Chapter VIII: Part II: Commencement of the Gipsy Crusade (2)

"Mr. Smith has now embarked upon a fresh crusade against misery and ignorance. He has turned his attention from the 'water Gipsies' to their brethren ashore. He has already began to busy himself with the condition of 'our roadside arabs,' as he calls them. We fear Mr. Smith in prosecuting this good work of his is doomed to perform a serious act of disenchantment. The ideal Gipsy is destined to be scattered to the winds by the unvarnished picture which Mr. Smith will cause to be presented to our vision. He does not pretend to show us the romantic, fantastically-dressed creature whose prototypes have long been in the imaginations of many of us as types of the Gipsy species. Those of our readers who have formed their notions of Gipsy life upon the strength of the assurances which have been given them by the late Mr. G. P. R. James and kindred writers will find it hard to substitute for the joyous scenes of sunshine and freedom he has associated with the nomadic existence, the dull, wearisome round of squalor and wretchedness which is found, upon examination, to constitute the principal condition of the Gipsy tent. Whether it is that in this awfully prosaic period of the world's history the picturesque and jovial rascality which novelist and poet have insisted in connecting with the Ishmaelites is stamped ruthlessly out of being by force of circumstances, it is barely possible to say. Perhaps Gipsies, in common with other tribes of the romantic past, have gradually become denuded of their old attractiveness. It is, we confess, rather difficult to believe that Bamfylde Moore Carew (wild, restless fellow though he was) would persistently have linked his lot with that of the poor, degraded, poverty-stricken wretches whom Mr. Smith has taken in hand. Perchance it happens that our old heroes of song and story have, so far as England is concerned, deteriorated as a consequence of the money-making, business-like atmosphere that they are compelled to breathe, and that with more favoured climes they are to be seen in much of their primitive glory. In Hungary, for instance, it is declared that Gipsy life is pretty much what it is represented to be in our own glowing pages of fiction. The late Major Whyte-Melville, in a modern story declared to be founded on fact, introduces us to a company of these continental wanderers who, with their beautiful Queen, seem to invest the scenes from our old friend, 'The Bohemian Girl,' with something akin to probability. But there is, of course, a limit to even Mr. Smith's labours. Hungary is beyond his jurisdiction. He does not pretend to carry his experience of the Gipsies further than the Midlands. Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and our neighbouring counties have offered him the examples he requires with his new campaign. The lot of the roamers who eke out a living in the adjacent lanes and roadways is, he explains to us, as pitiful as anything of the sort well could be. The tent of the Gipsy he finds to be as filthy and as repulsive as the cabin of the canal-boat. Human beings of both sexes and of all ages are huddled together without regard to comfort. As a necessary sequence the women and children are the chief sufferers in a social evil of this sort. The men are able to rough it, but the weaker sex and their little charges are reduced to the lowest paths of misery. Children are born, suffer from disease, and die in the canvas hovels; and are committed to the dust by the roadside. One old woman told Mr. Smith 'that she had had sixteen children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of them being born in a roadside tent. She says that she was married out of one of these tents; and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at Packington, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch.' The experience of this old crone is akin to that of most of her class. She also tells Mr. Smith that she could not read herself, and she did not believe one in twenty could. Morally, as well as from a sanitary point of view, Gipsy life, as it really exists, is a social plague-spot, and consequently a social danger. Especially does this contention apply to the children, of whom Mr. Smith estimates that there are ten thousand roaming over the face of the country as vagrants and vagabonds. It is to be hoped many months will not be allowed to elapse before this difficulty is seriously and successfully grappled with. Mr. Smith's counsel as to the children is that 'living in vans and tents and under old carts, if they are to be allowed to live in these places they should be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act of 1877, so that the children may be brought under the compulsory clauses of the Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised as other children.' The Duke of Richmond and his department may do much to facilitate Mr. Smith's crusade without temporising with the prejudices of red-tapeism."

_Figaro_ writes August 27th:--"Our old friend having successfully tackled the brick-yard children, and the floating waifs and strays of our barge population, has now taken the little Gipsies in hand, with a view of bringing them under the supervision of the School Board system now general in this country. He is a bold and energetic man, but we are bound to say we doubt a little whether he will be able to tame the offspring of the merry Zingara, and pass them all through the regulation educational standard. Should he succeed, we shall be thenceforth surprised at nothing, but be quite prepared to hear that Mr. Smith has become chairman of a society for changing the spots of the leopard, or honorary director of an association for changing the Ethiopian's skin!"

