimes they will eat like pigs, till they have to loose their garments for more room, and other times they starve themselves to fiddle-strings. A few weeks since, when snow was on the ground, I saw in the outskirts of London eight half-starved, poor, little, dirty, Gipsy children dining off three potatoes, and drinking the potato water as a relish. They do not always use knife and fork. Table, plates, and dishes are not universal among them. Their whole kitchen and table requirements are an earthen pot, an iron pan, which serves as a dish, a knife, and a spoon. When the meal is ready the whole family sit round the pot or pan, and then “fall to it” with their fingers and teeth, Adam’s knives and forks, and the ground providing the

table and plates. Boiled pork is, as a rule, their universal, every-day, central pot-boiler, and the longer it is boiled the harder it gets, like the Irishman who boiled his egg for an hour to get it soft, and then had to give it up as a bad job. Some of these kind-hearted folks have, on more than one occasion, given me “a feed” of it. It is sweet and nice, but awfully satisfying, and I think two meals would last me for a week very comfortably; all I should require would be to get a good dinner off their knuckle-bones, roll myself up like a hedgehog, doze off like Hubert Petalengro into a semi-unconscious state, and I should be all right for three or four days. “Beggars must not be choosers.” They have done what they could to make me comfortable, and for which I have been very thankful. I have had many a cup of tea with them, and hope to do so again.

One writer observes:—“Commend me to Gipsy life and hard living. Robust exercise, out-door life, and pleasant companions are sure to beget good dispositions both of body and mind, and would create a stomach under the very ribs of death capable of digesting a bar of pig-iron.” Their habits of uncleanliness are most disgusting. Occasionally you will meet with clean people, and children with clean, red, chubby faces; but in nine cases out of ten they are of parents who have had a different bringing up than squatting about in the mud and filth. One woman I know at Notting Hill, and who was born in an Oxfordshire village, is at the present time surrounded with filth of the most sickening kind, which she cannot help, and to her credit manages to keep her children tolerably clean and nice for a woman of her position. There is another at Garrett Lane, Wandsworth; another at Sheepcot Lane, Battersea; two at Upton Park; one at Cherry Island; two at Hackney Wick, and several others in various parts on the outskirts of London. At Hackney Wick I saw twenty tents and vans, connected with which there were forty men and women and about seventy children of all ages, entirely devoid of all

sanitary arrangements. A gentleman who was building some property in the neighbourhood told me that he had seen grown-up youths and big girls running about entirely nude in the morning, and squatting about the ground and leaving their filth behind them more like animals than human beings endowed with souls and reason. When I was there it was with some difficulty I could put my foot in a clean place. The same kind of thing occurs in a more or less degree wherever Gipsies are located, and, sad to relate, house-dwelling Gipsies are very little better in this respect. Grellmann, speaking of the German and Hungarian Gipsies many years ago, says:—“We may easily account for the colour of their skin. The Laplanders, Samoyeds, as well as the Siberians, have bronze, yellow-coloured skins, in consequence of living from their childhood in smoke and dirt, as the Gipsies do. These would long ago have got rid of their swarthy complexions if they had discontinued this Gipsy manner of living. Observe only a Gipsy from his birth till he comes to man’s estate, and one must be convinced that their colour is not so much owing to their descent as to the nastiness of their bodies. In summer the child is exposed to the scorching sun, in winter it is shut up in a smoky hut. Some mothers smear their children over with black ointment, and leave them to fry in the sun or near the fire. They seldom trouble themselves about washing or other modes of cleaning themselves. Experience also shows us that it is more their manner of life than descent which has propagated this black colour of the Gipsies from generation to generation.” I am told, and I verily believe it, that many of the children are not washed for years together. I have seen over and over again dirt peeling off the poor children’s bodies and faces like a skin, and leaving a kind of white patch behind it, presenting a kind of a piebald spectacle. Some of the children never take their clothes off till they drop off in shreds. Many of the Gipsies, both old and young, have only one suit of

clothes. English delicacy of feeling and sentiment for female virtue must stand abashed with horror at this kind of civilisation in the nineteenth century of Christian England. I have seen washing done on the Sunday afternoon among them, and while the clothes have been drying on the line the women and children have been roasting themselves before the fires in nearly a nude state. A Sunday or two ago a poor Gipsy woman was washing her only smoky-looking blanket late in the afternoon, and upon which she would have to lay that night. It was a cold, wintry, drizzling afternoon, and how it was to get dry was a puzzle to me. A Gipsy woman, named Hearn, said to me a few days ago, in answer to some conversation relating to their dirty habits; “The reason for the Gipsies not washing themselves oftener was on account of their catching cold after each time they washed.” She “only washed herself once in a fortnight, and she was almost sure to catch cold after it.” In some things the real old Gipsies are very particular, i.e., they will on no account take their food out of cups, saucers, or basins, that have been washed in the same pansions in which their linen has been washed; so sensitive are they on this point that if they found out that by an accident this custom had been transgressed they would immediately break the vessel to pieces. This is a custom picked up by the Gipsies among the Jews in their wandering from India through the Holy Land. Another practice they adopt in common with the Jews is, swearing or taking oaths over their dead relations. The customs, practices, and words picked up by them during their wanderings have added to their mystification. While they will respect certain delicacy observed among the Jews, they will eat pork, the most detestable of all food in the eyes of the Israelites, and will even pay a greater price for it than for beef or mutton. An Englishwoman, who had married a Gipsy named Smith, told me very recently, in presence of her mother-in-law and another woman, that she had seen her husband eat a small

plate of cooked snails as a dainty. While the daughter-in-law was telling me this, the old Gipsy mother-in-law, with one foot in the grave, not far from Mary’s Place, near the Potteries, Notting Hill, was trying to make me believe what a choice dish there was in store for me if I would allow her to cook me a hedgehog. She said I should “find it nicer than the finest rabbit or pheasant I had ever tasted.” The fine, old, Gipsy woman, as regards her appearance, although suffering from congestion of lungs and inflammation, and expecting every moment to be her last, would joke and make fun as if nothing was the matter with her. When I questioned her upon the sin of lying, she said, “If the dear Lord spares me, I shall tell lies again. I could not get on without it; how could I? I could not sell my things without lies.” She was rather severe, and this was a pleasing feature in the old woman’s character, upon a Gipsy who was pretending to “’ligious,” and yet living upon the money gained by his wife in telling fortunes. She said, “If I must be ‘’ligious,’ I would be ‘’ligious.’ You might,” said the old woman, “as well eat the devil as suck his broth. Ah! I hate the fellow.” After asking her, and getting her interpretation of “God bless you” in Romany, which is Mi-Doovel-Parik-tooti—and she was the only Gipsy round London who could put the words in Romany—and some other conversation accompanied with “coppers and baccy,” &c., and to which she replied, “Amen!” with as much earnestness as if she was the greatest saint outside heaven, we parted.

Much has been said and written years ago about the chastity, fidelity, and faithfulness of the Gipsies towards each other. This may have been the case, and in a few exceptional cases it holds good now; but if I am to believe these men themselves they are very isolated indeed, and what I have said upon this point about the brick-yard employés in my “Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards of England,” and also those living in canal-boats, in “Our

Canal Population,” holds good, but with ten times more force concerning the Gipsies. Immorality abounds to a most alarming degree. Incest, wantonness, lasciviousness, lechery, whoring, bigamy, and every other abomination low, degrading, carnal appetites, propensity, and lust originate and encourage they practise openly, without the least blush; in fact, I question if many of them know what it is to blush at all.

