Chapter I: HAD heard much and often about the Boughton Green Fair, and the vast (7)

I had not been long in the “mop” before I was face to face with a good-looking, but somewhat eccentric, and good-natured popgun owner, named Mott, at one of the stalls. One passage of Scripture after another he repeated in rapid succession with breathless speech, until quite a crowd gathered round us in the drizzling rain. After my friend—who has been on the road attending fairs for forty years—had finished his speech, his wife handed to him a newspaper, out of which he read my letter as it appeared in the _Daily News_, bearing date September 5th, 1882, which will also be found in page 161. The newspaper had been given to them by a dirty, wretched, filthy-looking family of travelling show folks from London, whose corns and consciences had been touched to the quick. After he had read it, and had given it to his wife again, I expected a “rather hot reception,” especially after a paragraph which has been going the round of a few of the papers, to the effect that I must look out for trouble from “light and dark gentlemen.” As the paper passed from his hands I looked rather anxiously into his face to see what the effect would be. To my surprise, the index of his soul showed pleasure, and not anger; and in unmistakable tones he said, “You are quite right, sir, and I thank you for it. It is rather warm, but your object is right—there is no mistaking that. I quite agree with your plans, and so does every right-thinking man. The traveller’s and other gipsy children ought to be educated. God bless you, sir, I know what religion is; I am an old backslider. I was once a leading member among the Baptists, but I chipped out over a little thing, and now me and my old woman are travelling the country in our van, and doing this sort of thing. There is one thing I should like to say, sir; I never creep into my bed in the van without saying my prayers to my heavenly Father. I feel to sleep better after it. It soothes me a little.” Tears were making their way down the grey-haired traveller’s face; and I think it would have been a blessed thing for him if I could have introduced him into a Methodist prayer-meeting, as a stepping stone that would lead him out and on to the paths he trod in the days of yore, crying out from the depths of his soul, in the language of a writer in the _Christian Life_ for October 14th, 1882—

“Thou art a rock, to which I flee;
With all my sins I come to Thee,
And lay them down, Lord, at Thy feet,
Before the shining mercy-seat.
Thou art a fortress strong and high,
To which for shelter all may fly,
Sure there to find a safe retreat,
Beneath the sacred mercy-seat.”

After shaking hands with this couple I bade them goodbye, and gave them something to read during the dark hours of winter, something in which are buried seeds of a bright spring-time for them both, if they will only follow out the directions given. I then strolled into the fair. I had not gone far before I came upon an old brickmaker, and from him I gleaned some facts showing how wretchedly the Brickyard Act of 1871 is being carried out. After chatting with him for some minutes he apparently took stock of my hair, which has, thank God, grown almost white in the cause of suffering children. Mr. Brickmaker turned quite poetical, and in parting said—

“Take stock, Mr. Knock,
That’s what I have to say, Mr. Grey,”

and he then sidled and smiled away into the crowd.

I had not been long moving to and fro among the gipsies before I learned that two gipsies, whose head-quarters were a few miles from Daventry, were undergoing transportation, one for sheep-stealing, and the other for horse-stealing. The horse-stealing gipsy was caught in his own trap, owing to his being too clever and daring. It came about as follows: A publican and farmer a few miles from here had a fine, beautiful, young black horse, to which the gipsy took a fancy; and it so happened with this gipsy, as with other gipsies of this class, that he had not too much money to spare for purchasing purposes. An old idea ran fresh through his brain, which was, that he could with but little trouble make the horse his own, without money and the bother and trouble of giving back the “shilling for luck” on the completion of the purchase. Accordingly he sallied forth one dark night and took the beautiful animal out of the field, not far from Daventry, and kept it “in close confinement” for three days to undergo doctoring, at the end of which time the stolen horse was quite a different looking animal. The horse now had a white star upon its forehead, and two white fetlocks. Its tail and mane were shortened, and, with the assistance of “ginger,” it put on quite a sharp, frisky appearance. In the meantime he heard that the owner of the horse was much in want of one. “Now,” thought the gipsy, “here’s a fine chance for turning money over quickly, and getting rid of an animal that would turn ‘a tell-tale’ if kept too long.” Consequently the gipsy mounted his steed, and off he trotted to the publican. On arriving at the door he called the innkeeper out to look at a horse that he had for sale, “good, quiet in harness, sound in wind and limb, a good worker, without a blemish, and cheap.” The publican liked the looks of the horse very much, and he asked the gipsy to trot him up and down the road; and off the horse bounded, frisked, and danced about quite lively. The action of the horse was all that was desirable, and the price “right.” In the end the horse was sold, glasses round given, the “luck shilling” returned, the horse was put into the stable, and the gipsy became scarce.