The following letter from the Rev. J. Finch, a rural dean, appeared in the _Standard_, August 30th:--"The following facts may not be without some interest to those who have read the letters which have recently appeared in the pages of the _Standard_ respecting Gipsies. During the thirty years I have been rector of this parish, members of the Boswell family have been almost constantly resident here. I buried the head of the family in 1874, who died at the age of 87. He was a regular attendant at the parish church, and failed not to bow his head reverently when he entered within the House of God. His burial was attended by several sons resident, as Gipsies, in the Midland counties, and a headstone marks the grave where his body rests. I never saw, or heard, any harm of the man. He was a quiet and inoffensive man, and worked industriously as a tinman within a short time of his death. If he had rather a sharp eye for a little gift, that is a trait of character by no means confined to Gipsies. One of his daughters was married here to a member of the Boswell tribe, and another, who rejoiced in the name of Britannia, I buried in her father's grave two years ago. After his death she and her mother removed to an adjoining parish, where she was confirmed by Bishop Selwyn in 1876. Regular as was the old man at church, I never could persuade his wife to come. In 1859 I baptized, privately, an infant of the same tribe, whose parents were travelling through the parish, and whose mother was named Elvira. Great was the admiration of my domestics at the sight of the beautiful lace which ornamented the robe in which the child was brought to my house. Clearly there are Gipsies, and those of a well-known tribe, glad to receive the ministrations of the Church."

I next turned my steps towards London, having heard that Gipsies were to be found in the outskirts of this Babylon. I set off early one morning in quest of them from my lodgings, not knowing whither; but my earliest association came to my relief. Knowing that Gipsies are generally to be found in the neighbourhood of brick-yards, I took the 'bus to Notting Hill, and after asking the policeman, for neither clergyman or other ministers could tell me where they were to be found, I wended my way to Wormwood Scrubs, and the following letter, which appeared in the _Daily News_, September 6th of last year, is the outcome of that "run out," and is as follows:--"It has been the custom for years--I might almost say centuries--when speaking of the Gipsies, to introduce in one form or other during the conversation either 'the King of the Gipsies,' 'the Queen,' or some other member of 'the Royal Family.' It may surprise many of your readers who cling to the romantic side of a Gipsy's life, and shut their eyes to the fearful amount of ignorance, wretchedness, and misery there is amongst them, to say that this extraordinary being is nothing but a mythological jack-o'-th'-lantern, phantom of the brain, illusion, the creation of lying tongues practising the art of deception among some of the 'green horns' in the country lanes, or on the village greens. It is true there are some 'horse-leeches' among the Gipsies who have got fat out of their less fortunate hedge-bottom brethren and the British public, who delight in calling them either 'the King,' 'Queen,' 'Prince,' or 'Princess.' It is true also that there are vast numbers of the Gipsies who, with a chuckle, tongue in cheek, wink of the eye, side grin and a sneer, say they have these important personages amongst them; and if any little extra stir is being made at a fair-time in the country lanes, in the neighbourhood of straw-yards, they will be sure to tell them that either the 'king,' 'queen,' or some member of the 'royal family' is being married or visiting them; and nothing pleases the poor, ignorant Gipsies better than to get the bystanders, with mouths open, to believe their tales and lies. I should think that there is scarcely a county in England but what a Gipsy king's or queen's wedding has not taken place there within the last twenty years. There was one in Bedfordshire not long since; another at Epping Forest; and the last I heard of this wonderful airy being was that he had taken up his head-quarters at the Royal Hotel, Liverpool, and a carriage with eight wheels and six piebald horses had been presented to him as a wedding present from the Gipsies. Gipsy 'kings,' 'queens,' and 'princes,' their marriages and deaths, are innumerable among the 'royal family.' It is equally believing in moonshine and air-bubbles to believe that the Gipsies never speak of their dead. There is a beautiful headstone put in a little churchyard about two and a half miles from Barnet in memory of the Brinkly family, and it is carefully looked after by members of the family; one of the Lees has a tombstone erected to his memory in Hanwell Cemetery; and such silly nonsense is put out by the cunning, crafty Gipsies as 'dazzlers,' to enable them more readily to practise the art of lying and deception upon their gullible listeners. Then again, with reference to the Gipsies having a religion of their own. There is not a word of truth in this imaginative notion prevalent in the minds or some who have been trying to study their habits. Excepting the language of some of the old-fashioned real Gipsies, and a few other little peculiarities, any one studying the real hard facts of a Gipsy's life with reference to the amount of ignorance, and everything that is bad among them, will come to the conclusion that there is much among them to compare very unfavourably with the most neglected in our back streets and slums. Of course, there are some good among them, as with other 'ragamuffin' ramblers. The following particulars, related to me by a well-known Gipsy woman in the neighbourhood of 'Wormwood Scrubs' and the 'North Pole,' remarkable for her truthfulness, honesty, and uprightness, will tend to show that my previous statement as regards the amount of ignorance prevalent among the poor Gipsy children has not been over-stated. She has had six brothers and one sister, all born in a tent, and only one of the eight could read a little. She has had nine children born in a tent, four of whom are alive, and only one could read and write a little. She has seventeen grandchildren, and only two of them can read and write a little, and thinks this a fair average of other Gipsy children. She tells me that she got a most fat living for more than twenty years by telling lies and fortunes to servant-girls, old maids, and young men, mostly out of a book of which she could not read a sentence, or tell a letter. She said she had heard that I had taken up the cause of the poor Gipsy children to get them educated, and, with hands uplifted and tears in her eyes, which left no doubt of her meaning, said, 'I do hope from the bottom of my heart that God will bless and prosper you in the work till a law is passed, and the poor Gipsy children are brought under the School Board, and their parents compelled to send them to school as other people are. The poor Gipsy children are poor, ignorant things, I can assure you.' She also said 'Does the Queen wish all our poor Gipsy children to be educated?' I told her that the Queen took special interest in the children of the working-classes, and was always pleased to hear of their welfare. Again, with tears trickling down her face, she said, 'I do thank the Lord for such a good Queen, and for such a noble-hearted woman. I do bless her. Do Thou, 'Lord, bless her!' After some further conversation, and taking dinner with her in her humble way in the van, she said she hoped I would not be insulted if she offered me, as from a poor Gipsy woman, a shilling to help me in the work of getting a law passed to compel the Gipsies to send their children to school. I took the shilling, and, after making her a present of a copy of the new edition of my 'Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards of England,' which she wrapped in a beautiful white cloth, and after a shake of the hand, we parted, hoping to meet again on some future day."

The foregoing letter brought forth the following letter from Mr. Daniel Gorrie, and appeared in the _Daily News_ under date September 13th, as under:--"Mr. George Smith, Coalville, Leicester, whose letter on the above subject appears in your impression to-day, succeeded so well in his efforts on behalf of the poor slave-children of the Midland brick-yards, that it is to be hoped he will attain equal success in drawing attention to the pitiful condition of the Gipsy children, who are allowed to grow up as ignorant as savages that never saw the face nor heard the voice of a Christian missionary. In one of the late Thomas Aird's poems, entitled 'A Summer Day,' there are some lines which, with your permission, I should like to quote, that are in perfect accord with Mr. Smith's wise and kindly suggestion. The lines are these:--

"'In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,
Beside the wood, a Gipsy band are camped;
And there they'll sleep the summer night away.
By stealthy holes their ragged, brawny brood
Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest
Of sticks and pales to make their evening fire.
Untutored things scarce brought beneath the laws
And meek provisions of this ancient State.
Yet is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,
To let so many of her sons grow up
In untaught darkness and consecutive vice?
True, we are jealous, free, and hate constraint
And every cognisance, o'er private life;
Yet, not to name a higher principle,
'Twere but an institute of wise police
That every child, neglected of its own,
State claimed should be, State seized and taught and trained
To social duty and to Christian life.
Our liberties have limbs, manifold;
So let the national will, which makes restraint
Part of its freedom, oft the soundest part,
Power-arm the State to do the large design.'

"The above lines, I may add, were written by the poet (in losing whom Mr. Thomas Carlyle lost one of his oldest and most valued friends) many, many years before the Education Acts now in force came into existence. As many parents might not like the idea of Gipsy children attending the same Board schools as their own, would it not be possible to establish special schools in those parts of the Midland counties where Gipsies 'most do congregate'?"

To which I replied as under, in the _Daily News_ bearing date September 13th:--"In reply to Mr. Gorrie's letter which appears in your issue of this morning, I consider that it would be unwise and impracticable to build separate schools for either the brick-yard, canal-boat, Gipsy, or other children moving about the country, in tents, vans, &c., for their use solely; especially would it be so in the case of Gipsy children and roadside arabs. What I have been and am still aiming at is the education of these children, not by isolating them from other working-classes--colliers, potters, ironworkers, factory hands, tradesmen, &c.--but by bringing them in daily contact with the children of these parents, and also under some of the influences of our little missionary civilisers who are brought up and receiving some of their education in drawing-rooms, and whose parents cannot afford to send them to boarding-schools, colleges, &c., and have to content themselves by having their children educated at either the national, British, or Board schools. I confess that it is not pleasant to hear that our children have picked up vulgar words at school; and it requires patience, care, and watchfulness on the part of parents to counteract some of the downward tendencies resulting from an uneven mixing of children brought up and educated under such influences. Better by far put up with these little ills than others we know not of, the outcome of ignorance. On the other hand, it is pleasing to note how glad the parents of Gipsy, canal-boat, and brick-yard children are when their children pick up 'fine words' and become more 'gentlerified' by mixing with children higher up the social scale. Bad habits, words, and actions are generally picked up between school times. It would be well for us to rub down class feeling among children as much as possible as regards their education. The children of brick-makers, canal-boatmen, and Gipsies are of us and with us, and must be taken hold of, educated, and elevated in things pertaining to their future welfare. The 'turning up of the nose,' by those whose duty, education, and privilege should have taught them better things, at these poor children has had more to do in bringing about their pitiable and ignorant condition than can be imagined. The Canal Boats Act, if wisely carried out, will before long bring about the education of the canal-boat children; and in order to bring the Gipsy children, show children, and other roadside arabs under the Education Acts, I am seeking to have all movable habitations, _i.e._, tents, vans, shows, &c., in which the families live who are earning a living by travelling from place to place, registered and numbered, as in the case of canal-boats, and the parents compelled 'by hook or by crook' to send their children to school at the place wherever they may be temporarily located, be it national, British, or Board school. The education of these children should be brought about at all risks and inconveniences, or we may expect a blacker page in the social history of this country opening to our view than we have seen for many a long day."

