As I neared them, the poor woman met me and said, “I don’t know what to do; I ought not to be here in this market-place like this. I am liable to be down at any minute, and I don’t know one in the place. I wish our Jim had settled down last spring. It is a hard lot to be a gipsy’s wife,” and she began to cry. “Nobody knows what I have had to put up with since I took to travelling. Why, bless you, dear sir, it would make your heart ache if I were to tell you a tenth part of what myself and the children have gone through. Between Hilmorton and Ashby St. Ledgers will never be forgotten by me. It was a cold night, at the back end of the year; rain came down in torrents. We had only an uncovered cart for all of us to sleep in down one of the lanes. The children crouched under the cart upon the ground like dogs. Our Jim, myself, and three of the children slept, or lay down, in the body of the cart with our dripping clothes on us. We drew an old torn woollen rug over us, and did the best we could, shivering and shaking till morning. The children cried, and were half starved to death. I cannot tell you, if I went down upon my knees, of a twentieth part of our sufferings and hardships on that night, and hundreds of other nights besides. I had a black eye, and was black and blue on many parts of my body. Our Jim was very cruel at that time; but he has not been so bad lately.” Her husband, Jim, is about three parts a gipsy, or between a posh and a Romany chal. He has six children by his first wife, living with their grandmother near Epping Forest, who are left to gipsy and take care of themselves. I don’t think that he would be a bad sort of a man if it were not for “drink” and gipsy companies. The only one who can read in this family is the poor woman, and that is only very little. With tears in her eyes she said, “I often read the little books you gave me, to our Jim at bedtime, till he cries, sometimes like a baby. My heart is at times ready to break when I see how our children are being brought up.” Business was beginning to look up with them, and I made myself scarce for a time. Such sad, heartrending instances of gipsy neglect, depravity, poverty, and wretchedness would be impossible if our Government would carry out my plans for reclaiming them, and Christians and philanthropists would do their duty towards drawing them into the arms of the State and the fold of God.
I had not gone far before a terrible row was echoing in the air from a stall lower down the market, between two gipsy women and a “potato master.” The gipsy women said the potato master had promised them three roasted potatoes for a halfpenny, and he had only given them two. A fight, hair-pulling, and bloodshed seemed to be in a fair way for being the outcome of this trumpery dispute, and would have taken place if the policeman had not put in an appearance. As it was the fracas ended, for the present, in nothing worse than threats of vengeance, oaths and curses being poured upon the head of the potato seller without stint or measure.
I now turned into the horse fair, and had scarcely got many yards before I found myself roughly jostled in the midst of a gipsy row over a dog. The gipsy horse-dealer had a lurcher dog with him, which was owned by a collier. The collier said his dog had been stolen by some gipsies about two months ago. High words, carrying mischief and blows, were flying about thick and fast, and bade fair to end in bloodshed and the pulling of the dog limb from limb. The dog preferred his old master to the gipsy. This the gipsy saw, and at the approach of the police the pair withdrew to a public-house to “square” matters. In the end the collier came out with his dog, which he said “had won more handicaps than any dog in the county,” and off he started home, with a smile instead of blood and bruises upon his face, and the dog wagging its tail with delight at his heels, much to the chagrin and discomfiture of the gipsy.
While I was among gipsy horse-dealers I made the best use of my eyes for a little time, and one of the first dodges of the gipsies was to hire a country Johnny to ride one of their “screws” up and down the fair. Of course the gipsies kept clear away, hoping thereby to draw the attention of customers to the horse as one that a farmer had no further use for. Johnny had very nearly sold the horse to a higgler, but “at the last pinch” the question of reducing the amount Johnny was to sell it for, by one pound, necessitated an appeal to the gipsy owner, who was not far away. The higgler saw the dodge of the gipsy and he withdrew his offer. The gipsy’s blessing was given, but the higgler did not mind it, and he went to seek other quarters for horseflesh.
