“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.