The following leading article upon Gipsies and other tramps of a similar class appeared in the _Standard_, September 10th, 1879, and as it relates to the subject I have in hand I quote it in full:--"Not only in his 'Uncommercial Traveller,' but in many other scattered passages of his works, Dickens, who for many years lived in Kent, has described the intolerable nuisance inflicted by tramps upon residents in the home counties, and has sketched the natural history of the sturdy vagabond who infests our roads and highways from early spring to late autumn, with a minuteness and power of detail worthy of a Burton. The subject of vagabondage is not, however, confined in its interest to the Metropolis and its adjacent parts. In the United States the habitual beggar has become as serious a nuisance, and, indeed, source of positive danger, as he was once amongst ourselves; and in the State of Pennsylvania more especially it has been found necessary to pass what may be described as an Habitual Vagrants Act for his suppression. That the terms of this enactment should be excessively severe is hardly matter of astonishment, when we bear in mind the fate of little Charley Ross. Early in the year 1874 a couple of men who were travelling up and down the country in a waggon stole from the home of his parents in Germantown, Pennsylvania, a boy of some seven years named Charley Ross. They then sent letters demanding a large sum of money for his restoration. The ransom increased, until no less than twenty thousand dollars was insisted upon. While the parents, on the one hand, were attempting to raise the money, and while the police were endeavouring to arrest the kidnappers, all negotiations fell through. The two men believed to have been concerned in the abduction were shot down in the act of committing a burglary on Rhode Island, and from that day to this the fate of Charley Ross has remained a mystery. Under these circumstances, public opinion has naturally run high, and it has been provided that any habitual tramp making his way from place to place, without earning an honest livelihood, shall be liable to imprisonment with hard labour for a period of twelve months; and that tramps who enter dwellings without permission, who carry fire-arms, or other weapons, or who threaten to injure either persons or property, shall be put to work in the common penitentiary for a period of three years. Pennsylvania in this is but reverting to the old law of England in the Tudor days. In the time of Henry VIII. vagrants were whipped at the cart's tail, without distinction of either sex or age. The whipping-post, together with the stocks, was a conspicuous ornament of every parish green, and it was not until the year 1791 that the whipping of women was expressly forbidden by statute. There were other enactments even more severe. By an act of Elizabeth idle soldiers and marines, or persons pretending to be soldiers or marines, wandering about the realm, were held _ipso facto_ guilty of felony, and hundreds of such offenders were publicly executed. Another act of the same kind was directed against Gipsies, by which any Gipsy, or any person over fourteen who had been seen or found in their fellowship, was guilty of felony if he remained a month in the kingdom; and in Hale's 'Pleas of the Crown' we learn that at one Suffolk Assizes no less than thirteen Gipsies were executed on the strength of this barbarous act, and without any other reason or cause whatever.

"The ancient severity of our Statute Book has long since been modified, and the worst that can now befall 'idle persons and vagabonds, such as wake on the night and sleep on the day, and haunt customable taverns and ale-houses, and routs about; and no man wot from whence they come ne whither they go,' is a brief period of hard labour under the provisions of the Vagrant Act. Under this comprehensive statute are swept together as into one common net a vast variety of petty offenders, of whom some are deemed 'idle and disorderly persons,' other 'rogues and vagabonds,' and others again 'incorrigible rogues.' Under one or other of these heads are unlicensed hawkers or pedlars; persons wandering abroad to beg or causing any child to beg; persons lodging in any outhouse or in the open air, not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a good account of themselves; persons playing or betting in the public street; and notorious thieves loitering about with intent to commit a felony. At the present period of the year the country in the neighbourhood not of the Metropolis alone, but of all large towns, is filled with offenders of this kind. Indeed, the sturdy tramp renders the country to a very great extent unsafe for ladies who have ventured to go about without protection. Ostensibly he is a vendor of combs, or bootlaces, or buttons, or is in quest of a hop-picking job, or is a discharged soldier or sailor, or a labourer out of employment. But whatever may be his pretence, his mode of procedure is more or less the same. If he can come upon a roadside cottage left in the charge of a woman, or possibly only of a young girl, he will demand food and money, and if the demand be not instantly complied with will never hesitate at violence. Indeed, when we remember how many horrible outrages have within the last few years been committed by ruffians of this kind, it is quite easy to understand the severity necessary in less civilised times. Only recently the Spaniard Garcia murdered an entire family in Wales; and some few years ago, at Denham, near Uxbridge, a small household was butchered for the sake of a few shillings and such little plunder as the humble cottage afforded. And although grave crimes of this kind are happily rare, and tend to become rarer, petty violence is far from uncommon. Many ladies resident in the country can tell how they have been beset upon the highway by sturdy tramps of forbidding aspect, to whom, in despair, they have given alms to an amount which practically made the solicitation an act of brigandage. The farmer's wife and the bailiff tell us how haystacks are converted into temporary lodging-houses, chickens stolen, and outbuildings plundered. Only too often the rogues are in direct league with the worst offenders in London. Whitechapel supplies a large contingent of the Kentish hop-pickers, and the 'traveller' who is ostensibly in search of a haymaking or hopping job is, as often as not, spying out the land, and planning profitable burglaries to be carried out in winter with the aid of his colleagues.