I have heard a deal of disgusting, filthy language in my time among brick-yard and canal-boat women, but not a tithe so sickening as among some Gipsy women. I pitied them, and to look upon them as charitably as possible I set it down to their extreme ignorance of the language they used. A Gipsy at Upton Park last week named D--- gloried to my face in the fact that he was not married. This same man has a brother not far from Mitcham Common living with two sisters in an unlawful state. Abraham Smith, a Gipsy at Upton Park, who is over seventy, and tells me that he is trying to serve God and get to heaven, mentioned a case to me of a Gipsy and a woman at Hackney Wick. The man has several children by a woman now living with another man, and the woman has several children by another man.

This Gipsy, S---, and his woman S---, turned both lots of their former own children adrift upon the wide, wide world, uncared for, unprotected, and abandoned, while they are living and indulging in sin to their hearts’ content, without the least shame and remorse. Inquire of whoever I may, and look whichever way Providence directs me among the various phases of Gipsy life, I find the same black array of facts staring me in the face, the same dolorous issues everywhere. The words reason, honour, restraint, and fidelity are words not to be found in their vocabulary. My later inquiries fully confirm my previous statements as to two-thirds living as husband and wife being unmarried. I have not found a Gipsy to contradict this statement. Abraham Smith fully agrees with it.

The marriage ceremony of the Gipsies is a very off-hand affair. Formerly there used to be some kind of ceremony performed by a friend. Now the ceremony is not performed by any one. Of course there are a few who get married at the church, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is performed by the clergyman gratuitously. As soon as a boy has arrived in his teens he begins to think that something more than eating and drinking is necessary to him, and as the children of Gipsies are under no kind of parental, moral, or social restraint, a connection is easily formed with girls of twelve, some of them of close relationship. After a few hours, in many cases, of courtship, they go together, and the affair so far is over. They leave their parents’ tents and set up one for themselves, and for a short time this kind of life lasts. In course of time children are born, the only attendant being, in many instances, another Gipsy woman, or it may be members of their own families see to the poor woman in her hour of need. If they have no vessel in which to wash the newly-born child, they dig a hole in the ground, which is filled with cold water, and the Gipsy babe is washed in it. This being over, the poor little thing is wrapped in some old rags. This was the custom years ago, and I verily believe the Gipsies have gone backwards instead of forwards in matters of this kind.

The following brief account of a visit—one of many I have made to Gipsy encampments at Hackney Marshes and other places during the present winter—will give some faint idea of what Gipsy life is in this country, as seen by me during my interviews with the Gipsies. The morning was dark; the snow was falling fast; about six inches of snow and slush were upon the ground—my object being in this case, as in others, viz., to visit them at inclement seasons of the weather to find as many of the Gipsies in their tents as possible, and as I closed my door I said, “Lord, direct me,” and off I started, not knowing which way to go. Ultimately I found my way to Holborn, and took the ’bus, and,

as I thought, to Hackney, which turned out to be “a delusion and a snare,” for at the terminus I found myself some two and a half miles from the Marshes; however, I was not going to turn back if the day was against me, and after laying in a stock of sweets for the Gipsy children, and “baccy” for the old folks, I commenced my squashy tramp till I arrived at the Marshes; the difficulty here was the road leading to the tents being covered ankle deep with snow and water, but as my feet were pretty well wet I could be no worse off if I paddled through it. Consequently, after these little difficulties were overcome, I found myself in the midst of about a score of tents and vans of all sizes and descriptions, connected with which there were not less than thirty-five grown-up Gipsies and about sixty poor little Gipsies. The first van I came to was a kind of one-horse cart with a cover over it; inside was a strong, hulking-looking fellow and a poor, sickly-looking woman with five children. The woman had only been confined a few days, and looked more fit for “the box” than to be washing on such a cold, wintry day. On a bed—at least, some rags—were three poor little children, one of whom was sick, which the mother tried to prevent by putting her dirty apron to the child’s mouth. The large, piercing eyes of this poor, death-looking Gipsy child I shall never forget; they have looked into my innermost soul scores of times since then, and every time I think about this sight of misery the sickly child’s eyes seem to cry out, “Help me! Help me!” The poor woman said it was the marshes that caused the illness, but my firm opinion is that it was neither more nor less than starvation. The poor woman seemed to be given up to despair. A few questions put to her in the momentary absence of the man elicited the fact that she was no Gipsy. She had been brought up as a Sunday-school scholar and teacher, and had been beguiled away from her home by this “Gipsy man.” She said she could tell me a lot if I would come some other time. She also said, “Gipsy life as it is at present carried out ought

to be put a stop to, and would be if people knew all.” With a few coppers given to her and the children we parted. In another tent on the marshes there was a man, woman, and six children. The tent was about twelve feet long, six feet six inches wide, and an average height of about three feet, making a total of about two hundred and thirty-four cubic feet of space for man, wife, and six children. These were of both sexes, grown-up and in their teens. Their bed was straw upon the damp ground, and their sheets, rags. The man was half-drunk, and the poor children were running about half-naked and half-starved. The woman had some Gipsy blood in her veins, but the man was an Englishman, and had, so he said, been a soldier. With a few coppers and sweets among the children, and in the midst of “Good-byes!” and “God bless you’s!” I left them, promising to pay them another visit. Out of these twenty families only three were properly married, and only two could read and write, and these were the poor woman who had been a Sunday-school scholar and the man who had been a soldier, and, strange to say, the children of these two people could not read a sentence or tell a letter. No minister ever visited them, and not one ever attended a place of worship. In a visit to an encampment in another part of London I came across a poor Irishwoman, who had been allured away from her respectable home at the age of sixteen by one of the Gipsy gang. When I saw her she was sitting crying, with two half-starved children by her side, who, owing to the coke fire, had bad eyes. Their home was an old ragged tent, and their bed, rotten straw. When I saw them, and it was about one o’clock, they had not tasted food for twenty-four hours. I sent for a loaf for them, and they set to work upon it with as much relish as if they had been gnawing at the leg of a Christmas fat turkey. The poor Gipsy woman had been a Sunday-school scholar, and could read and write, but neither her husband nor children could tell a letter. Her taking to Gipsy life had broken her father’s heart. Her eldest child,

a fine little girl of about seven years of age, had been taken from her by her friends, and was being educated and cared for. A few weeks since the little daughter was anxious to see her mother, consequently she was taken to her tent; but, sad to relate, instead of the daughter going to kiss her mother, as she would expect, she turned away from her with a shudder and a shriek, and for the whole day the child did nothing but cry. It would not touch a morsel of anything. The only pleasant look that came upon its countenance was as it was leaving. As the poor child was leaving the tent she would not kiss her mother or say the usual “Good-bye” as she went away. This poor woman, as in the case of the woman at Hackney, said she could tell me a lot of things, which she would some time, and said, “Gipsy life ought to be put a stop to, for there was something about it more than people knew,” and I thoroughly believe what this poor woman says. It is my firm conviction that there is much more in connection with Gipsy life than many people imagine, or is dreamt of in their philosophy. There is a substratum of iniquity lower than any writers have ever touched. There are certain things in connection with their dark lives, hidden and veiled by their slang language, that may not come out in my day, but most surely daylight will be shed upon them some day. They will kill and murder each other, fight and quarrel like hyenas, but certain things they will not divulge, and so long as the well-being of society is not in danger I suppose we have no right to interfere. A query arises here. Their past actions back me up in this theory. Upon Mitcham Common last week there were nearly two hundred tents and vans. In one tent, which may be considered a specimen of many others, there were two men and their wives, and about twelve children of both sexes and of all ages. In another tent there were nine children of both sexes and all ages, some of them men and women, and for the life of me I cannot tell how they are all packed when they sleep—I suppose like herrings in a box, pell-mell, “all

of a heap.” One of these Gipsy young women was a model, and has her time pretty much occupied during the day. I have been among house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midland counties, and have found twelve to fifteen men, women, and children, squatting about on the floor, which they used as a workshop, sitting-room, drawing-room, and bed-room; although there was a bed-room up-stairs it was not often used—so I was told by the landlady.