Three days after the “white star” and “white fetlocks” were not to be seen, and the horse began to look “quite different.”

It was brought plainly home to the publican that he had bought back his stolen horse. The gipsy was “hunted up,” tried, and sentenced to a “long term,” where horses are not to be had.

In the fair, or “mop,” there were eight vans, in which there would be about sixteen men and women and thirty children living and sleeping; and, so far as I could gather, only about four could read and write, and these were adults, none of whom were teaching their children anything that would be helpful to them in after life.

Connected with one of the “Aunt Sally” establishments there were man, woman, and three little neglected children, with no other sleeping accommodation than a “bottom” of straw spread under the stall, covered with an old sheet, and warmed in the winter by an oil lamp. The poor woman was the picture of poverty, despair, degradation, and misery. Their stall and “Aunt Sally” were pushed through the country on a small “hand cart.” The family hailed from Leicester, and were in a most wretched, dirty, and ignorant condition. As soon as I saw the man I thought I could recognize his features as those of a _posh_ gipsy I had seen before; and it turned out to be true, for he was no other than a “fishman” who had more than once carried my fish to the station.

In the “mop” I came across a man and woman with four children who hailed from a village a few miles from Daventry, and who had taken to gipsying and were singing in the streets in the midst of mud and drenching rain—

“Beautiful Zion, built above,
Beautiful city that I love,
Beautiful gates of pearly white,
Beautiful temple, God its light.”

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.

Their first venture at a showman’s life was to exhibit the model and paintings, and they hired a donkey-cart and set off to Aberdare. When they got there the showman wrote to me, “I am sure you would have been amused if you had been there to have seen us; for when we had our establishment erected—which, by the way, was very small—we were too shy at first to make an appearance outside; at last we made a resolution, and began to shout. So we found out after we had broken the ice that we were landed. On the first night we took enough to pay our month’s rent. This gave us encouragement. We made a good many friends, and I became notorious among my fellow workmen. They thought me an extraordinary man. In three years I painted in oil colours thirteen pictures, three feet square, of the interior of a coal-mine and different other subjects. . . . The waxwork show owners we had accompanied left Wales for London. Afterwards my wife went to Bristol and bought a barrel organ, and I had what we thought a very nice little show, and a nice van and horse. But alas! we did not know what travelling in the winter meant. We found very soon that we could not show every night on account of the weather, and also found that we could not get any credit. If we had no money there was no bread. I shall never forget the first night we got ‘hard up.’ Dear sir, just fancy yourself going into a large town about eight o’clock at night, and the rain coming down in torrents in the cold January month; the houses shining with wet, and a horse to be fed and stabled—for we kept it in a stable then—and six children to get a supper for, let alone yourself, and not a penny in your pocket, and not a friend in the world to speak to or to give you counsel. Well, that is just how we were situated in the first January that we travelled. Dear sir, perhaps you would say, ‘Why did you not make for your home?’ That would have been the wisest plan, but we thought we would endure anything rather than go back to be laughed at. Well, after my good wife had had a good cry, we went to the pawnbroker’s and pledged my watch, thinking that we should be able to redeem it again in a few weeks. We borrowed fifteen shillings, so that with opening the show we could be helped on for a few weeks, instead of which we met with a worse misfortune than ever. We lost our horse at Pontypool. We pledged our organ for £2, and then trailed our van to Swansea for Llanefni fair, thinking we should get money enough to buy another. More next week. The children all send their love to you, wishing you a merry Christmas.”

This man was at one time earning nearly £2 per week, and had a good home. It will be found on close inquiry that nearly all our present-day showmen have been in better circumstances, and rather than be laughed at for their silly adventures by their friends, they are content to wander up and down the world little better than vagabonds, and to train their children for a tramp’s life. By travelling in vans, carts, and tents they escape the school boards, sanitary officers, rent and rate collectors; and to-day they are—unthinkingly, no doubt—undermining all our social privileges, civil rights, and religious advantages, and will, if encouraged by us, bring decay to the roots. I speak that which I do know, from what I have seen and heard.

