“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.