There is much more sickness among the Gipsies than is generally known, especially among the children. They have strong faith in herbs; the principal being chicken-weed, groundsel, elder leaves, rue, wild sage, love-wort, agrimony, buckbean, wood-betony, and others; these they boil in a saucepan like they would cabbages, and then drink the decoction. They only go to the chemist or surgeon at the last extremity. They are very much like the man who tried by degrees to train his donkey to live and work without food, and just as he succeeded the poor Balaam died; and so it is with the poor Gipsy children. It kills them to break them in to the hardships of Gipsy life. Occasionally I have heard of Gipsies who act as human beings should do with their children. A well-to-do Gipsy whom I know—one of the Lees, a son of Mrs. Simpson—has spent over £30 in doctors’ bills this winter for his children’s good. Not one Gipsy in a thousand would do likewise.

Gipsies die like other folk, although before doing so they may have lived and quarrelled like the Kilkenny cats among other Gipsies; but at death these things are all forgotten, and a Gipsy funeral seems to be the means to revive all the good they knew about the person dead and a burying of all the bad connected with the dead Gipsy’s life. I am now referring to a few of the better class of Gipsies. Gipsies, as a rule, pay special regard to the wishes of a dying Gipsy, and will sacrifice almost anything to carry them out. I attended the funeral of a house-dwelling Gipsy, Mrs. Roberts, at Notting Hill, a few weeks ago. The editor and proprietor of the Suburban Press,

refers to this funeral in his edition under date February 28th, as follows:—“On Monday last a noteworthy event took place in the humble locality of the Potteries, Notting Dale. In this district are congregated a miscellaneous population of the poorest order, who get what living they can out of the brick-fields or adjoining streets and lanes, or by costermongering, tinkering, &c., &c. They dwell together in the poorest and most melancholy-looking cottages, some in sheds and outhouses, or in dilapidated vans, for it is the resort and locale of many of the Gipsies that wander in the western suburbs. Yet all these make up a kind of community and live together as friends and neighbours, and every now and again they show themselves amenable to good influences, and characters of humble mark and power arise among them. To those who sympathise with the poet who sings of the

“‘Short and simple annals of the poor,’

we scarcely know a region that can be studied to greater advantage. In the present instance it was the funeral of an old inhabitant of the Gipsy tribe, one of the oldest, most respected, and loved of all the nomads, and related in some way to many Gipsy families in London and the neighbouring counties. Abutting from the Walmer Road is a good sized court or alley called ‘Mary Place,’ and in a nook of one of the small cottages here lived Mrs. Roberts for a number of years, who has been described to us by one who long enjoyed her acquaintance as ‘a very superior woman, intelligent and happy Christian.’ So that she must indeed have shone in that humble and sombre spot as a ‘gem of purest ray serene,’ though not exactly as the flower

“‘Born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.’

For the comprehensive genius of Christian sympathy and labour had found her out, and she was known and respected, and her influence was felt by all around her. She lived for

years a widow, but with five grown-up, strong, and thrifty children—two sons and three daughters and troops of friends—to cheer her latter days. The preliminaries—a service of song conducted by Mr. Adams and his sons—were soon over, and the coffin being lifted through the window was placed on the strong shoulders which had been appointed to convey it to Brompton Cemetery, a distance of some three miles. It was a neat coffin, covered with black cloth, and when the pall had been thrown over it affectionate hands placed upon it two or three large handsome wreaths of immortals white as snow, and so the procession moved off followed by weeping sons, daughters, and friends, and a host of sympathising neighbours, to the strains of the ‘Dead March in Saul.’ Requiescat in pace. Among those present at this interesting ceremony standing next to us, and sharing in part our umbrella, was a gentleman whose name and vocation we were not aware until afterwards. We were glad, however, to learn that we were unwittingly conversing with no other than Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, the philanthropic and well-known promoter of the ‘Brick-maker’s’ and ‘Canal Boatman’s’ Acts, who has specially devoted himself to the improvement of the social condition of these too-neglected people. He is now giving his attention to the case of the Gipsies, and specially to the children, to whom he is anxious to see extended among other things the provisions of the School Board Act. The great and good work of Mr. Smith has already attracted the attention of a number of charitable Christian people, and it has not been overlooked by Her Majesty the Queen, who, with her accustomed care and kindness, has expressed her special interest therein.” She was a good, Christian woman, and I think I am speaking within bounds when I say that there is not one in five hundred like she was. Before she died she wished for two things to be carried out at her funeral—one was that she should be carried on Gipsies’ shoulders all the way to Brompton Cemetery, a distance of some miles; and the

other was that Mr. Adams, a gentleman in the neighbourhood, should conduct a service of song just before the funeral cortége left the humble domicile; both requests were carried out, notwithstanding that it was a pouring wet day. The service of song was very impressive, surrounded as we were by some two hundred Gipsies and others of the lowest of the low, living in one of the darkest places in London. Some stood with their mouths open and appeared as if they had not heard of the name of Jesus before, and there were others whose features betokened strong emotion, and upon whose cheeks could be seen the trickling tears as we sung, among others:—

“Shall we gather at the river,
Where bright angels’ feet have trod,
With its crystal tide for ever
Flowing by the throne of God?
Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river,
That flows by the throne of God.

“Soon we’ll reach the silvery river,
Soon our pilgrimage will cease,
Soon our happy hearts will quiver,
With the melody of peace.
Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river,
That flows by the throne of God.”

It has frequently been stated that the Gipsies never allow their poor to go into the union workhouses; this statement is both erroneous, false, and misleading. Clayton, a Gipsy, at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, told me only the other day that he knew an old Gipsy woman who was living in the Melton Mowbray Union Workhouse at the present time, and mentioned some others who had died in the union, a few connected with his own family. Abraham Smith, a respectable and an old Christian Gipsy, mentioned the names of a dozen or more Gipsies of his acquaintance who had died in the

union workhouse, some in the Biggleswade Union, of the name of Shaw. There was a time when there was a little repugnance to the union, but this feeling has died out, thus adding another proof that the Gipsies, in many respects, are not so good as what they were fifty years or more ago; and this fact, to my mind, calls loudly for Government interference as regards the education of the children. Abraham Smith also further stated that nearly all the old people belonging to one family of S--- had died in the workhouse in Bedfordshire. Another thing has forced itself upon my attention, viz., that there seems to be a number of poor unfortunate idiots among them. I know, for a fact, of one family where there are two poor creatures, one of whom is in the asylum, and of another family where there is one, and a number in various parts where they are semi-idiotic, and only next door to the asylum. These painful facts will plainly show to all Christian-thinking men and women, and to others who love their country and seeks its welfare, that the time has arrived for the Gipsies to be taken hold of in a plain, practical, common-sense manner by those at the helm of affairs, and placed in such a position as to help themselves to some of the blessings we are in possession of ourselves. During all my inquiries, when the Gipsies have not fallen in with all I have said with reference to Gipsy life, they have all agreed without exception to the plan I have sketched out for the education of their children and the registration of their tents, &c.

