11. All fines to be paid over to those authorities who enforce the Act and the regulations of the Local Government Board.
12. As an encouragement to those gipsy wanderers who cannot afford to have healthy and suitable travelling vans and other abodes, and who desire to settle down from their wandering and degrading existence to industrious habits the Government should purchase common or waste lands, or allot lands of their own to the gipsies in small parcels upon a long lease—say for ninety-nine years—at a nominal rent.
With these features embodied in an Act of Parliament, and properly carried out by the local authorities, under the supervision and control of the Local Government Board and Education Department, gleams of a brighter day might be said to manifest themselves upon our social horizon, which will elevate our gipsies and their children into a position that will reflect a credit instead of a disgrace to us as a civilized nation.
“And shall he be left in the streets to room,
An outcast live and wild?
‘God forbid!’ you say. Then help, I pray.
To provide for the [gipsy child].”Rev. I. Charlesworth, Sword and Trowel, 1671.
The Canal Boats Act of 1877, and the Amending Bills of 1881 and 1882. By George Smith, of Coalville.
In 1877 an Act was passed entitled “The Canal Boats Act of 1877,” on the basis sketched out by me in a paper I had the honour to read before this Congress, held at Liverpool in 1876; and also in my letters, articles, &c., which have appeared in the lending journals, and in my works since the passing of the Act and onward from 1872 to this date.
After the Bill was drawn up, and during its progress through committee in 1877, several features were foreshadowed in the measure which led me to fear that when passed it would not accomplish all we so much desired, and these I pointed out to the late Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, Mr. Salt, Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board; Mr. John Corbett, M.P., Mr. Pell, M.P., Mr. P. Rylands, M.P., Mr. Sampson Lloyd, MP., Mr. W. E. Price, M.P., and many others; but rather than yield to the opposition of the Canal Association, and the loss of the Bill, I suggested that it should be passed, notwithstanding the drawbacks that were in sight.
When Lord Frederick Cavendish, Mr. Price, and others, at the fag end of the session of 1877, put the question seriously to me, as to whether the Bill should not be massacred along with the other innocents, I replied as follows: “Push the Bill through Committee by all means. A piece of a loaf is better than none. It has its defects, but if we do not get the Bill passed this year we shall not be likely to do so next year. Let us get the thin end of the wedge in. The operation of the Act will be to bring about the registration of the canal boats, to give power to the sanitary officers to enter the cabins, to secure the education of the 40,000 canal children, and also to prevent overcrowding in the cabins.”
The first step towards carrying out the Act, after five years’ continued agitation and visits to various parts of the country, has been fairly accomplished; and the sanitary officers, by the power given to them under the Act, have done good by preventing, in some degree, the spread of infectious diseases; but the main features of the Act, viz., the education of the canal children, the prohibition of overcrowding in the cabins, and the annual registration of the boats, are almost entirely neglected.
The following are the failing points of the Act of 1877: