To the Gypsyry on the Potteries came nomads named Heron and Leatherlund in the year 1854. (Some of their descendants still reside at the backs of the mews in Notting Hill.) They were the survivors of a sad disaster which in the previous year had befallen a party of hop-pickers at Hadlow in Kent. Through the kindness of a Gypsy woman who was “saved from the flood,” I am able to reprint a portion of an old tract giving the Rev. R. Shindler’s version of “The Medway Disaster.”
“In Kent you may still be told of a sad catastrophe which befel a party of hop-pickers, in the year 1853, as they were returning to their temporary habitations after a day’s work. The scene of the alarming event was in the parish of Hadlow, near Tunbridge, Kent. It is well known that thousands of poor people flock down into Kent for the hopping. Some of these are Gypsies; some may be described as house-cart people, who travel from place to place for the greater part of the year, selling their wares—brushes and brooms, tin-ware, earthen-ware, and such-like; but by far the larger part emerge from the lanes and alleys and courts of London. To the last especially, but to the others also, the hopping proves, when the weather is fine and the hops good, a pleasant recreation as well as a profitable employment. A number of people of Gypsy character and habits were employed by a farmer who resided in the parish of Tudely, and who had hop gardens also in Hadlow parish. It is a good rule among the hop-farmers, that when their gardens are any considerable distance from the homes of the natives or the encampments of the strangers, the pickers should be conveyed in wagons to and from the gardens. In this case, the river Medway had to be crossed in going to and from the gardens, and the only means of crossing was a wooden bridge of considerable span, and high above the current. The bridge was considered dangerous, especially for spirited horses, who were alarmed at the noise made by their own feet. The bridge was rendered even more dangerous by reason of the rather frail open wooden rails which flanked it right and left.
“On the morning of the day on which the catastrophe occurred, several parties passed over the bridge in safety, and in the evening parties of natives, or ‘home-dwellers,’ had returned without any mishap; but as a party of Gypsies and suchlike were being conveyed back, the horses suddenly took fright, ran the wagon against the side of the bridge, which gave way, and wagon, horses, and people were precipitated into the strong current below, and no less than thirty were drowned. I was then pastor in a neighbouring parish, and had taken a deep interest in the religious condition of the hoppers, preaching in fields and stackyards and elsewhere near their encampments, and distributing tracts and New Testaments. The sad event mentioned above stirred my heart a great deal, and I felt impelled to write a short tract. The thirty hop-pickers were buried in Hadlow churchyard in a common grave, the spot being marked by a monument recording the names of those who perished in the waters of the Medway.”
There are in Battersea numerous “yards” under railway arches, where living-vans of “travellers” used to be seen all the year round. Very much diluted is the Gypsy blood to be found nowadays in these “yards.” It is these degenerates, mostly Londoners bred and born, who at times give so much trouble to the local authorities in Surrey.
Upon Hampstead Heath, and at Wormwood Scrubbs, a sprinkling of Gypsy faces may be seen among the show-folk on a Bank Holiday, and at Edmonton, Mitcham, and near Southend-on-Sea, I have met Gypsies all the year round.
If the Yorkshireman goes to see the St. Leger because he has an instinctive love of horse-flesh, the Cockney resorts to Epsom Downs on the Derby Day to smell the scent of green turf and to take part in the most stupendous picnic in the world.
Not merely to see a crowd of nearly a million human beings, but to sample Epsom’s Gypsies, was the object of my visit to the Downs one unforgettable June day. London’s unyielding pavements mean for me, after a day or two of them, an unpleasant foot-soreness, hence it was a relief to step forth upon the springy sward outside the Downs Station. Like children let loose from school, my fellow-travellers from town laughed and joked, whistled and sang, as briskly they moved towards the course.
It was among the gorse bushes on the sunlit hilltop that I caught my first glimpse of the Gypsies, and to one acquainted with the swart Romanitshels of East Anglia and the Northern Counties, the folk of the ramshackle carts and tiny tents were distinctly disappointing. Ruddy, fair-haired, and poorly-clad, were many of them; what a falling off from the horde of dark Gypsies assembled at some of our North-Country fairs!
While I was chatting with a metropolitan policeman, up came a tall Gypsy girl vending what purported to be tiny squares of cedar wood, though the specimen I purchased for threepence smelled a good deal more like the innermost layer of the red bark abounding in the strips of pine forest around Tunbridge Wells. When I inquired of the damsel as to what Gypsies were present on the Downs, she replied, with a low laugh, “You’s never got to go far in these parts for to catch an Ayre. My dad’s an Ayre, but my dai (mother) was a Stevens. Over there” (pointing to a town of Gypsy caravans and a country fair combined opposite the Grand Stand) “you’ll find some of the Matthews, Penfolds, and maybe a few of the Bucklands.”
Crossing the course, I made my way to the part of the Downs indicated by Cinderella Ayre, and though I rubbed shoulders with a good many sunburnt travellers in corduroys, and show-women in gowns of red and green, the first real Gypsy it was my good fortune to meet was Davy Lee, the ancient vagabond who “planted” the dukerin-mokto (fortune-telling box) upon George Smith of Coalville. Although nearly blind, Davy managed to dodge in and out of the crowd, and, taking me up to his wagon, found time to chat about his father, the renowned Zacky Lee.