"There is, no doubt, much about the tramp that is picturesque. A romantic imagination pictures him as a sort of peripatetic philosopher, with more of Jacques in him than of Autolycus; living in constant communion with Nature; sleeping in the open air; subsisting on the scantiest fare; slaking his thirst at the running brook; and only begging to be allowed to live his own childlike and innocent life, as purposeless as the butterflies, as happy as the swallows, as destitute of all worldly ends and aims as are the very violets of the hedge-row. AEsthetic enthusiasm of this kind is apt to be severely checked by the prosaic realities of actual existence. The tramp, like the noble savage, is a relic of uncivilised life with which we can very well afford to dispense. There is no appreciation of the country about him; no love of Nature for its own sake. In winter he becomes an inmate of the workhouse, where he almost always proves himself turbulent and disorderly. As soon as it becomes warm enough to sleep in a haystack, or under a hedge, or in a thick clump of furze and bracken, he discharges himself from 'the Union' and takes to 'the roads.' From town to town he begs or steals his way, safe in the assurance that should things go amiss the nearest workhouse must always provide him with gratuitous board and lodging. Work of any kind, although he vigorously pretends to be in 'want of a job,' is utterly abhorrent to him. Home county farmers, led by that unerring instinct which is the unconscious result of long experience, know the tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the _bona-fide_ 'harvester,' in quest of honest employment. The tramp, indeed, is the sturdy idler of the roads--a cousin-german of the 'beach-comber,' who is the plague of consuls and aversion of merchant skippers. In almost every port of any size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles for a voyage, but who are, in reality, living from hand to mouth. Captains know only too well that the true 'beach-comber' is always incompetent, often physically unfit for work, and constitutionally mutinous. When his other resources fail, he throws himself upon the nearest consul of the nation to which he may claim to belong, and a very considerable sum is yearly wasted in providing such ramblers with free passages to what they please to assert is the land of their birth. Harbour-masters and port authorities generally are apt to treat notorious offenders of this kind somewhat summarily, and our local police and poor-law officers are ill-advised if they do not follow the good example thus set, and show the tramp as little mercy as possible. Leniency, indeed, of any kind he simply regards as weakness. He would be a highwayman if the existing conditions of society allowed it, and if he had the necessary personal courage. As it is, he is a blot upon our country life, and an eyesore on our roads. Vagabondage is not a heritage with him, as it is with the genuine Gipsies. He has taken to it from choice, and the true-bred Romany will always regard him with contempt, as a mere migratory gaol bird, who knows no tongue of the roads beyond the cant or 'kennick' of thieves--a Whitechapel _argot_, familiarity with which at once tells its own tale. Fortunately, our existing law is sufficient to keep the nuisance in check, if only it be resolutely administered. The tramp, however, trades upon spurious sympathy. There will always be weak-minded folk to pity the poor man whom the hard-hearted magistrates have sent to gaol for sleeping under a haystack--forgetting that this interesting offender is, as a rule, no better than a common thief at large, who will steal whatever he can lay his hands on, and who makes our lanes and pleasant country byways unpleasant, if not actually dangerous."

The foregoing article upon Gipsies and tramps brought from a correspondent in the _Standard_, under date September 12th, the following letter:--"I have just been reading the article in your paper on the subject of tramps. If you could stand at my gate for one day, you would be astonished to see the number of tramps passing through our village, which is on the high road between two of the principal towns in South Yorkshire; and the same may be said of any place in England situated on the main road, or what was formerly the coach road. We seldom meet tramps in town, except towards evening, when they come in for the casual ward. They spend their day in the country, passing from one town to another, and to those who reside near the high road, as I do, they are an intolerable nuisance. A tramp in a ten mile journey, which occupies him all day, will frequently make 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day, besides being supplied with food, and the more miserable and wretched he can make himself appear, the more sympathy he will get, and if he is lucky enough to meet a benevolent old lady out for her afternoon drive he will get 6d. or 1s. from her. She will say 'Poor man,' and then go home thinking how she has helped 'that poor, wretched man' on his way. Tramps are a class of people who never have worked, and who never will, except it be in prison, and, as long as they can get a living for nothing, they will continue to be, as you say in your article, 'A blot upon the country and an eyesore on our roads.'