A little higher up the fair there stood a man with two horses, who was evidently a small farmer in somewhat needy circumstances. It might be, for anything I knew, that he was wanting some money to pay for the cutting of his corn, which was ripening very fast. The horses looked like two thoroughly good sound horses, although aged. The price he asked for the best-looking was £25, and £20 for the other. The gipsies saw that this farmer was very anxious to sell. A big, good-looking gipsy came up to him and said, “What for the big horse? Now, then, speak the lowest price you will take for it in a word.” The farmer said, “£25.” “Nonsense,” said the gipsy; “you must think everybody is either a fool or asleep. I’ll give you a ‘fiver’ for it, and it is dear at that price.” To one of his gipsy mates he said, “Jack, jump across it and ride it up the fair.” Jack jumped across the horse, and off they started at a rattling pace, almost frightening people out of their wits who were in the way. After going up and down a few times several gipsies clustered round the horse when it and its gipsy rider had cleared to outside the throng of the fair. The group stood for a few minutes, and then the horse was brought back and given up to the owner. The bargain was not struck, and the gipsies cleared away. In the course of ten minutes the horse began to get very restless, kick, and plunge about. Sometimes it seemed as if it wanted to lie down. It would then begin to cringe and kick, much to the danger of the lookers on. The owner said that a horse-fly was on it somewhere. He stroked and tapped it, but all to no purpose. Presently another gipsy came up, evidently one of the gang, and said to the farmer, “Why, governor, your horse has either got the ‘bellyache’ or an inflammation; it will be dead in half an hour; what will you take for it at all risks? Now, speak your lowest figure at once.” The farmer said, very much “chopfallen,” “A little time ago I asked £25, but I suppose I must take less than that now.” The gipsy saw his chance, and at once said, “I will give you a ‘tenner,’ and not a farthing more; say either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and I’m off.” The horse was still kicking about. The farmer, much dejected, said, “I suppose you may as well have it.” The bargain was struck and the kicking horse led away. In going up the fair a group of gipsies clustered round it with evident glee. A few hours afterwards I saw the horse led off quietly enough from Hinckley fair at the heels of a gipsy. No doubt the horse had been doctored by the gipsies in some way when they first took it in hand and while it was surrounded by the first group.
In another instance a countryman bought a horse of a “farmer-looking” gipsy and paid the money, when, just before the horse was handed over to the purchaser, another gipsy came upon the scene and claimed the horse as his own, and, apparently, threatened vengeance and the gaol to be the doom of the man who had sold the horse. The two gipsies now began to pull each other about—without any bones being broken or blood flowing—and to wrestle and struggle for the possession of the horse. The country man had parted with his money and he had not got the horse, nor any prospect of it. Another gipsy came up and suggested that the whole business should be ended by the countryman having his money back except ten shillings and the payment of “glasses round.” To this arrangement the countryman assented, and they turned into the public-house to carry out the bargain. What sharp men and fools there are in the world, to be sure, to be met with on gipsy fair ground!
As usual there were gipsy Smiths in the fair, and without much difficulty I ran against one who was the proprietor of a popgun establishment and two shillings’ worth of “toffy” stuck round a wheel of fortune. I had a long chat with him between the “cracks,” and elicited the fact that he had twice tried gipsying in Ireland, but it resulted each time in a drawn game. He only visited four fairs. Irish soil and poverty are not suited for the development of gipsying. The fact is, Irishmen are too wide awake for the vagabond gipsies, and they are too much taken up with the matter-of-fact everyday life to listen to idle lying, misleading, romantic, wheedling tales designed to draw the money out of their pockets. At one of the fairs in Ireland my gipsy friend took four shillings, with a prospect of losing his tent, bag and baggage. If he had been one of Arabi’s Egyptian ragamuffin soldiers frightened from Tel-el-Kebir he could not have decamped more quickly from the land of St. Patrick. The pleasure fairs of England and the fashionable squares of London, and the watering-places on the coasts are places and palaces where gipsy kings and queens thrive best.
They fatten and thrive fairly well in some places in Scotland. One cannot but smile sometimes at the ease with which some of them go through the world. If their cleverness was turned into legitimate channels and honourable business transactions, they would soon be a credit to themselves and to us as a nation. It is a thousand pities that in these educational days there are narrow-minded croakers who, under the guise of friends—though in reality their worst enemies—are trying to keep the gipsy children in ignorance; but their object is easily seen by those who stand by and are looking quietly and thoughtfully on. These false friends smile in gipsy faces while they are robbing them of their lore to fill their empty coffers, and this the gipsies will see some day.
Gipsy Smith and myself began to enumerate all the vans in the fair, together with those living in them. There were about thirty gipsy vans, shows, covered carts, &c. In one of the vans there were eight children besides adults. In another van there were seven children besides adults. Altogether we counted over one hundred travelling children in the fair, not three of whom could read and write. Smith said that in all his travelling experience he had not known either gipsy, showman, auctioneer, or traveller ever attend a place of worship from fair grounds. “Sundays as a rule,” said Smith, “are spent in travelling with their families from town to town and from place to place.” Gipsy Smith lived and travelled with his wife in a covered pony-cart. There were four “Aunt Sally” stalls, which dealt out cigars to children for successful “throws.” The gipsies are to-day doing more to encourage gambling and smoking than is imagined by ninety-nine out of every hundred Englishmen. The former saps the morals and the latter the minds and constitutions of those who are simple enough to indulge in them.
Before I had done talking with gipsy Smith the Salvation Army brass band from Leicester, with “Captain” Roberts from the headquarters, one of the staff officers, hailed within sight and sound, and as I had not had the opportunity to spend an evening with the Salvation Army, to see and hear for myself something of the proceedings, I joined in the procession as an outsider. Some of the people made an eye-butt of me at which they stared. Crowds were gathering round the band as it played in martial strains—if Mr. Inspector Denning had been there from the House of Commons better order could not have been kept—