I had heard of a gipsy Smith who had settled down, and was now residing in one of the “courts” of Daventry. I hunted him up, and found him in a little cottage residing by himself. The cottage was nice and clean. When I went in I was invited to sit upon a chair. The old gipsy had just come home with some work. He was lighting the fire, and I said to him, “I suppose you could do very well with a _Hotchi-witchi_ just now, could you not, Mr. Smith?” The old man turned up his bronzed face, and with a laugh said, “I just could, my dear good gentleman. I was looking for one this morning, but could not find one.” I said, “Could you do with a _Kanéngro_?” The old man replied, “I could if I had one; but I never goes after them now. I don’t much care for them. I would rather have _Hotchi-witchi_.” After a general conversation for a few minutes, I said, “How long have you given up travelling?” He replied, “Nearly thirty years. I like it better now.” “How long have you lived by yourself?” The old man’s lips began to pucker and tears came into his eyes. After wiping his face, he said falteringly, “It is nearly four years since I lost my dear good bedfellow. We had lived together over forty years. She was a good creature, and I mean to meet her in heaven, bless the Lord. I’ve been a bad one in my time, but I’ve given up all bad ways, and have attended the Wesleyan chapel and the Salvation Army nearly two years, bless the Lord; it was the best day’s work that ever I did when I found Him.” The old gipsy now gave me a little of his history. “My grandfather was a Welsh gipsy, and used to attend Northampton and Daventry market and fairs with horses and ponies, and in course of time my father and grandfather began to travel round the midland counties and the Staffordshire Potteries. I was born under the hedge in Gayton Lane, between Kingsthorpe and Boughton Green. The gipsy’s lot is a hard one, I can assure you, my good gentleman. I’ve seen a deal in my time. I attended Boughton Green fair for thirty years, and for eighteen years of this time in succession I never knew two of my cousins to leave the fair without fighting. I’ve seen murder upon the ‘Green’ more than once. It will never be known in this world how many murders have been committed upon the ‘Green.’ There has been some fearful bloodshed and rows done, I can assure you. The gipsies are very vengeful and spiteful, if they ever take it in their heads to be so. Two of my cousins, D— and N—, quarrelled, when they were children down ‘Spectacle Lane,’ over a few sticks.

“They parted, and never met each other again for twenty years, and then it was at a Boughton Green fair. When the fair was over they went into a field to have their old grievance out in blows. They had not been fighting long before D— was put senseless upon the ground. N— went to his tent, and after a few minutes I followed him, and said to my cousin, ‘N—, you have killed D—; you had better be off.’ He went then and there, and has never been took. We buried my cousin, and the day I shall never forget. It was a day, I can assure you. I don’t know where my cousin is now, but I have seen him lots of times since then. The past is a blank, but I mean to get to heaven to meet my dear good old creature. I wish I could read; what a great pity it is that none of us poor gipsies can read. Bless the Lord, although I cannot read I prize the Bible, God’s book; it’s the best book in the world.” The old man now took down a small pocket Bible off his kitchen shelf, and clasped it to his breast and said, “Although I cannot read I puts it in my chair when I says my prayers, and the dear Lord blesses it to my soul and makes me feel happy.”

After partaking of a cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter in the humble “British Workman” in High Street, I made my way to the Byfield carrier, Mr. W—, to secure my “berth” in his cart, which was pretty closely packed with groceries, servants’ boxes and trunks, nails, balms, and paraffin, “chaps,” girls, and their mothers. There seemed to be no “cousins” in our party. I was pretty well wet through from head to foot, and it was perhaps fortunate that we were closely packed, as by which means I was, in all probability, prevented taking a severe cold. At a jog-trot rate we began to move out of Daventry at the heels of a grey horse, whose sides stuck out with fatness and with a “coat” as sleek as a mole. Mr. W— looked well to his steed, while Mrs. W— chatted, joked, and chaffed with her company inside. Up hills and down dales lay our course. Parsons and squires, as usual, were the theme, in the first instance, for conversation and gossip. The Rev. Mr. So-and-So was a very good man in the pulpit but a bad one out of it, and a worse landlord. And they began to enumerate cases of hardship inflicted by him. I must confess that I should not like to be a clergyman with a large family in a small poor parish with a small stipend, and with “charity money” to deal out to a number of dissatisfied, idle, grumbling poor people. A clergyman nowadays has to mix up with the grand and fashionable, to visit the poor, dispense charity with smiles, write any number of letters for the parishioners, assist the sexton, take a lead in the choir, preach his own sermons, superintend the bell-ringers, keep the parish accounts, blow up the roadmen, visit “new comers,” allay scandal, hush gossip, settle squabbles, be liberal, stand insults, know everybody’s business, and know nobody’s business. Must not pay too much attention to young ladies for fear of trouble at home. He must be handsome, lovely, and charming, with a rich melodious voice; hide the faults of evil-doers occupying big pews, lecture evil-doers in little pews; never enter a “dissenting” chapel, give Methodists the “cold shoulder” privately, fraternize with them publicly; take wine with the rich, be teetotal among the poor; give the “tip-top” price for his goods; and above all things, and under all circumstances, the parson must never look cross. If at any time he feels angry he must “keep it to himself inwardly and never show it.” These are the qualifications for a minister of the gospel according to the ideas and motives of Church dwarfs and Sunday saints.