In the days of Hoyland and Borrow the Gipsies were very anxious for the education of their children and struggled hard themselves to bring it about. Sixty years ago one of the Lovells sent three of his children to school, at No. 5, George Street, taught by Partak Ivery, and paid sixpence per week each with them; but the question of religion came up and the children were sent home. The schoolmaster, Ivery, said that he had had six Gipsy children sent to his school, and when placed among the other children they

were reduceable to order. It is a standing disgrace and a shame to us as a nation professing Christianity that at this time we had in our midst ten to fifteen thousand poor little heathen children thirsting for knowledge, and no one to hand it to them or put them in the way to help themselves. The sin lays at some one’s door, and I would not like to be in their shoes for something. While this dense ignorance was manifest among the poor Gipsy children at our doors we were scattering the Bibles all over the world, and sending missionaries by hundreds to foreign lands and supporting them by hundreds of thousands of pounds gladly subscribed by our hard-working artisans and others. Not that I am finding fault with those who take an interest in foreign missions in the least—would to God that more were done for every nation upon the face of the globe—but I do think in matters relating to the welfare of the children we ought to look more at home.

With reference to missionary effort among the Gipsies, I must confess that I am not a strong advocate for a strictly sectarian missionary organisation to be formed with headquarters in London, and a paid staff of officials, to convert the Gipsies. If the act is passed upon the basis I have laid down, the result will be that in course of time the Gipsies will be localised. I am strongly in favour of all sections of Christ’s Church dealing with our floating population, whether upon land or water, in their own localities, and in a kind of spirit of holy rivalry among themselves, if I may use the term. For the life of me I cannot see why temporary wooden erections, something of the “penny-gaff” style, should not be erected upon race-courses, and in the market-places during fair time, in which religious services could be held free from all sectarian bias, and which could be called the Showman’s or Gipsy’s Church. There are times when a short interesting service could be held without coming in collision with the steam whistles of the “round-abouts,” “big drums,” reports from the “rifle galleries,” the screams and shouts of stall-keepers;

and at any rate, I think it would be better to have a number of organisations at work rather than one, dealing both with our Gipsies and canal-boatmen. In whatever form missionary effort is put forth, it must go further than that of a clergyman, who told me one Sunday afternoon last year, after he had been preaching in the most fashionable church in Kensington, to the effect that, if any of the large number of Gipsies who encamped in his parish in the country, and not far from the vicarage, “raised their hats to him as he passed them, he returned the compliment.” Poor stuff this to educate their children and to civilise and Christianise their parents.

It is my decided opinion that if the Gipsy children had been taken hold of at that day, and placed side by side with the children of other working classes, we should not by this time have had a Gipsy wigwam flitting about our country; fifty years’ educational influences mean, to a great extent, their present and eternal salvation. A tremendous responsibility and sin hangs, and will hang, about the necks of those who have in the past, or will in the future, shut the door of the school in the face of the poor Gipsy child, and turn it into the streets to perish everlastingly. I am confident the Gipsies will do their part if a simple plan for its accomplishment can be set in motion. Harshness, cruelty, and insult, rigid, and extreme measures will do no good with the Gipsies. Fiery persecution will only frustrate my object. God knows, they are bad enough, and I have no wish to mince matters, or to paint them white, as fiction has done. I have tried—how far I have succeeded it is not for me to say—to expose the evils, and not individuals, thoroughly, in accordance with my duty to my God, my country, and my conscience, without partiality, bias, or fear, be the consequences what they may. To write a book full of glowing colour, pictures, fancies, imagination, and fiction, is both more profitable and pleasant. The waft of a scented pocket-handkerchief across one’s face by the hand of a fair

and lovely damsel is only as a fleeting shadow and a passing vapour; they quickly come and they quickly go, leaving no footstep behind them; a shooting star and a flitting comet, and all is in darkness blacker than ever. Somehow or other the Gipsies will, if possible, encamp near a school, but they lack the power to enter, and some of them, no doubt, could send their children to school for a few days occasionally; but the Gipsies have got it in their heads that their children are not wanted, and this is the case with the show people’s children. Last autumn I saw myself an encampment of Gipsies upon Turnham Green; there were about thirty Gipsy children playing upon the school-fence, not one of whom could either read or write. The school was only half full, and the teacher was looking very pleasantly out of the door of the school upon the poor, ignorant children as they were rolling about in the mud. In another part of London a Gipsy owns some cottages, with some spare land between each cottage; upon this land there is her own van and a number of other vans and tents, for which standing ground they pay the Gipsy woman a rent of one shilling and sixpence per week each. Neither herself nor any of the Gipsies connected with the encampment could tell a letter, and there were some sixty to seventy men, women, and children of all ages; and the strange part of the thing is, the Gipsy woman’s tenants in her cottages were compelled by the School Board officer to send their children to school, while the Gipsy children were running wild like colts, and revelling in dirt and filth in the neighbourhood. A similar state of things to this exists in a more or less degree with all the other encampments on the outskirts of London. At one of the large encampments I tried to find if there were really any who could read and write, and to put this to the test I took the Christian World and the Christian Globe with me. The Gipsy lad who they said was “a clever scholard” was brought to me, and I put the Christian World before him to see if he could read the large

letters; sad to say, instead of Christian World, he called it “Christmas,” and there he stuck and could get no further. I have said some strong things, and endeavoured to lay bare some hard facts relating to Gipsy life in the preceding part of this book, with a view to enlist help and sympathy for the poor children, and not to submit the Gipsy fathers to insult and ridicule.

From the mode of living among the Gipsies, the mother is often necessitated to leave her tent in the morning, and seldom returns to it before night. Their children are then left in or about their solitary camps, having many times no adult with them; the elder children then have the care of the younger ones. Those who are old enough gather wood for fuel; nor is stealing it thought a crime. By the culpable neglect of the parents in this respect the children are often exposed to accidents by fire, and melancholy instances of children being burnt and scalded to death are not unfrequent. One poor woman relates that two of her children have thus lost their lives by fire during her absence from her tent at different periods, and some years ago a child was scalded to death at Southampton.

The following account will faintly show something of the hardships of Gipsy children’s lives:—It was winter, and the weather was unusually cold, there being much snow on the ground. The tent, which was only covered with a ragged blanket, was pitched on the lee side of a small hawthorn bush. The children had stolen a few green sticks from the hedges, but they would not burn. There was no straw in the tent, and only one blanket to lay betwixt six children and the frozen ground, with nothing to cover them. The youngest of these children was three and the eldest seventeen years old. In addition to this wretchedness the smaller children were nearly naked. The youngest was squatted on the ground, her little feet and legs bare, and gnawing a frozen turnip which had been stolen from an adjoining field. None of them had tasted bread for more than a day. The

moment they saw their visitor, the little ones repeatedly shouted, “Here is the gemman come for us!” Some money was given to the eldest sister to buy bread with, at which their joy was greatly increased. Straw was also provided for them to sleep on, four were measured for clothes, and after a few days they were placed under proper care. The youngest child died, however, a short time after in consequence of having been so neglected in infancy.

