From the mode of living among the Gipsies, the mother is often necessitated to leave her tent in the morning, and seldom returns to it before night. Their children are then left in or about their solitary camps, having many times no adult with them; the elder children then have the care of the younger ones. Those who are old enough gather wood for fuel; nor is stealing it thought a crime. By the culpable neglect of the parents in this respect the children are often exposed to accidents by fire, and melancholy instances of children being burnt and scalded to death are not unfrequent. One poor woman relates that two of her children have thus lost their lives by fire during her absence from her tent at different periods, and some years ago a child was scalded to death at Southampton.
The following account will faintly show something of the hardships of Gipsy children’s lives:—It was winter, and the weather was unusually cold, there being much snow on the ground. The tent, which was only covered with a ragged blanket, was pitched on the lee side of a small hawthorn bush. The children had stolen a few green sticks from the hedges, but they would not burn. There was no straw in the tent, and only one blanket to lay betwixt six children and the frozen ground, with nothing to cover them. The youngest of these children was three and the eldest seventeen years old. In addition to this wretchedness the smaller children were nearly naked. The youngest was squatted on the ground, her little feet and legs bare, and gnawing a frozen turnip which had been stolen from an adjoining field. None of them had tasted bread for more than a day. The
moment they saw their visitor, the little ones repeatedly shouted, “Here is the gemman come for us!” Some money was given to the eldest sister to buy bread with, at which their joy was greatly increased. Straw was also provided for them to sleep on, four were measured for clothes, and after a few days they were placed under proper care. The youngest child died, however, a short time after in consequence of having been so neglected in infancy.
During last June a Gipsy woman, of the name of Bishop, was found in one of the tents, on a common just outside London, with her throat cut and her child lying dead by her side in a pool of blood, and the man with whom she cohabited—true to his Gipsy character—refused to answer any questions concerning this horrible affair. An impression has gone the round for years that the Gipsies are exceedingly kind and affectionate to their children, in some instances it, no doubt, is true, but they are rare indeed if I may judge from appearances. I have yet to learn that starvation, allowing their children to grow up infinitely worse than barbarians, subjecting them to fearful oaths and curses, and inflicting upon the poor children blows with sticks, used with murderous passion, to within an inch of their lives, exhibits much of the lamb-like spirit, dove-like innocence, and childish simplicity fiction would picture to our minds concerning these English barbarians as they camp on the mossy banks on a hot summer day. In the presence of myself and a friend one of these lawless fellows very recently hurled a log of wood at a poor Gipsy child’s head for an offence which we could not learn, farther than it was for a trifling affair; fortunately, it missed the poor child’s head, or death must have been the result. In visiting an encampment last autumn I came across six Gipsy children having their dinner off three small boiled turnips, and drinking the water as broth; the eldest girl, although dressed in rags, was going to sit the same afternoon for a leading artist upon a throne as a Spanish queen. In another part of London—
Mary Place—I found a family of Gipsies living under sticks and rags in the most filthy, sickening, and disgusting backyard I have ever been into—to such an extent was the stench that immediately I came out of it I had to get a little brandy or I should have fainted—the eldest girl of whom had her time pretty fully taken up by sitting as an artist’s model in the costume of a peasant girl, sometimes gathering buttercups and daisies, at other times gathering roses and making button-holes for gentlemen’s coats and placing them there with gentle hands and a smiling face; occasionally she would be painted as a country milk-girl driving the cows to pasture; at other times as a young lady playing at croquet on the lawn and gambolling with children. What a contrast, what a delusion! from rags to silks and satins; from a filthy abode not fit for pigs to a palace; from turnips and diseased bacon to wine and biscuits; from beds of rotten straw to crimson and gold-covered chairs; from trampling among dead cats to a carpet composed of wild flowers; from “Get out you wretch and fetch some money, no matter how,” to “Come here, my dear, is there anything I can do for you?” from the stench of a cesspool to the fragrance of the honeysuckle and sweetbriar, in one word, from hell to heaven all in an hour—such is one side of Gipsy life among the little Gipsies, not one of whom can read a sentence or write one word, and it is in this way Gipsy girls are found exposing their bodies to keep their big, healthy brothers and fathers at home in idleness and sin. Two such Gipsy girls have come under my own notice, and no doubt there are scores of similar cases. Gipsy children are fond of a great degree of heat, and sometimes lie so near to the coke fires as to be in danger of burning. I have seen them with their faces as red as if they were upon the point of being roasted, and yet they can bear to travel in the severest cold bare-headed, with no other covering than some old rags carelessly thrown over them. The cause of their bodily qualities, at least some of them, arises from their education and hardy manner of life.
Formerly the Gipsies, when there was less English blood in their veins, could stand the extreme changes and hardships of the English climate much better than now. An Englishman, notwithstanding the fact that he has let go all moral and social respect and restraint over his conduct and joined the Gipsies, does not, and cannot, thrive and look well under their manner of living, and this I see more and more every day. I have been struck very forcibly lately in visiting some of the hordes of Gipsies with the vast number of children the Gipsies bring into the world and the few that are reared. At one encampment there were forty men and women and only about the same number of children to be seen. At another encampment I found double the quantity of children to adult Gipsies.
No one can deny the fact that some of the children look well, but, on the other hand, a vast number look quite the reverse of this, pictures of starvation, neglect, bad blood, and cruelty. An Englishman is born for a nobler purpose than to lead a vagabond’s life and end his days in scratching among filth and vermin in a Gipsy’s wigwam, consequently, upon those of our own countrymen who have forsaken the right path, the sin attending such a course is dogging them at every footstep they take. I don’t lay at the door of their wigwam the sin of child-stealing, but this I have seen, i.e., many strange-looking children in their tents without the least shadow of a similarity to the adults in either habits, appearance, manner, or conversation. Some of the poor things seemed shy and reserved, and quite out of their element. Sometimes the thought has occurred to me that they were the children of sin, and put out of the way to escape shame being painted upon the back of their parents. Sometimes my pity for the poor things has led me to put a question or two bearing upon the subject to the Gipsies, and the answer has been, “The poor things have lost their father and mother.” When I have asked if the fathers and mothers were Gipsies a little hesitation was manifested, and the subject
dropped with no satisfactory answer to my mind. I have my own idea about the matter.