J. T. Pierce, Esq., J.P., county magistrate of Essex, writes me again under date October 2, 1882:
“Can you oblige me by forwarding a copy of the Bill amending your Act, 40 and 41 Vict. c. 60? I am desirous of bringing the question of registration of vans, &c., before my fellow magistrates at our next quarter sessions. The children who dwell in small vans and under tents cannot receive education under the present state of things, and it is seldom any of them are got into industrial schools. Possibly the magistrates of different counties might help forward the extension of your scheme in favour of these poor children. There is a common here on which we get a large number of them every year, and I have had a fair opportunity of seeing how urgent is the need of legislation, unless the children are to remain in their present state of ignorance and dirt. No thoughtful man can desire this, and you have already done so much in this direction that every one who thinks about it must wish to strengthen your hands for further work.”
The foregoing independent statements, given by persons I have never seen, extracted out of shoals of letters I have received, will faintly show what is going on all over the country among our English heathens and hell trainers; while sensual, backwood, romantic gipsy novelists have been drawing a film over our eyes.
I have received a number of suggestions as to how the gipsy problem should be solved. A Scotch Presbyterian minister suggests that the children should be sent to an industrial reformatory; in fact, he would obliterate them with an iron hand from the face of the earth. He goes on to say that the recent School Act is useless for them in Scotland. They can and do with ease evade all its requirements.
One kind-hearted lady, who writes to me from Brentwood, thinks that separate schools should be built for the gipsy and other travelling children. Neither of these suggestions are practicable and workable: the former is too severe for English liberty, and the latter too wild and scattered; and it would also be too costly, and in the end it would prove a failure.
On October 25, 1882, I sent Mr. Mundella copies of my Social Science Congress papers, with the hope of eliciting something from him as to what steps the Government proposed taking in the matter, and the following is his reply:
“Privy Council Office,
Whitehall,
October 26, 1882.“Dear Sir,
“I am much obliged to you for the copies of the papers read by you in the Health Department of the Social Science Congress on the Canal Boats Act and on the gipsy children, and I will give the same my careful attention. I shall be very thankful if anything can be done to remedy the evils affecting the neglected children referred to in your papers, and to whose interest you have given such long and faithful service.
“I am, dear sir,
Yours faithfully,
A. J. Mundella.“George Smith, Esq.”
I have thought since I took up the canal crusade in 1872, as my letters will show, and I cannot for the life of me do otherwise than think so now, that the Canal Boats Act Amending Bill I am humbly promoting could be made to include all movable habitations and temporary dwellings. The counsel to the Education Department, Mr. Ilbert, thought otherwise, and of course I have had to submit to the “ruling of the chair.” He thought that a separate Act would better meet the case of the gipsy and other travelling children. I am not now alone in my idea of including all movable dwellings in my Canal Amending Bill; for since I mooted the subject in my letters to the press and in other ways, friends have come round to see that there is something in the suggestion worthy of notice. Canal-boat cabins and vans are boxes in which are stived up human beings of all ages and sizes, without either regard for health, morals, sense or decency, packed closer than the poor unfortunate creatures in the black hole of Calcutta were. These moving homes are drawn, in many instances, by animals with only one step between them and the blood- or foxhound’s teeth. The only difference is, one home is moving through the country upon our magnificent, black, streaky canals, of the enormous width of about twenty feet, and an average of three feet deep. For the size of boats and boat cabins and other particulars I must refer my readers to my works, “Our Canal Population,” and “Canal Adventures by Moonlight,” and for the full particulars of gipsy tents, vans, &c., to my “Gipsy Life.”
The last Essex Michaelmas Quarter Sessions, with Sir H. Selwin Ibbetson, Bart., M.P., in the chair, was supported by between forty and fifty leading county magistrates. The following is taken from the Chelmsford Chronicle, October 20, 1882:
“The Canal Act Amendment Bill.—Mr. Pierce suggested that this Bill should be referred to the Parliamentary Committee, with a view to their considering whether clauses should not be recommended to Parliament to be added for dealing with gipsy and travelling show-man life as well as canal life. Mr. Pierce spoke of the miserable squalor and unwholesome condition in which the gipsies and travelling showmen lived, and said he thought it was necessary that their children, who are absolutely uneducated, and who number about 30,000, should be looked after. Seconded by Mr. G. A. Lowndes. This motion was carried.”