During last June a Gipsy woman, of the name of Bishop, was found in one of the tents, on a common just outside London, with her throat cut and her child lying dead by her side in a pool of blood, and the man with whom she cohabited—true to his Gipsy character—refused to answer any questions concerning this horrible affair. An impression has gone the round for years that the Gipsies are exceedingly kind and affectionate to their children, in some instances it, no doubt, is true, but they are rare indeed if I may judge from appearances. I have yet to learn that starvation, allowing their children to grow up infinitely worse than barbarians, subjecting them to fearful oaths and curses, and inflicting upon the poor children blows with sticks, used with murderous passion, to within an inch of their lives, exhibits much of the lamb-like spirit, dove-like innocence, and childish simplicity fiction would picture to our minds concerning these English barbarians as they camp on the mossy banks on a hot summer day. In the presence of myself and a friend one of these lawless fellows very recently hurled a log of wood at a poor Gipsy child’s head for an offence which we could not learn, farther than it was for a trifling affair; fortunately, it missed the poor child’s head, or death must have been the result. In visiting an encampment last autumn I came across six Gipsy children having their dinner off three small boiled turnips, and drinking the water as broth; the eldest girl, although dressed in rags, was going to sit the same afternoon for a leading artist upon a throne as a Spanish queen. In another part of London—

Mary Place—I found a family of Gipsies living under sticks and rags in the most filthy, sickening, and disgusting backyard I have ever been into—to such an extent was the stench that immediately I came out of it I had to get a little brandy or I should have fainted—the eldest girl of whom had her time pretty fully taken up by sitting as an artist’s model in the costume of a peasant girl, sometimes gathering buttercups and daisies, at other times gathering roses and making button-holes for gentlemen’s coats and placing them there with gentle hands and a smiling face; occasionally she would be painted as a country milk-girl driving the cows to pasture; at other times as a young lady playing at croquet on the lawn and gambolling with children. What a contrast, what a delusion! from rags to silks and satins; from a filthy abode not fit for pigs to a palace; from turnips and diseased bacon to wine and biscuits; from beds of rotten straw to crimson and gold-covered chairs; from trampling among dead cats to a carpet composed of wild flowers; from “Get out you wretch and fetch some money, no matter how,” to “Come here, my dear, is there anything I can do for you?” from the stench of a cesspool to the fragrance of the honeysuckle and sweetbriar, in one word, from hell to heaven all in an hour—such is one side of Gipsy life among the little Gipsies, not one of whom can read a sentence or write one word, and it is in this way Gipsy girls are found exposing their bodies to keep their big, healthy brothers and fathers at home in idleness and sin. Two such Gipsy girls have come under my own notice, and no doubt there are scores of similar cases. Gipsy children are fond of a great degree of heat, and sometimes lie so near to the coke fires as to be in danger of burning. I have seen them with their faces as red as if they were upon the point of being roasted, and yet they can bear to travel in the severest cold bare-headed, with no other covering than some old rags carelessly thrown over them. The cause of their bodily qualities, at least some of them, arises from their education and hardy manner of life.

Formerly the Gipsies, when there was less English blood in their veins, could stand the extreme changes and hardships of the English climate much better than now. An Englishman, notwithstanding the fact that he has let go all moral and social respect and restraint over his conduct and joined the Gipsies, does not, and cannot, thrive and look well under their manner of living, and this I see more and more every day. I have been struck very forcibly lately in visiting some of the hordes of Gipsies with the vast number of children the Gipsies bring into the world and the few that are reared. At one encampment there were forty men and women and only about the same number of children to be seen. At another encampment I found double the quantity of children to adult Gipsies.

No one can deny the fact that some of the children look well, but, on the other hand, a vast number look quite the reverse of this, pictures of starvation, neglect, bad blood, and cruelty. An Englishman is born for a nobler purpose than to lead a vagabond’s life and end his days in scratching among filth and vermin in a Gipsy’s wigwam, consequently, upon those of our own countrymen who have forsaken the right path, the sin attending such a course is dogging them at every footstep they take. I don’t lay at the door of their wigwam the sin of child-stealing, but this I have seen, i.e., many strange-looking children in their tents without the least shadow of a similarity to the adults in either habits, appearance, manner, or conversation. Some of the poor things seemed shy and reserved, and quite out of their element. Sometimes the thought has occurred to me that they were the children of sin, and put out of the way to escape shame being painted upon the back of their parents. Sometimes my pity for the poor things has led me to put a question or two bearing upon the subject to the Gipsies, and the answer has been, “The poor things have lost their father and mother.” When I have asked if the fathers and mothers were Gipsies a little hesitation was manifested, and the subject

dropped with no satisfactory answer to my mind. I have my own idea about the matter.

The hardships the women have to undergo are most heartrending. The mother, in order to procure a morsel of food, takes her three months’ old child either in her arms or on her back, and wanders the streets or lanes in foul or fair weather—in heat or cold. Some of them have told me that they walk on an average over twelves miles a day. They are the bread-winners. I have seen them on their return to their wigwams, in the depth of winter, with six inches of snow on the ground, and scantily clad, and with six little children crying round them for bread. No fire in the tent, and her husband idling about in other tents. In cases of confinements, the men have to do something, or they would all starve. For a few days they wake up out of their idle dreams. I know of Gipsy women who have trudged along with their loads, and their children at their heels, to within the last five minutes of their confinement. The children were literally born under the hedge bottom, and without any tent or protection whatever. A Gipsy woman told me a week or two since that her mother had told her that she was born under the hedge bottom in Bagworth Lane, in Leicestershire. When I questioned her on the subject, she rather gloried in the fact that they had not time to stick the tent-sticks into the ground. This kind of disgraceful procedure is not far removed from that of animals. I should think that I am speaking within compass when I state that two-thirds of the Gipsies travelling about the country have been born under what they call the “hedge bottom,” i.e., in tents and like places. The Gipsy women use no cradles; the child, as a rule, sleeps on the ground. When a boy attains three years of age, so says Hoyland, the rags he was wrapped in are thrown on one side, and he is equally exposed with the parents to the severest weather. He is then put to trial to see how far his legs will carry him. Clayton told me that when he was a boy of about twelve, his father sent

him into the town and among the villages—with no other covering upon him only a piece of an old shirt—to bring either bread or money home, no matter how.

Among some of the State projects put forth in Hungary more than a century since to improve the condition of the Gipsies, the following may be mentioned: (1) They were prohibited from dwelling in huts and tents, from wandering up and down the country, from dealing in horses, from eating animals which died of themselves and carrion. (2) They were to be called New Boors instead of Gipsies, and they were not to converse in any other language but that of any of the countries in which they chose to reside. (3) After some months from the passing of the Act, they were to quit their Gipsy manner of life and settle, like the other inhabitants, in cities or villages, and to provide themselves with suitable and proper clothing. (4) No Gipsy was allowed to marry who could not prove himself in a condition to provide for and maintain a wife and children. (5) That from such Gipsies who were married and had families, the children should be taken away by force, removed from their parents, relations, or intercourse with the Gipsy race, and to have a better education given to them. At Fahlendorf, in Schütt, and in the district of Prassburg, all the children of the New Boors (Gipsies) above five years old were carried away in waggons on the night of the twenty-first of December, 1773, by overseers appointed for that purpose, in order, that, at a distance from their parents or relations, they might be more usefully educated and sent to work. (6) They were to be taught the principles of religion, and their children educated. Their children were prohibited running about their houses, streets, or roads naked, and they were not to be allowed to sleep promiscuously by each other without distinction of sex. (7) They were enjoined to attend church regularly, and to give proof of their Christian disposition, and they were not to wear large cloaks, which were chiefly used to hide the

things they had stolen. (8) They were to be kept to agriculture, and were only to be permitted to amuse themselves with music when their day’s work was finished. (9) The magistrates at every place were to be very attentive to see that no Gipsy wasted his time in idleness, and whoever was remiss in his work was to be liable to corporal punishment.