Parsons were now dispensed with, and darkness was creeping over us as we passed by Sir Charles Knightly, Baronet’s, beautiful estate at Fawsly. The next leading topic of our dames and damsels was, as might be expected, the appearance of certain ladies at the usual maidenhood ages. We had not gone far before I knew most of the ages of the “young” dames in the cart, who were much surprised to find that I was younger than they were. “Lor bless me!” said one, “there is no accounting for looks nowadays, for I was talking to a lady the other day, and telling her how young she looked, and that I wished I had as good a black head of hair as she had; but lor and behold you, when I went home with her, I found out that the black hair was a wig, and her own hair was as white as mine. I never was more astonished and surprised in all my life. I could not help but stare at her, she did not look like the same woman, Mrs. W—; I should not have known her if I had not known her so well, and what had made the change. Since then I have guessed but little at women’s ages.” We now pulled up to allow one or two of our party to get out. Our legs had been so crushed and mixed up with each other’s that we were almost left in doubt as to whose legs we were standing upon, Mrs. W— naïvely remarking, as the young damsels were stepping down, “Now mind and see that you got out upon your own legs; don’t run away with some one else’s.”

We were now seated, and off we began to jog again. We had not got far before the company began to ask each other if they were “saved.” The word “saved” is a word well known to me from childhood, and at its sound I pricked up my ears, and began to ask questions about it. And the answers I received were as follows: “Why, bless you, dear sir, have you not heard of the great stir that has been going on among the children connected with the Methodist and Congregational chapels in Byfield? We are woke up at eleven o’clock at night by the children singing about the streets Moody and Sankey’s and Salvation hymns—

“‘Only an armour-bearer, firmly I stand,
Waiting to follow at the King’s command,’ &c.

“‘I love to tell the story
Of unseen things above,’ &c.

“‘Who are these beside the chilly wave,
Just on the borders of the silent grave?’ &c.—

and away they go all round the village disturbing everybody. The young things ought to be in bed. The girls have got so excited that they go about shouting and singing in the daytime. One girl I knew went into the garden to get some cabbages, and while she was getting them up, the devil came to her, and told her that she was not ‘saved,’ and the girl knelt down in the middle of the garden at dinner-time, and there and then began to pray, cry, sing, and shout. After a time she jumped up and said she was saved. ‘Then,’ said the girl, ‘Master Devil, I am saved.’ Another girl went into the garden to get some potatoes, and the good, or some other spirit, came to her, and said that unless she was saved all the potatoes in the garden would go rotten. She there and then stuck the fork into the ground, and began to pray to God to save her. She had not prayed long before she got up and shouted out, ‘I am saved! bless the Lord!’”

I asked how all this was brought about, and the answer I got was, that “The children began to sing in the streets some hymns, and to hold children’s prayer-meetings, under the direction of nobody but themselves; and the movement began to spread about, and bigger folks attended the meetings, and now the place is almost in an uproar; everybody is asking each other, or nearly so, if they are saved.”—I kept putting in a word for the children, bless their little hearts!—“Tea-meetings and prayer-meetings are held, the chapels are filled, and it is all through the children. I don’t like so much shouting and going on in this way.” I hope the good work is still going on, notwithstanding the old woman’s cold water.

It was now pitch dark, and we were winding our way down the narrow lanes in Byfield to the carrier’s home, with whom and his good wife I was to stay for the night, where we arrived “safe and sound,” but cold and damp.

On the hearth there were six beautiful cats, named after her husband’s friends. A month before this they had eight cats; and Mrs. W— says next year she hopes to keep a dozen. The big-hearted, genial woman is an ardent admirer of animals. She said she never had but one valentine in her life, inside of which were pictures of cats, dogs, rabbits, and birds; and it was addressed to her as “Mrs. W—, Cat and Dog Fancier.”

After a good warming and an excellent supper, “the good woman of the house,” Mrs. W—, began to tell me a little of their family history, while her good husband was seeing to his horses, which were petted like children. My hostess related her story as follows: “My father lived to be ninety-four years of age, and my mother died last August at the age of ninety-two. I have had fifteen brothers and sisters, all of whom are dead but three. I have not been out of mourning for sixteen years.” She now fetched the photographs, walking-sticks, and other things of her parents, for me to look at, and then continued her sorrowful story. “My mother,” she said, “was a great sufferer for some years, but she bore it all so meekly. She never murmured once during her illness, and was always talking about heaven. Once she said to me, ‘Why don’t you kiss your father? He is in the room and wants to shake hands with you; why don’t you kiss him?’ Just before she died she called me to her and said, ‘I am going to die, my child. I am going to your father.’ And then she said, faintly, ‘“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” My girl, trust in Jesus. Come a little nearer to me.’ And she then whispered in my ear, ‘Meet me in heaven,’ and passed away like a child going to sleep.”