"I always find the quickest way of getting rid of a tramp is to threaten him with the police, and I am quite sure if every householder would make a rule never to relieve tramps with money, and only those who are crippled, with food, the number would soon be decreased. If people have any old clothes or spare coppers to give away, I am sure they will soon find in their own town or village many cases more worthy of their charity than the highway tramp. I do not recommend anybody to find a tramp even temporary employment, unless they can stand over him and then see the man safe off the premises, and even then he may come again at night as a burglar; but I am sure work could be found at 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day by our corporations or on the highways, where, under proper supervision, these idle vagabonds would be made to earn an honest living. You will find that nine out of ten tramps have been in prison and have no character, and although they may say they 'want work,' they really do not mean it. Not long ago I caught a great rough fellow trying to get the dinner from a little girl who was taking it to her father at his work. 'Poor man! he must have been very hungry,' I fancy I hear the benevolent old lady saying. Of course, during the last year we have had many men 'on the road' who are really in search of work, but I always tell them that there is as much work in one place as another, and unless they really have a situation in view they should not go tramping from town to town. Many of them have no characters to produce, and I expect when they find 'tramping' is such a pleasant and easy mode of living they will join the ranks and become roadsters also."

In _May's Aldershot Advertiser_, September 13th, 1879, the following is a leading article upon the condition of Gipsies:--"The incoming of September reminds us that in the hop districts this is the season of advent of those British nomads--the Gipsies, the only class for whom there is so little legislation, or with whose actions and habits, lawless as they are, the agents of the law so seldom interfere. The miners of the Black Country owe the suppression of juvenile labour and the short time law to the long exertions of the generous-hearted Richard Oastler. The brickmaker may no longer debase and ruin, both morally and physically, his child of the tender age of nine or ten years, by turning it--boy or girl--into the brick-yard to toil, shoeless and ragged, at carrying heavy lumps on its head. The canal population--they who are born and die in the circumscribed hole at the end of a barge, dignified by the name of 'cabin,' are just now receiving the special attention of Mr. Smith, of Coalville, and certainly, excepting the section of whom I am writing, there is not to be found in privileged England a people so utterly debased and regardless of the characteristics of civilised life. The Factory Act prevents the employing of boys or girls under a certain age, and secures for those who are legally employed a sufficient time for recreation. But who cares for, or thinks about, the wandering Romany? True, Police-Constable Argus receives authority by which he, _sans ceremonie_, commands them to 'move on,' should he come across any by the roadside in his diurnal or nocturnal perambulations. But it often occurs that the object for which they 'camped' in the spot has been accomplished. The farmer's hedge has been made to supply them with fuel for warmth and for culinary purposes; his field has been trespassed upon, and fodder stolen for their overworked and cruelly-treated quadrupeds; so, the 'move on' simply means a little inconvenience resulting from their having to transfer their paraphernalia to another 'camp ground' not far off. They also enjoy certain immunities which are withheld from other classes. Excepting that some of them pay for a hawker's licence, they roam about as they list, untaxed and uncontrolled, though the earnings of most of them amount to a considerable sum every year; as they are free from the conventional rule which requires the house-dwelling population, often at great inconvenience, to 'keep up appearances,' it often happens that the wearer of the most tattered garments earns the most money. They can and do live sparingly, and spend lavishly. The labour which they choose is the most remunerative kind. Ploughing or stone-breaking is not the employment, which the Gipsy usually seeks! He takes the cream and leaves the skimmed milk for the cottier, and having done all there is to do of the kind he chooses, he is off to some other money-making industry. A Gipsy will make four harvests in one year; first he goes 'up the country,' as he calls going into Middlesex, for 'peas-hacking.' That over, he goes into Sussex (Chichester--'wheat-fagging' or tying), and on that being done, returns toward Hampshire--North Hants--to 'fag' or tie, and that being done he enters Surrey for hop-picking (previously securing a 'bin' in one of the gardens). Some idea of his gross earnings may be obtained from the following fact:--Two able-bodied men, an old woman of about 75 years of age, and two women, earned on a farm in one harvest, no less than 42 pounds. After that, they went hop-picking, and, in answer to my question, 'How much will they earn there?' the farmer, who is a hop-grower, said, 'More than they have here.' These operations were performed in less than a quarter of the year. In the places through which they pass to their work they sell what they can, and at night pitch their tent or draw their van on some common or waste land, buy no corn for their horses, nor spend any money for coal or wood. If they locate themselves on the margin of a wood, and make a prolonged sojourn, the uproar, the screams, the cries of 'murder' heard from their rendezvous

"'Make night hideous.'

All this, and more, they do with impunity. 'It is only the Gipsies quarrelling.' No inspector of nuisances pays them a visit; the tax-gatherer knows not their whereabouts; the rate-collector troubles them not with any 'demand note;' their children are not provided with proper and necessary education, yet no school attendance officer serves them with a summons. Their existence is not known officially, saving the time a census is taken, when, at the _expense of the house-dwellers_, a registry is made of them. Not a farthing do they contribute to the government, imperial or local, though many of them are in a position to do it, and can, without inconvenience, find from 40 to 80 pounds; or 100 pounds for a new-travelling van when they want one. Overcrowding and numerous indecencies exist in galore among them, yet no representative of the Board of Health troubles himself about the number of cubic feet of air per individual there may be in their tent or van. Is this neglect, indifference, obliviousness, or do the authorities believe that the impurities and unsanitary exhalements are sufficiently oxidised to prevent any disease? It is worthy of remark that they are not liable to the epidemics which afflict others. The loss of a pony from a common simultaneously with their exodus is a suspicious fact occasionally. They live in defiance of social, moral, civil, and natural law, a disgrace to the legislature.--J. W. B."

