Three of these children were of school age, but could not read or write a letter.
When I questioned the man about putting the children into the union workhouse, and the wrong he was doing to them in bringing them up as tramps, he said “he could not help that; they must look out for themselves as they got bigger, and help to do a little for him.” By singing about the streets they got him some “baccer and a little vittles.” In 1882 at the “mop” I met with a showman, named S—, and his wife and six children, living in a wretched tumbledown van; the small windows were broken, and rags, dirt, and filth abounded in every nook and corner. The father had had a religious “bringing-up” by Christian parents in Cornwall, and for many years earned a good living in Wales as a miner, and was a member of a Christian Church. The sharp, good-looking woman, although dirty and dejected enough to banish looks and spirits to the winds, waves, and realities of eternity, bore up fairly well under the wretched surroundings. She had, previous to her marriage, for many years been a “lady’s maid” in a good “religious family,” and was well educated. The man was ingenious and clever, and had during his spare moments and hours in Wales made the working model of a coal-mine, which, at the instigation of “religious friends,” he began to exhibit in public. The success that attended him in the first instance led him to think that he was on the high way to a fortune. He acted upon the advice of his “Christian friend” and others, instead of his own common sense, and bought a van in which to place his handiwork, and “took to the road.” A downhill one for himself and his large family it has been ever since, and they are now gipsying, and cursing the day upon which he took and followed the advice of a shortsighted—to say the least—“Christian friend.”
In giving advice, God-fearing Christian men and women above all others should look well ahead, and to all the surroundings of the case, before deciding the fate of a family. Advising a parent to break up a settled home and comfortable livelihood to tramp the country among gipsy vagabonds and tramps, I consider little less than murder.
In making their way one Sunday from a village to attend the “mop,” they got stuck fast at the bottom of a hill with an old bony emaciated horse that would not draw “a man’s hat off his head.” The poor little children dressed in dirt and rags, and scarcely able to toddle, had to set to work to drag and carry the old boards, rags, and other things belonging to their “show” to the top of the hill. After hours of toil, interrupted by the constant striking and chiming of church bells on the bright autumn Sunday morning, they were able to make another move.
Their show consisted of the working model of the mine, one of their youngest children, nearly naked, with a Scotch plaid over its shoulder being exhibited as a “prize baby.” In addition it included a boxing establishment. The man had not the build and stamina to lead the “ring,” and they had to wait for the “millers” to pair themselves before a boxing exhibition could take place.
They had not been in Daventry long before this backsliding showman, who had taken to gipsying, was wanted by Shórokno gáiro Garéngro for cruelty to his horses. The result was that he had to “do a month” in Northampton gaol. No doubt the poor misguided showman would feel in his cell as John Harris puts it—
“Here bees and beetles buzz about my ears
Like crackling coals, and frogs strut up and down
Like hissing cinders: wasps and waterflies
Scorch deep like melting mineral. Murther! save!
What shall a sinner do?”
To which I would have answered—
“Pray to thy God
To help thee in thy trouble.”
A week or two after I saw the woman and her six children in a most destitute condition. I gave the poor little things a good tea and cake in my house, and subscribed my mite towards buying them another horse, and advised them to make their way to Aberdare, in Wales, and take to mining again, to send their children to school, for none of them could tell a letter, and they were growing up worse than heathens.