to show that my previous statement as regards the amount of ignorance prevalent among the poor Gipsy children has not been over-stated. She has had six brothers and one sister, all born in a tent, and only one of the eight could read a little. She has had nine children born in a tent, four of whom are alive, and only one could read and write a little. She has seventeen grandchildren, and only two of them can read and write a little, and thinks this a fair average of other Gipsy children. She tells me that she got a most fat living for more than twenty years by telling lies and fortunes to servant-girls, old maids, and young men, mostly out of a book of which she could not read a sentence, or tell a letter. She said she had heard that I had taken up the cause of the poor Gipsy children to get them educated, and, with hands uplifted and tears in her eyes, which left no doubt of her meaning, said, ‘I do hope from the bottom of my heart that God will bless and prosper you in the work till a law is passed, and the poor Gipsy children are brought under the School Board, and their parents compelled to send them to school as other people are. The poor Gipsy children are poor, ignorant things, I can assure you.’ She also said ‘Does the Queen wish all our poor Gipsy children to be educated?’ I told her that the Queen took special interest in the children of the working-classes, and was always pleased to hear of their welfare. Again, with tears trickling down her face, she said, ‘I do thank the Lord for such a good Queen, and for such a noble-hearted woman. I do bless her. Do Thou, ‘Lord, bless her!’ After some further conversation, and taking dinner with her in her humble way in the van, she said she hoped I would not be insulted if she offered me, as from a poor Gipsy woman, a shilling to help me in the work of getting a law passed to compel the Gipsies to send their children to school. I took the shilling, and, after making her a present of a copy of the new edition of my ‘Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards of England,’ which she wrapped in a
beautiful white cloth, and after a shake of the hand, we parted, hoping to meet again on some future day.”
The foregoing letter brought forth the following letter from Mr. Daniel Gorrie, and appeared in the Daily News under date September 13th, as under:—“Mr. George Smith, Coalville, Leicester, whose letter on the above subject appears in your impression to-day, succeeded so well in his efforts on behalf of the poor slave-children of the Midland brick-yards, that it is to be hoped he will attain equal success in drawing attention to the pitiful condition of the Gipsy children, who are allowed to grow up as ignorant as savages that never saw the face nor heard the voice of a Christian missionary. In one of the late Thomas Aird’s poems, entitled ‘A Summer Day,’ there are some lines which, with your permission, I should like to quote, that are in perfect accord with Mr. Smith’s wise and kindly suggestion. The lines are these:—
“‘In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,
Beside the wood, a Gipsy band are camped;
And there they’ll sleep the summer night away.
By stealthy holes their ragged, brawny brood
Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest
Of sticks and pales to make their evening fire.
Untutored things scarce brought beneath the laws
And meek provisions of this ancient State.
Yet is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,
To let so many of her sons grow up
In untaught darkness and consecutive vice?
True, we are jealous, free, and hate constraint
And every cognisance, o’er private life;
Yet, not to name a higher principle,
’Twere but an institute of wise police
That every child, neglected of its own,
State claimed should be, State seized and taught and trained
To social duty and to Christian life.
Our liberties have limbs, manifold;
So let the national will, which makes restraint
Part of its freedom, oft the soundest part,
Power-arm the State to do the large design.’
“The above lines, I may add, were written by the poet (in losing whom Mr. Thomas Carlyle lost one of his oldest and most valued friends) many, many years before the Education Acts now in force came into existence. As many parents might not like the idea of Gipsy children attending the same Board schools as their own, would it not be possible to establish special schools in those parts of the Midland counties where Gipsies ‘most do congregate’?”
To which I replied as under, in the Daily News bearing date September 13th:—“In reply to Mr. Gorrie’s letter which appears in your issue of this morning, I consider that it would be unwise and impracticable to build separate schools for either the brick-yard, canal-boat, Gipsy, or other children moving about the country, in tents, vans, &c., for their use solely; especially would it be so in the case of Gipsy children and roadside arabs. What I have been and am still aiming at is the education of these children, not by isolating them from other working-classes—colliers, potters, ironworkers, factory hands, tradesmen, &c.—but by bringing them in daily contact with the children of these parents, and also under some of the influences of our little missionary civilisers who are brought up and receiving some of their education in drawing-rooms, and whose parents cannot afford to send them to boarding-schools, colleges, &c., and have to content themselves by having their children educated at either the national, British, or Board schools. I confess that it is not pleasant to hear that our children have picked up vulgar words at school; and it requires patience, care, and watchfulness on the part of parents to counteract some of the downward tendencies resulting from an uneven mixing of children brought up and educated under such influences. Better by far put up with these little ills than others we know not of, the outcome of ignorance. On the other hand, it is pleasing to note how glad the parents of Gipsy, canal-boat, and brick-yard children are when their children pick up ‘fine words’ and become more ‘gentlerified’ by mixing with
children higher up the social scale. Bad habits, words, and actions are generally picked up between school times. It would be well for us to rub down class feeling among children as much as possible as regards their education. The children of brick-makers, canal-boatmen, and Gipsies are of us and with us, and must be taken hold of, educated, and elevated in things pertaining to their future welfare. The ‘turning up of the nose,’ by those whose duty, education, and privilege should have taught them better things, at these poor children has had more to do in bringing about their pitiable and ignorant condition than can be imagined. The Canal Boats Act, if wisely carried out, will before long bring about the education of the canal-boat children; and in order to bring the Gipsy children, show children, and other roadside arabs under the Education Acts, I am seeking to have all movable habitations, i.e., tents, vans, shows, &c., in which the families live who are earning a living by travelling from place to place, registered and numbered, as in the case of canal-boats, and the parents compelled ‘by hook or by crook’ to send their children to school at the place wherever they may be temporarily located, be it national, British, or Board school. The education of these children should be brought about at all risks and inconveniences, or we may expect a blacker page in the social history of this country opening to our view than we have seen for many a long day.”
The following leading article upon Gipsies and other tramps of a similar class appeared in the Standard, September 10th, 1879, and as it relates to the subject I have in hand I quote it in full:—“Not only in his ‘Uncommercial Traveller,’ but in many other scattered passages of his works, Dickens, who for many years lived in Kent, has described the intolerable nuisance inflicted by tramps upon residents in the home counties, and has sketched the natural history of the sturdy vagabond who infests our roads and highways from early spring to late
autumn, with a minuteness and power of detail worthy of a Burton. The subject of vagabondage is not, however, confined in its interest to the Metropolis and its adjacent parts. In the United States the habitual beggar has become as serious a nuisance, and, indeed, source of positive danger, as he was once amongst ourselves; and in the State of Pennsylvania more especially it has been found necessary to pass what may be described as an Habitual Vagrants Act for his suppression. That the terms of this enactment should be excessively severe is hardly matter of astonishment, when we bear in mind the fate of little Charley Ross. Early in the year 1874 a couple of men who were travelling up and down the country in a waggon stole from the home of his parents in Germantown, Pennsylvania, a boy of some seven years named Charley Ross. They then sent letters demanding a large sum of money for his restoration. The ransom increased, until no less than twenty thousand dollars was insisted upon. While the parents, on the one hand, were attempting to raise the money, and while the police were endeavouring to arrest the kidnappers, all negotiations fell through. The two men believed to have been concerned in the abduction were shot down in the act of committing a burglary on Rhode Island, and from that day to this the fate of Charley Ross has remained a mystery. Under these circumstances, public opinion has naturally run high, and it has been provided that any habitual tramp making his way from place to place, without earning an honest livelihood, shall be liable to imprisonment with hard labour for a period of twelve months; and that tramps who enter dwellings without permission, who carry fire-arms, or other weapons, or who threaten to injure either persons or property, shall be put to work in the common penitentiary for a period of three years. Pennsylvania in this is but reverting to the old law of England in the Tudor days. In the time of Henry VIII. vagrants were whipped at the cart’s tail, without distinction of either sex or age. The whipping-post,
together with the stocks, was a conspicuous ornament of every parish green, and it was not until the year 1791 that the whipping of women was expressly forbidden by statute. There were other enactments even more severe. By an act of Elizabeth idle soldiers and marines, or persons pretending to be soldiers or marines, wandering about the realm, were held ipso facto guilty of felony, and hundreds of such offenders were publicly executed. Another act of the same kind was directed against Gipsies, by which any Gipsy, or any person over fourteen who had been seen or found in their fellowship, was guilty of felony if he remained a month in the kingdom; and in Hale’s ‘Pleas of the Crown’ we learn that at one Suffolk Assizes no less than thirteen Gipsies were executed on the strength of this barbarous act, and without any other reason or cause whatever.