In the _Hand and Heart_, September 19th of last year, the editor says, with reference to our roadside arabs:--"Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, whose efforts to better the condition of the wretched canal population have met deserved success, draws attention to the state of another neglected class. Parliament, he says, which has lately been reforming so many things, would have done well to consider the case of the Gipsies, 'our roadside arabs.' Of the idleness, ignorance, heathenism, and general misery prevailing among these strange people he gives some curious instances. One old man, whose acquaintance Mr. Smith made, calculates that 'there are about 250 families of Gipsies in ten of the Midland counties, and thinks that a similar proportion will be found in the rest of the United Kingdom. He has seen as many as ten tents of Gipsies within a distance of five miles. He thinks there will be an average of five children in each tent. He has seen as many as ten or twelve children in some tents, and not many of them able to read or write. His child of six months old--with his wife ill at the same time in the tent--sickened, died, and was "laid out" by him, and it was also buried out of one of those wretched abodes on the roadside at Barrow-upon-Soar, last January. When the poor thing died he had not sixpence in his pocket.' An old woman bore similar testimony. 'She said that she had had sixteen children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of them being born in a roadside tent. She says that she was married out of one of these tents; and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at Packington, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch. This poor woman knows about three hundred families of Gipsies in eleven of the Midland and Eastern counties, and has herself, so she says, four lots of Gipsies travelling in Lincolnshire at the present time. She said she could not read herself, and thinks that not one Gipsy in twenty can. She has travelled all her life. Her mother, named Smith, of whom there are not a few, is the mother of fifteen children, all of whom were born in a tent.' Mr. Smith's conclusion (which will not be disputed) is that 'to have between three and four thousand men and women, and eight or ten thousand children classed in the Census as vagrants and vagabonds, roaming all over the country, in ignorance and evil training that carries peril with it, is not a pleasant look-out for the future.' He contends that 'if these poor children, living in vans and tents and under old carts, are to be allowed to live in these places, they should be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act of 1877, so that the children may be brought under the compulsory clauses of the Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised as other children.'"

The _Illustrated London News_, October 4th, says:--"Among the papers to be read at Manchester is one on the condition of the Gipsy children and roadside 'arabs' in our midst, by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester. Here, indeed, is a gentleman who is certainly neither a dealer in crotchets nor a rider of hobbies. Mr. Smith has done admirable service on behalf of the poor children on board our barges and canal-boats, and the even more pitiable boys and girls in our brick-fields; and to his philanthropic exertions are mainly due the recent amendments in the Factory Acts regulating the labour of young children. He has now taken the case of the juvenile 'Romanies' in hand; and I wish him well in his benevolent crusade. Mr. Smith has obligingly sent me a proof of his address, from which I gather that, owing to a superstitious dislike which the Gipsies entertain towards the Census, and the successfully cunning attempts on their part to baffle the enumerators, it is only by conjecture and guesswork that we can form any idea of the number of Bohemians in this country. The result of Mr. Smith's diligent inquiries has led him to the assumption that there are not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and 'arab'--that is to say, tramp--children roaming about the country 'outside the educational laws and the pale of civilisation.'"

The following leading article, relating to my paper upon "The Condition of the Gipsy Children," appears in the _Daily News_, October 6th:--"At the Social Science Congress Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, will to-morrow open a fresh campaign of philanthropy. The philanthropic Alexander is seldom in the unhappy condition of his Macedonian original, and generally has plenty of worlds remaining ready to be conquered. Brick-yards and canal-boats have not exhausted Mr. Smith's energies, and the field he has now entered upon is wider and perhaps harder to work than either of these. Mr. Smith desires to bring the Gipsy children under the operation of the Education Act. Education and Gipsies seem at first sight to be words mutually contradictory. Amid the mass of imaginative fiction, idle speculation, and deliberate forgery that has been set afloat on the subject of the Gipsies, one thing has been made tolerably clear, and that is the intense aversion which the pure bred Gipsy has to any of the restraints of civilised life. Whether those restraints take the form of orderly and cleanly living in houses of brick and of stone, or of military service, or of school attendance, is pretty much a matter of indifference to him. Schools, indeed, may be regarded from the Gipsy point of view as not merely irksome, but useless institutions. Our most advanced places of technical education do not teach fortune-telling, or that interesting branch of the tinker's art which enables the practitioner in mending one hole in a kettle to make two. Except for music the Gipsies do not seem to have much aptitude for the arts; they are more or less indifferent to literature; and business, except of certain dubious kinds, is a detestable thing to them. Their vagrant habits, on the other hand, enable them, without much difficulty, to evade the great commandment which has gone forth, that all the English world shall be examined.