All these suggestions and plans of operation may not suit English life; be that as it may, they were suitable to the condition of the Hungarian Gipsies, and no doubt laid the foundation for the improvement that has taken place among them. The Hungarian Gipsies are educated, and are tillers of the soil. If a plan similar in some respects had been carried out with our Gipsies at the same period, we should not by this time have had a Gipsy-tent in the country, or an uneducated Gipsy in our land. What a different aspect would have presented itself ere this, if the 5,000 Gipsies among us had been tilling our waste lands and commons for the last century. With proper management, these 5,000 Gipsy men could have bought and kept under cultivation some 20,000 acres of land for the well-being of themselves and for the good of the country. There is neglect, indifference, and apathy somewhere. The blame will lay heavily upon some one when the accounts are made up.

It is appalling and humiliating to think that we, as a Christian nation, should have had in our midst for more than three centuries 15,000 to 20,000 poor ignorant Asiatic heathens, naturally sharp and clever, and next to nothing being done to reclaim them from their worse than midnight darkness. A heavy sin and responsibility lays at our doors. Take away John Bunyan, a few of the Smiths, Palmers, Lovells, Lees, Hearns, Coopers, Simpsons, Boswells, Eastwoods, Careys, Roberts, &c., and what do we find?—a black army of human beings who have done next to nothing—comparatively speaking—for the country’s good. They have cadged at our doors, lived on our commons, worn our

roads, been fed from our tables, sent their paupers to our workhouses, their idiots to our asylums, and not contributed one farthing to their maintenance and support. Rates and taxes are unknown to them. There is only one instance of them paying rates for their vans, and that is at Blackpool.

It is a black, burning shame and disgrace to see herds of healthy-looking girls and great strapping youths growing up in ignorance and idleness, not so much as exerting themselves to wash the filth off their bodies or make anything better than skewers. Their highest ambition is to learn slang, roll in the ditch, spread small-pox and fevers, threaten vengeance, and carry out revenge upon those who attempt to frustrate their evil designs. Excepting skewers, clothes-pegs, and a few other little things of this kind, they have not manufactured anything; the highest state of perfection they have arrived at is to be able to make and tie up a bundle of skewers, split a clothes-peg, tinker a kettle, mend a chair, see-saw on an old fiddle, rap their knuckles on a tambourine, clatter about with their feet, tickle the guitar, and make a squeaking noise through their teeth, that fiction and romance call singing. The most that can be said in their favour is, that a few of them have become respectable Christians and hard-working men and women, and have done something for the country’s good—and whose fault is it that there are not more? They have been the agents of hell, working out Satan’s designs, and we have stood by laughing and admiring their so-called pretty faces, scarlet cloaks, and “witching eyes.” For the life of me I can find no more bewitching beauty among them than can be found in our back slums any day, circumstances considered—and where does the blame lay?—upon our own shoulders for not paying more attention to the education and welfare of their children. It is truly horrible to think that we have had 15,000 to 20,000 young and old Gipsies at work, carrying out the designs of the infernal regions at the tip end of the roots of our national life, vigour, and Christianity.

Only the other day the country was much shocked, and rightly so, at a hundred poor Russian emigrants landing upon our shores; and yet we have two hundred times this quantity of Gipsies among us, and we quietly stand by and take no notice of their wretched condition. The time will come, and that speedily, when we shall have the scales taken off our eyes, and the thin, flimsy veil of romance torn to shreds. Sitting by and admiring their “pretty faces” and “witching eyes” will not save their souls, educate their children, or put them in the way of earning an honest livelihood. It is not pity—whining, sycophantic pity—alone that will do them good. The Rev. Mr. Cobbin’s Gipsy’s petition, written fifty years ago,

“Oh! ye who have tasted of mercy and love,
And shared in the blessings of pardoning grace,
Let us the kind fruits of your tenderness prove,
And pity, oh! pity, the poor Gipsy race.”

has been little better than beating the air, and it may be repeated a thousand times, but if nothing further is done more than “pity,” the Gipsies will be worse off in fifty years hence than they are now, nor will presenting to them bread, cheese, ale, blankets, stockings, and a dry sermon, as Mr. Crabb did half a century ago, render them permanent help. We must do as the eagle does with her young: we must cause a little fluster among them, so that they may begin to flounder for themselves. Take them up, turn them out, and teach them to use their own wings, and the schoolmaster and sanitary officers are the agencies to do it. The men are clever and can get money sufficient to keep their families comfortable even at skewer-making and chair-mending, &c., if they will only work. All the police-officer must do will be to take charge of those who prefer to fall to the ground rather than to struggle for life with its attendant pleasures and enjoyments. The State has taken in hand a more dangerous class—perhaps the most dangerous—in

India, viz., the Thugs, and is teaching them useful trades and honest industry with most encouraging results. Before the Government tackled them, they were idling, loafing, rambling, and robbing all over the country, alike to our Gipsies; now they have settled down and become useful and good citizens. In Norway the Gipsies are put into prison, and there kept till they have learnt to read and write. In Hungary the Government has appointed a special Minister to look after them, and see that they are being properly educated and brought up. In Russia, the laws passed for their imprisonment has had the effect of causing them, to a great extent, to settle down to useful trades, and they are forming themselves into colonies. And so, in like manner, in Spain, Germany, France, and other European countries, steps have been taken to bring about an improvement among them. In these countries nearly the whole of the Gipsies can read and write; and we, of all others, who ought to have set the example a century ago in the way of educating the Gipsy children, have stood by with folded arms, and let them drift into ruin. I claim it to be our duty—and it will be to our shame if we do not—to see to the welfare of the Gipsy children for four reasons. First, that they are Indians, and under the rule of our noble Queen; second, that they are in our midst, and ought to take their share of the blessings, duties, and responsibilities pertaining to the rest of the community; third, that as a Christian nation, professing to lead the van and to set forth the blessings of Christianity and civilisation; and, fourth, their universal desire for the education of their children, and to contribute their quota, however small, to the country’s good, and for the eternal welfare of their own children; and I do not think that there will be any objection on their part to it being brought about on the plan I have briefly sketched out.

I fancy I can hear some of the artists who have been delighted with Gipsy models—the novelists who have hung many a tale upon the skirts of their garments—the

dramatists who have trotted them before the curtain to please the public, and some old-fashioned croakers, who delight in allowing things to be as they have always been—the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever—saying, “let everybody look after their own children;” and then, in a plaintive tone, singing—

“Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough;
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now.”

First,—I would have all movable or temporary habitations, used as dwellings, registered, numbered, and the name and address of the owner or occupier painted in a prominent place on the outside, i.e., on all tents, Gipsy vans, auctioneers’ vans, showmen’s vans, and like places, and under proper sanitary arrangements in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act of 1877.

Second,—Not less than one hundred cubic feet of space for each female above the age of twelve, and each male above the age of fourteen; and not less than fifty cubic feet of space for each female young person under the age of twelve, and for each male under the age of fourteen.

Third,—No male above the age of fourteen, and no female above the age of twelve, should be allowed to sleep in the same tent or van as man and wife, unless separate sleeping accommodation be provided for each male of the age of fourteen, and for each female of the age of twelve; and also with proper regard for partitions and suitable ventilation.

Fourth,—A registration certificate to be obtained, renewable at any of the offices of the Urban or Rural sanitary authorities throughout the country, for which the owner or occupier of the tent or van should pay the sum of ten shillings annually, commencing on the first of January in each year.

Fifth,—The compulsory attendance at school of all

travelling children, or others living in temporary or unrateable dwellings, up to the age required by the Elementary Education Acts, which attendance should be facilitated and brought about by means of a school pass-book, in which the children’s names, ages, and grade could be entered, and which pass-book could be made applicable to children living and working on canal-boats, and also to other wandering children. The pass-book to be easily procurable at any bookseller’s for the sum of one shilling.