“What is this that steals upon my frame?
Is it death? Is it death?”

Tears were now forcing their way down the good woman’s face, and in the midst of sobs and sighs a tremulousness was manifest, and she quietly stole upstairs to pray, and to ask Jesus to dry her tears.

After she had left me I was upon the hearthstone alone. The ring-dove, nineteen years old, perched in its cage by the fireside, began to “coo—coo—coo;” the cats began to “pur—pur—pur;” the dog to snore; the kettle to sing; and the lamp shed a cheerful light upon the whole. I stole away to rest my weary bones upon a snowy-white feather bed, and under an extra lot of blankets and fine linen sheets. How different, I thought, as I wandered into dreamland, from the lot of the poor gipsy child, whose sheets are old rags, and whose feathers are damp and almost rotten straw, with mother earth for a bedstead, and the canopy of heaven for curtains.

At seven o’clock I turned out and got my breakfast, and with the morning dawn and a lovely sun shining in my face, I took a stroll through the ancient village to stare at the loitering villagers, gaze at the thatched roofs, eye over the tradesmen, to peep at a very ancient, curious, antiquated stone upon the green, which the roots of a huge tree were toppling over, enjoy the feast of some beautiful scenery, and make some inquiries about the empty house pleasantly situated in the village. I paid my bill—two shillings—and gave the little servant and mine hostess some picture-cards and little books, and then seated myself in the carrier’s cart to be drawn round the village before we trotted off to Banbury fair. Out in the way, the nurse-girls, mothers, and children shrieked out with laughter as they tossed upon their knees the round-faced, chubby, live, kicking, squeaking balls of love, embodiments of pleasure and trouble, singing and shouting—

“Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady get on a white horse,
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.”

On the way and in carts there were crowds of human beings, pretty and plain, big and little, tall and thin, short and stout, some dressed in silks and black cloth, some in rags and tatters; some were smiling all over their faces, and others looked as cross and sour as if they lived on nothing but vinegar and crabs and slept on thorns and thistles. Lovers and haters, pleasure-seekers and thieves, labourers, farmers, tradesmen, and gentlemen, were hurrying helter-skelter to Banbury fair. Some were crying, some were laughing, some were shouting, roaring, puffing, and panting; others were in carriages, with liveried servants as attendants; some were on horseback and donkeyback; others were in horse-carts, donkey-carts, and waggons; and among the number there was a little thin man of sixty winters, standing about two feet six high with his boots on, and by his side was his wife, about five feet high, stout, plump, and about thirty years old. I should not be surprised to hear that she had “not agreed to stop again.” She was well able to carry him on her back, as gipsies do their children, instead of which she looked down upon him and allowed him to trudge along in the mud and rain. She had no love for the little fellow, or she would have carried him in her arms; in fact, she seemed inclined to walk on the other side of the road.

In the throng and crush we arrived at Banbury. I paid my fare—all the way from Daventry, one shilling and sixpence—shook hands with my kind friends, and made my way into the crowd of sightseers, gipsies, mendicants, tramps, the fashionable, and the gay.

The first gipsy I met with was an old friend, “Righteous Smith”—which name was printed on the van—and his large family, at a cocoa-nut establishment. One of the daughters, dressed in lively colours, was in charge of the balls, and shouting out to the “chaps” as they passed forward, “Try your luck, gentlemen!” and the father shouted out, “Now, gentlemen, bowl away! all bad nuts returned.” In response to their bewitching entreaties some old cricketers tried their hand, and, much to the chagrin of “Righteous Smith,” they sent the nuts “spinning away” rather more freely than was profitable and pleasant for “Righteous,” to the extent of putting his good name in the shade. This family of gipsies have, I should think, about three parts of Romany blood in their veins. Their van was a good one, and beautifully clean, and will pass muster when the new order of things comes about, for which I am working night and day, and which, I am thankful to say, is casting its shadows before it. The eight cocoa-nut establishments were owned by cross-bred Romanies, and one or two of the families lived in vans fairly clean. There were over thirty families living in the vans attending the fair, in which there would be an average of three children, one man, and one woman in each van. In five of the vans there were two men and two women in each. A number of those who owned small short shooting galleries and “rock stalls” slept with their children under the stalls.

