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.