Sixth,—The travelling children should be at liberty to go to either National, British, Board, or other schools, under the management of a properly-qualified schoolmaster, and which schoolmaster should sign the children’s pass-book, showing the number of times the children had attended school during their temporary stay.

Seventh,—The cost for the education of these wandering children should be paid by the guardians of the poor out of the poor rates, a proper account being kept by the schoolmaster and delivered to the parochial authorities quarterly.

Eighth,—Power to be given to any properly-qualified sanitary officer, School Board visitor or inspector, to enter the tents, vans, canal-boats, or other movable or temporary habitations, at any time or in any place, and detain, if necessary, for the purpose of seeing that the law was being properly carried out; and any one obstructing such officer in his duty, and not carrying out the law, to be subject to a fine or imprisonment for each offence.

Ninth,—It would be well if arrangements could be made with lords of manors, the Government, or others who are owners of waste lands, to grant those Gipsies who are without vans, and living in tents only, prior to the act coming into force, a long lease at a nominal rent of, say, half an acre or an acre of land, for ninety-nine years, on purpose to encourage them to settle down to the cultivation of it, and to take to honest industry—as many of them are prepared to do. By this means a number of the Gipsies would collect

together on the marshes and commons, and no doubt other useful and profitable occupation would be the outcome of the Gipsies being thus localised, and in which their children could and would take an important part; and in addition to these things the social and educational advantages to be reaped by following such a course would be many.

I have not the least doubt in my mind but that if a law be passed embodying these brief, but rough, suggestions, on the one hand, and steps are taken to encourage them to settle down, in accordance with the idea thrown out in clause nine, on the other, we shall not have in fifty years hence an uneducated Gipsy in our midst. Many of the Gipsies are anxious, I know, for some steps to be taken for the children to be brought up to work. The operation of the present Hawkers’ and Pedlars’ Act is acting very detrimental to the interests of the Gipsy children, as none are allowed to carry a licence under the age of sixteen, consequently all Gipsy children, except a few who assist in making pegs and skewers, are neither going to school nor yet are they learning a trade or in fact work of any kind; they are simply living in idleness, and under the influence of evil training that carries mischief underneath the surface.

It is truly appalling to think that over seven hundred thousand sharp, clever, well-formed human beings, and with plenty of muscular power, have, as I have said before, been roaming about Europe for many centuries with no object before them, and accomplishing nothing. Something like ten millions of Gipsies have been born, lived, died, and gone into the other world since they set foot upon European soil, and what have they done? what work have they accomplished? Alas! alas! worse than a cipher might be written against them. They have lived in the midst of beauty, songsters, romance, and fiction, and they have been surrounded by everything that would help to call forth natural energy, mechanical skill, and ability, but they have been in some senses like children playing in the street gutters. They have

the elements of success within them, but no one has taken them by the hand to put them upon the first step, at any rate, so far as England is concerned. It is grievous to think that not one of these ten millions of Gipsies who have gone the way of all flesh has written a book, painted a painting, composed any poetry, worth calling poetry, produced a minister worthy of much note—at least, I can only hear of one or two. They have fine voices as a rule, and except some half-dozen Gipsies no first-rate musicians have sprung from their midst. No engineer, no mechanic—in fact, no nothing. The highest state of their manufacturing skill has been to make a few slippers for the feet, as some of them are doing at Lynn; skewers to stick into meat, for which they have done nothing towards feeding; pegs to hang out other people’s linen, some tinkering, chair-bottoming, knife-grinding, and a little light smith work, and a few have made a little money by horse-dealing. There are others clever at “making shifts” and roadside tents, and will put up with almost anything rather than put forth much energy. Since the Gipsies landed in this country more than one hundred and fifty thousand have been born, principally, as they say, “under the hedge bottom,” lived, and died. They are gone “and their works do follow them.” Their present degraded condition in this country may be laid upon our backs.

This book, with its many faults and few virtues, is my own as in the case of my others, and all may be laid upon my back; and my object in saying hard and unpalatable things about the poor, ignorant Gipsy wanderers in our midst is not to expose them to ridicule, or to cause the finger of scorn to be pointed at them or to any one connected with them, but to try to influence the hearts of my countrymen to extend the hand of practical sympathy, and help to rescue the poor Gipsy children from dropping into the vortex of ruin, as so many thousands have done before. It is not unlikely but that I shall, in saying plain things about the Gipsies, expose myself to some inconvenience, misrepresentation, malice, and spite from

those who would keep the Gipsies in ignorance, and also from shadow philanthropists, who are always on the look out for other people’s brains; but these things, so long as God gives me strength, will not deter me from doing what I consider to be right in the interest of the children, so long as I can see the finger of Providence pointing the way, and it is to Him I must look for the reward, “Well done,” which will more than repay me for all the inconvenience I have undergone, or may have still to undergo, in the cause of the “little ones.” That man is no real friend to the Gipsies who seeks to improve them by flattery and deception. A Gipsy, with all his faults, likes to be dealt fairly and openly with—a little praise but no flattery suits him. They can practise cunning, but they do not care to have any one practising it upon them.

I dare not be sanguine enough to hope that I shall be successful, but I have tried thus far to show, first, the past and present condition of the Gipsies; second, the little we, as a nation, have done to reclaim them; and, third, what we ought to do to improve them in the future, so as to remove the stigma from our shoulders of having 20,000 to 30,000 Gipsies, show people, and others living in vans, &c., in our midst, fast drifting into heathenism and barbarism, not five per cent. of whom can read and write, at least, so far as the Gipsies are concerned; and those children travelling with “gingerbread” stalls, rifle galleries, and auctioneers are but little better, for all the parents tell me their children lose in the summer what little they learn at school in the winter, for the want of means being adopted whereby their children could go to school during the daytime as they are travelling through the country with their wares, i.e., at their halting-places.

In bringing this book to a close, I would say, in the name of all that is just, fair, honourable, and reasonable, in the name of science, religion, philosophy, and humanity, and in the name of all that is Christ-like, God-like, and heavenly,

I ask, nay I claim, the attention of our noble Queen—whose deep interest in the children of the labouring population is unbounded—statesmen, Christians, and my countrymen to the condition of the Gipsies and their children, whose condition is herein feebly described, and whose cause I have ventured to take in hand, praying them to adopt measures and to pass such laws that will wipe out the disgrace of having so many thousands of poor, ignorant, uneducated, wretched, and lost Gipsy children in our midst, who cannot read and write, on the following grounds—

First. Their Indian origin, which I venture to think has been satisfactorily proved, and over which country our Queen is the Empress; consequently, our Gipsies ought and have as much need to be taken in hand and their condition improved by the State as the Thugs in India have been, with such beneficial results, a class similar in many respects to our Gipsies.

Second. As the Government in 1877 passed an act, called “The Canal Boats Act,” dealing pretty much with the same class of people as the Gipsies and other travelling children, they ought, in all fairness, to extend the principle to those living in tents and vans.

Third. As small-pox, fevers, and other infectious diseases are at times very prevalent among them—a medical officer being called in only under the rarest occasion—and as the tents and vans are not under any sanitary arrangements, there is, therefore, urgent need for some sort of sanitary supervision and control to be exercised over their wretched habitations to prevent the spread of disease in such a stealthy manner.

Fourth. As the Government took steps some three centuries ago to class the Gipsies as rogues and vagabonds, but took no steps at the same time to improve their condition or even to encourage them to get upon the right paths for leading an honourable and industrious life, the time has now come, I think, both in justice and equity, for

the Government to adopt some means to catch the young hedge-bottom “Bob Rats,” and to deal out to them measures that will Christianise and civilise them to such an extent that the Gipsies will not in the future be deserving of the epithets passed upon them by the Government for their sins of omission and commission.