From this cocoa-nut going “concern” I strolled among the shows, bosh, nonsense, and cheap Jacks. The introduction to one of the sparring establishments was by an old woman screaming out, “We are just going to begin.” By her side was a dandily dressed and painted doll, setting herself off to the best advantage. On some steps between the two women there stood a man painted as a fool, and dressed in tight indecent sparring costume. “Darkey,” with his pug nose, short hair, low narrow forehead, high cheekbones, deep sunken eyes, glistening fire like a black glass bead in the centre of a white china button under the glare of a lamp, which he frequently turned sharply, quickly, and inquisitively to me as if anxious to know my movements. If he had been an uncaught thief, and conscience was telling him that I was a detective, he could not have eyed me over more quickly and closely than he did.

_Gentlemen_ with diamond rings, poachers, and blackguards formed the company. A ring was formed, and “Darkey” and a “Johnny Straw” set to work with their gloves “milling” each other, and just as their “savage” was getting up, the curtain to outsiders was drawn. How long the big and little fools kept at the “milling” process I did not stay to see. What fools there are passing through the world as gentlemen, to be sure, to witness such debasing exhibitions with “pure frolic” and laughter, while their money is being drawn out of their pocket imperceptibly by idle vagabonds.

Not far from this “boxing establishment” there was another “set-out” waiting for a second dose of fools, with a “champion boxer” as a “draw.” Money went freely into the coffers, while the owners of stalls upon which useful articles were exposed for sale “had a bad time of it;” even the celebrated “Banbury cake” was “a drug in the market.”

Over the door, as a sign at one of the shows belonging to Mr. Great Frederick Little, where a nude man was exhibiting himself—“girls and ladies not allowed to enter”—stood two calves’ heads over a skeleton, and what surprised me most was that the good Banbury folks and country Johnnies could not see the satire that was being played upon them. “Calves and bones” for a sign; and I think, judging from the dejected appearance of the people as they came out of the establishment, they felt like “calves and bones” themselves; at any rate they did not look any the wiser—certainly they looked sadder.

Turning from this concern, I was jostled into a crowd of folks to witness a man named Turnover Snuff, Esq., dressed in best blue cloth, with gold watches, guards, and rings, making fools of two well-dressed innocent youths, whom he had called up from the crowd and dressed in rags to eat buns for a prize, to be used as a “draw,” to enable him to pass off his showy goods under various colours, dodges, and pretexts. While the youths were forcing the buns down their throats he was cracking jokes, which the people, with their mouths open, swallowed as gospel. What this “Cheap Jack” said in action, if not in words, was, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, you see that these two youths have come up here at my bidding, to make fools of themselves, and to eat these buns I am forcing down their throats, to cause you to twitter and laugh with your eyes shut to the things that are to follow; so in like manner I want all of you to shut your eyes and open your mouths to receive all the lies I want to force down your throats, that I may extract the coin from your pockets for my ‘Cheap Jack’ articles; so we will now proceed to business, ladies and gentlemen.”

There were one or two exhibitions in the fair of a good genuine character, and the rest were “rubbish,” of which it might be said of the performers, as a writer in the _Sword and Trowel_ for 1876 says:

“See, I am as black as night;
See, I am darkness, dark as hell.”

In the fair I ran against the sanitary and local canal boat inspector—Mr. Daniel Dixon—whom I asked to give me his independent views of the gipsies and show-people attending the fair. In company with the medical officer of health he visited the vans, and the following particulars may be taken as a fair sample and average of the thirty vans in the fair, in accordance with what he says:

“According to promise, I forward you the particulars of our visits to the shows and vans visiting our fair on Thursday; and I also took a little more trouble to be along early on Friday morning. I was certainly astonished to see the people turn out of some of these places, some of the smaller vans turning out the greatest number. I give you a few instances of the number who turned out of the smaller vans. In Nos. 1, 2, 6, 13, and 19 there were 5 men, 5 women, and 22 children, making a total of 32 in the 5 vans. Education totally neglected. They were dirty, neglected, and uncared for. One van was as clean as could be expected.

“In 1879, 40 vans visited our fair.

“In 1880, 50 vans visited our fair, in which there were 38 men, 32 women, and 43 children.

“In 1881 there were 130 persons in 36 vans. While some of the vans were remarkably clean and well fitted up, there were some totally unfit for habitation, and certainly ought not to be allowed. The gipsy tribe was fairly represented, and evidently some of them are fairly blest with an amount of property which surprises me. There were a few surly people who did not like our visit, and gave us unmistakable signs of displeasure, but the majority were civil.

“If you can devise a plan whereby these people can receive _any_ education, you will render valuable service, morally and religiously, to society at large.”

After referring to the value of the Canal Boats Act, and the amendments I propose, Mr. Dixon said that he should be pleased to further my efforts at any time.

