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.