Fifth. By passing an Act of Parliament, as I suggest, or amending the Canal Boats Act, in accordance with the plan I have laid down, and embodying the suggestions herein contained, the Government will complete the educational system and bring under the educational and sanitary laws the lowest dregs of society, which have hitherto been left out in the cold, to grope about in the dark as their inclinations might lead them.

Sixth. The families who are seeking a living as hawkers, show people, &c., apart from the Gipsies, are on the increase. By travelling up and down the country in this way they not only escape rates and taxes, but their children are going without education, as no provision is made in the education acts to meet cases of this kind. By bringing the Gipsy children under the influence of the schoolmaster our law-makers will be adding the last stroke to the system of compulsory education introduced and carried into law through its first difficult and intricate phases by the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, M.P., when he was at the head of the Education Department under the Liberal Government, and through its second stages by the Right Hon. Lord Sandon, M.P., when he was at the head of the Education Department under the Conservative Government.

Seventh. There is an universal desire among people of the classes I have before referred to for the education of their children, in fact, I have not met with one exception during my inquiries, and the Gipsies will be glad to make some sacrifices to carry it out if the Government will do their part in the matter.

Eighth. The Gipsies and other travellers of the same

kind use our roads, locate on our commons, live in our lanes, and send their poor, halt, maimed, and blind to our workhouses, infirmaries, and asylums, towards the support of which they do not contribute one farthing.

Ninth. As a Christian nation professing to send the Gospel all over the world, to preach glad tidings, peace upon earth and good-will towards men everywhere, to take steps for the conversion of the Gipsies in India, the African, the Chinese, the South Sea Islander, the Turk, the black, the white, the bond, the free, in fact everywhere where an Englishman goes the Gospel is supposed to go too, and yet—and it is with sadness, sorrow, and shame I relate it—we have had on an average during the last three hundred and sixty-five years not less than 15,000 Gipsies moving among us, and not less than 150,000 have died and been buried, either under water, in the ditches, or on the roadside, on the commons, or in the cemeteries or churchyards, and we, as Christians of Christian England, have not spent 150,000 pence to reclaim the adult Gipsies, or to educate their children.

Tenth. As a civilised country we are supposed to lead the van in civilising the world by passing the most humane, righteous, just, and liberal laws, carrying them out on the plan of tempering justice with mercy; but in matters concerning the interests and welfare of the Gipsies we are, as I have shown previously, a long way in the rear. We have passed laws to improve the condition of the agricultural labourer’s child, children working in mines, children working in factories, performing boys, climbing boys, children working in brick-yards, children working and living on canal-boats, and a thousand others; but we have done nothing for the poor Gipsy child or its home. In things pertaining to their present and eternal welfare they have asked for bread and we have given them a stone; and they have asked for fish and we have given them a serpent. We have allowed them to wander and lose themselves in the dark wilds of sin and

iniquity without shedding upon their path the light of Gospel truths or the blessings of education; and to-day the Gipsy children are dying, where thousands have died before, among the brambles and in the thicket of bad example, ignorance, and evil training, into which we have allowed them to stray blinded by the evil associations of Gipsy life.

“An aged woman walks along,
Her piercing scream is on the air,
Her head and streaming locks are bare,
She sadly sobs ‘My child, my child!’”

A faint voice is heard in the distance calling out—

“My dying daughter, where art thou?
Call on our gods and they shall come.”

“So mote it be.”

London: Printed by Haughton & Co., 10, Paternoster Row, E.C.

WORKS PUBLISHED
by
HAUGHTON & Co.,
10, paternoster row, london.

Just Published, price 1s. 6d., cloth boards.

THE LIFE OF GEORGE SMITH,
OF COALVILLE.

“The name of George Smith, of Coalville, is familiar as household words, and the unpretending memoir just published by Messrs. Haughton & Co. of him, to whose deep sympathy and ceaseless effort the populations of our brick-yards and canals owe so much, will be read with interest by all.”—The Graphic.

“Readers of Mr. Smith’s letters in numerous papers, and of his descriptive articles in the Illustrated London News, Graphic, and other journals and magazines, will be glad to possess this little work, which tells the story of his career in a brief but interesting manner. The book is elegantly printed on good paper, and is embellished with an excellent portrait and with an engraving of Mr. Smith among the Gipsy children.”—Capital and Labour.

“This is ‘a chapter’ in philanthropy, yet it contains three times as much in the way of practical philanthropy as would suffice to make any man a benefactor to his generation. His devoted, self-denying, persistent, and successful endeavours on behalf of the brick-yard children, the canal population, and more recently the Gipsy ‘arabs,’ of our country and time, are concisely and vividly set forth in this neat volume.”—The Christian.

“The name of George Smith, and his noble work amongst the canal-boat folk and the Gipsies, have become familiar and welcome to multitudes in Great Britain. This volume is an excellent sketch of Mr. Smith; it contains a capital likeness, and should be read by all who desire to possess increasing zeal in rescuing the perishing.”—Christian Age.

“A smartly written biography of a man who may be justly termed the Children’s Friend. It is well got up, and contains an excellent portrait of the great social reformer. It is well that this fascinating sketch should be given to the world.”—Literary World.

“In this book we are presented with a sketch of the life and labours—labours which have been attended with a large measure of success—of one of the most devoted of living philanthropists.”—Scotsman.

“A fine biography, which every one should read in order to understand the noble character of a man who must be pronounced a great benefactor.”—Free Press.

Price 3s. 6d., cloth boards, with Illustrations.

OUR CANAL POPULATION:
a cry from the boat cabins, with remedy.

New Edition, with Supplement.
By GEORGE SMITH, F.S.A., Coalville, Leicester.

“A little book called ‘Our Canal Population,’ lately published and written by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, furnishes the most incredible details of what is going on on our silent highways.”—Morning Advertiser.

“The notorious state of ‘Our Canal Population,’ the women and children who live on barges, and in whose condition Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, has awakened public interest, is described as ‘revolting and intolerable.’ If only a part of the statements made were true it would be enough to make the ears of them that hear it tingle for pity and shame.”—Daily News.

“Although the statements made by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, in ‘Our Canal Population,’ were doubtless, in some instances, open to the charge of exaggeration, in the main they were largely correct. Mr. Smith has earned the thanks of the community in this philanthropic object, as he previously earned our thanks for his efforts to ameliorate the condition of children in the brick-yards.”—Standard.

“Canal Boats.—On the 1st inst. came into operation an Act (the 40 and 41 Vic., c. 60) which is calculated to do much good. Hitherto ‘Our Canal Population’ were left pretty much to themselves. They were considered outside the pale of local and educational authorities. They were permitted to live in their boats as they pleased, and to bring up their children without any interference from school authorities. Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, whose efforts on behalf of the children employed in brick-fields were attended with such beneficial results, turned his attention to ‘Our Canal Population,’ and the credit likely to be won by the passing of the Act of last Session will be mainly his.”—The Times.

“Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, who has done so much for the well-being of ‘Our Canal Population,’ is now busied in attempts to ameliorate the condition of juvenile Gipsies.”—Daily Telegraph.

“This gentleman represents by name, at least, a very large family, but he has won for himself considerable distinction among the ‘Smiths’ for his unparalleled efforts to ameliorate the wretched condition of ‘Our Canal Population’ on the English canals, the women and children working in the brick-yards, and the Gipsy children.”—Christian Herald.

Price 3s. 6d., cloth boards, with Portrait of Author and other Illustrations.