A minister of the town writes me to say that a number of vans left the town on Thursday night or early on Friday morning. In the 15 vans he visited he found 48 children and 22 men and women, only six of whom could read and write a little. The rest were growing up as ignorant as heathen, and with the exception of two of the vans, dirt and wretchedness abounded in their _homes_. He said also that the conduct of the gipsies and other travellers at this fair has been better than in former years.

Notwithstanding the reports that have been in circulation, enough to shake the nerves of timid folks, I am received kindly and civilly by all the gipsies. One gipsy woman named Smith in a jocular term said, “Mr. Smith, we have been told that you are going to take all our children away from us and send them to school; you will require a mighty big school, bigger than any in the world, to hold them, I can assure you.”

A few yards from where we were standing there was a van, into which I was invited to tea by the poor woman, the “mistress of the _house_.” In this wooden tumble-down house upon wheels, about 9 ft. long by 5 ft. wide, and 6 ft. high, there were man, wife, and seven children in a most dirty and heartrending condition. The youngest was a baby only three weeks old, and was born in the van at Weedon.

I had a long chat with the good-natured woman. As I sat upon an old sack at the bottom of the van, with the children in rags and dirt creeping round me, and in the midst of an odour not at all pleasant to the olfactory organs, I felt as if my heart was almost ready to break at the sight of human woe and misery before me. To say that I could have wept hot briny tears would not convey in language telling enough the strong feeling of sympathy that crept over me, to the extent of almost freezing the blood in my veins. For a moment I seemed to lose sight of everything else in the fair, and it was with some difficulty I could refrain from crying out, as I stepped from amongst the poor little forgotten and neglected children, and out of this gipsy house, with a cocoa-nut which “Jack” would thrust into my bag, “Good Lord! when shall these sad things and these wretched and pitiable sights come to an end? Would to God that the trumpet which is to bring to life the dead would begin to ring! ring! ring! and thrill into our ears a nervous, disquieting solo, keeping on and on till it has awoke us all up—aye! ministers, philanthropists, Christians of every grade, moralists, members of Parliament, cabinet ministers, and peers—to a sense of our duty towards the little and big heathens at our own door, before our fate becomes as that of Belshazzar and Babylon.”

“Oh say, in all the bleak expanse
Is there a spot to win your glance
So bright, so dark as this?
A hopeless faith, a homeless race.”

“_Lyrics of Palestine_,” _Religious Tract Society_.

I answer, No.

No children in lovely, beautiful England, the bright star of the West, stand so much in need of help as do our poor canal and gipsy children, who are living outside our factory, educational, and sanitary laws, and, with some bright exceptions, religious influences.

Short Excursions and Rambles in the Bypaths of Gipsydom.

SOME time ago a gipsy named Shaw was found in a Northamptonshire churchyard at midnight, asleep between the gravestones, with his fiddle by his side. When awakened by a wandering policeman crying out, “Now then, move on,” gipsy Shaw grunted and growled out, “Who’s there? What do you want, Mr. Devil? Wake these others up; they’ve been here longer than me, and when they goes I’ll go, and not till then, Mr. Devil; and so make yourself scarce.” The policeman saw, and in fact knew, that Shaw was a queer kind of customer, and he therefore let him snore and sleep among dead men’s bones till morning. On the following morning Mr. Policeman met gipsy Shaw with his fiddle (_Boshomengro_) under his arm, when he called out, “Halloo, Shaw, you’ve left your companions behind you after all.” “Yes,” said gipsy Shaw; “when I opened my eyes it was daylight, and the sun was shining in my face, and I thought over fresh considerations.”

At the present time the gipsies and other travellers in this country are among the dead men’s bones of backwood gipsy writers and their present-day sins and wrong-doings, with Mr. John Bull standing by, saying in effect to the lost gipsies and their children, “Snore on, sleep on; stick to your fiddles and the devil; care not a straw for either parsons or priests.”

If John Bull cares not, will not and won’t do for the children of travellers the same as he is doing for other children within his dominions, and what his Continental neighbours are doing for theirs, it is time the gipsies themselves “thought over fresh considerations,” and walked out into open day, and demanded the blessings of English civilized life in a way that will readily secure an attentive ear to the cries and wails of their children.

Thank God, a few writers of tales and stories of a healthy, interesting, elevating, and heavenly kind are coming to the rescue of the poor gipsy, canal, and other travelling children. May their name be Legion and their motto be Fairelie Thornton’s lines in the _Sunday School Chronicle_—

“Direct the words I say,
Oh, let them reach the heart;
Let there be wingèd words alway,
And light and life impart.”