"The condition of the Gipsies is a sufficiently gloomy one. We may pass over those degenerate members of the race who have elected to pitch permanent tents in the slums and rookeries of great towns, because, in the first place, they are degenerate, and in the second, their children ought to be within reach of School Board visitors who do their duty diligently. It is only the Gipsy proper who has the opportunity of evading this vigilance. His opportunity is an excellent one, and he fully avails himself of it. Gipsy households, if they can be so called, are of the most fluid, not to say intangible character. The partnerships between men and women are rarely of a legal kind, and the constant habit of aliases and double names make identification still more difficult. As a rule, the race is remarkably prolific, and though the hardships to which young children are exposed thin it considerably, the proportion of children to adults is still very large. Hawking, their chief ostensible occupation, cannot legally be practised until the age of seventeen, and until that time the Gipsy child has nothing to do except to sprawl and loaf about the camp, and to indulge in his own devices. Idleness and ignorance, unless the whole race of moralists have combined to represent things falsely, are the parents of every sort of vice, and the average Gipsy child would appear to be brought up in a condition which is the _ne plus ultra_ of both. It is true that Gipsies do not very often make their appearance in courts of justice, but this is partly owing to the cunning with which their peccadilloes are practised, partly to their well-known habit of sticking by one another, and still more to the mild but very definite terrorism which they exercise. Country residents, when a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know that a certain amount of blackmail in this way or that has to be paid, and that in their own time the strangers, if not interfered with, will go. Interference with them is apt to bring down a visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the 'red cock,' whose crowings usually cost a good deal more than a stray chicken here and a vanished blanket there. So the Ishmaelites are left pretty much alone to wander about from roadside patch to roadside patch to pick up a living somehow or other, and to exist in the condition of undisturbed freedom and filth which appears to be all that they desire.

"The gloss has long been taken off the picture which imaginative persons used to varnish for themselves as to the Romany. Nor, perhaps is any country in Europe so little fitted for these gentry as ours. England is every year becoming more and more enclosed, and the spaces which are not enclosed are more and more carefully looked after. Whether in our climate open-air living was ever thoroughly satisfactory is a question not easy to answer. But even if we admit that it might have been merry in good greenwood under the conditions picturesquely described in ballads, the admission does not extend to the present day. There is no good greenwood now, except a few insignificant patches, which are pretty sharply preserved; and the killing of game, except on a small scale and at considerable risk, is difficult. The cheapness of modern manufactures has interfered a good deal with the various trades of mending, mankind having made up their minds that it is better to buy new things and throw them away when they fail than to have them patched and cobbled. Fortune-telling is a resource to some extent, but even this is meddled with by the Gorgio and his laws. The _raison d'etre_ of the vagabond Gipsy is getting smaller and smaller in England, and as this goes on the likelihood of his practices becoming more and more undisguisedly criminal is obvious. The best way to prevent this is, of course, to catch him young and educate him. A century or two ago the innate Bohemianism of the race might have made this difficult, if not impossible. But it is clear that even if the Gipsy blood has not been largely crossed during their four centuries of residence in England, other influences have been sufficient to work upon them. If they can live in towns at all, they can live in them after the manner of civilised townsmen. A Gipsy at school suggests odd ideas, and one might expect that the pupils would imitate some day or other, though less tragically, the conduct of that promising South African prince who, the other day, solemnly took off his trousers (as a more decisive way of shaking our dust from his feet), and began vigorously to kill colonists. But it is by no means certain that this would be the case. The old order of Gipsy life has, in England, at any rate, become something of an impossibility and everything of a nuisance. It has ceased to be even picturesque."

The following is a copy of my paper upon the "Condition of Gipsy Children," as read by me before the Social Science Congress, held at Manchester on October 7th, 1879. Although it was at the "fag end" of the session, and the last paper but two, it was evident the announcement in the papers that my paper was to be read on Tuesday morning had created a little interest in the Gipsy children question, for immediately I began to read it in the large room, under the presidency of Dr. Haviland, it was manifest I was to be honoured with a large audience, so much so, that, before I had proceeded very far with it, the hall was nearly full of merchant princes--who could afford to leave their bags of gold and cotton--and ladies and gentlemen desirous of listening to my humble tale of neglected humanity, and the outcasts of society, commonly called "Gipsies' children." Dr. Gladstone, of the London School Board, opened the discussion and said that he could, from his own observation and knowledge of the persons I had quoted, testify to the truthfulness of my remarks. Dr. Fox, of London, Mr. H. H. Collins, Mr. Crofton, and other gentlemen took part in the discussion, and it was the unanimous feeling of those present that something should be done to remedy this sad state of things; and the chairman said that the result of my labours with regard to the Gipsies would be that something would be done in the way of legislation. The paper caused some excitement in the country, and was copied lengthily into many of the daily papers, including the _Leicester Daily Post_, _Leicester Daily Mercury_, _Nottingham Guardian_, _Nottingham Journal_, _Sunday School Chronicle_, _Record_, and others nearly in full, and was read as follows:--