On my way to Edinburgh in October, 1880, to read a paper before the Social Science Congress, upon the condition of our gipsies and their children, I took occasion to call at Leicester races on my way, and paddled ankle deep in mud and quagmire to try to ascertain how many gipsy and other travelling children there were upon the course living in tents and vans. At a rough calculation there would be fully four hundred children and two hundred men and women huddling together in eighty of these wretched temporary abodes. Not a score of the children, except a few snatches in the winter, were receiving any education other than such as is obtained upon a racecourse and its associations, giving and taking lessons in the initiatory stage of a gambler’s life. The following cases will give some idea of the state of morality amongst the wandering classes. Phillips, a gipsy from Maidstone, had in his van one woman and eleven children; Green, a gipsy from Bristol, had in his van two men, two women, and eleven children; Brinklow, a gipsy, had in his van two women and seven children; Lee, a gipsy from London, had in his tent two young men, one woman, and seven children; making a total of forty-seven men, women, and children of all ages and sizes, huddling together in these four tents and vans, not two of whom could read or write a sentence. Mrs. Brinklow said her eldest girl attended a Bible-class at Bristol in the winter, which led me to think that the gipsy girl could read, but on inquiry I found she could not tell a letter. Those who are spellbound by gipsy fascination and admire the “witching eyes” of picturesque human degradation and depravity, will consider this in the nineteenth century a state of civilization preparing us for the millennium, when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and all tears be wiped away.

Last autumn I visited the gipsies at Cherry Island, near London, and found about thirty tents, in which there were between one and two hundred gipsy children growing up worse than Zulus. For one minute let us get inside one of the gipsy tents in which these children are born, and in which they live and die. It is about seven feet wide, sixteen feet long, and where the round top is highest, is about four feet and a half in height. It is covered with pieces of old canvas or sacking to keep out the cold and rain, and the entrance is closed with a kind of curtain; the fire by which they cook their meals is placed in a tin bucket pierced with holes. Some of the smoke from the burning sticks goes out of an opening in the top of the tent that serves as a chimney, while the rest of it fills the place and helps to keep their faces and hands a proper gipsy colour. The bed is a little straw laid on the damp ground, covered with a sack or sheet, as the case may be; an old soap-box or tea-chest serves both as cupboard and table. Here they live, father and mother, brothers and sisters, huddled up together. They live like pigs, and die like dogs. Washing is but little known amongst them; and of such luxuries as knives and forks, chairs and tables, plates and cups, they are very independent. They take their meals, and do what work they do, squatting on the ground; and the knives and forks they use are of the kind that Adam used, and sensitive when dipped in hot water. Lying, begging, and pretended fortune-telling have as much to do with their living as chair-mending, tinkering, and hawking. The heaviest work falls to the lot of the women, who may often be seen with a child upon their backs, another in their arms, and a heavily-laden basket by their side. The men lounge about the lanes and hedges with their dogs, whilst the children grow up in such ignorance and sin as to deserve the name of _ditch-dwelling heathens_.

[Picture: Gipsy quarters, Plaistow marshes]

The winter drives many of the gipsies to encamp in the marshes, or in the disused brickfields near London. Anything more dismal and wretched than this life it is hard to think of. All the poetry of gipsying is clean gone then, and nothing is left but filth, poverty, vice, and misery. In Hackney Marshes and elsewhere about London you may find scores of these tents, often so rotten that a stiff wind would blow them away. Creeping into one of them, almost on all fours, you find half-naked gipsy children squatting upon the ground, busy at skewer-cutting, for which they get from tenpence to one shilling for fourteen pounds’ weight. Or else the family is at work in the more elaborate processes of making clothes-pegs. One chops sticks the right length; another trims them into shape and flings them into a pan of hot water; a child picks out the floating pieces and bites off the bark; and then a bigger lad fastens the two together with a strip of tin, and the clothes-peg is ready. So the dreary day goes by until the lurcher dog springs up, the unfailing attendant of the gipsy man, and the women of the family return with the scraps they have picked up in questionable ways at back doors, and with the proceeds of their sales. At night all lie down where they have worked, and sleep as they are, with but a rag between them and the bleak night of pitiless rain and snow. Here the gipsy children are born and brought up. Here they live and here they die, almost as far away from the track of any day-school or Sunday-school as if they were African savages.

The poor wandering outcast gipsy child can say with Phineas Fletcher in the “Fuller Worthies”—

“See, Lord, see, I am dead;
Tomb’d in myself, myself my grave:
A drudge, so born, so bred,
Myself, even to myself, a slave.”

* * * * *

“Ask’st Thou no beauty but to cleanse and clothe me?
If, then, Thou lik’st, put forth Thy hand and take me.”