Chapter I: HAD heard much and often about the Boughton Green Fair, and the vast (8)

Two years ago I attended a village feast in the neighbourhood of Bedford, and found, as usual, a large gathering of gipsies and others of a similar class plying their avocation among the “knock’em downs,” “three shies a penny,” &c. On arriving at the place I found “a gipsy row upon the carpet,” and on going up to one of the gipsies to ask him what it was all about, a gipsy some fifty yards off, more like a madman than anything else, began to bawl out all sorts of hard things, and in doing so other gipsies began to cluster round us, and to all appearance I seemed to be in a fair way for being in the midst of a “Welsh fight.” So I said to the gipsy who was standing by me, “I’ll go to see what he wants.” “If you do,” the gipsy replied, “he will knock you down.” I said, “Then I will go to be knocked down,” and away I went, and while I was going along the mad gipsy was literally foaming with rage, and uttering oaths and curses on my head not quite as thick as hailstones. On arriving before his majesty I began to smile at him, and said as I put out my hand to him, “Will you shake hands?” At this he drew back a little, and said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Lend me your hand.” He again said, with more emphasis than before, “What do you mean?” Ultimately he put out his hand into mine, and the result was nothing would please him and the other gipsies but that we must drink some ginger-beer together. And while this was going on a gipsy from Barking Road, London, whom I had seen before, whispered in his ear who I was, and that I was trying to get their children educated. So nothing would serve them but to explain in a public-house bar how the education of the gipsy children was to be brought about, which plan seemed to please them amazingly; and at the end of my tale they again closed in upon me, but this time to thank and bless me. The foremost in doing so was the mad gipsy whom I faced in the storm, saying, as he shook hands with both hands in a rough fashion, “I do love you, that I do, for taking so much trouble over our children.” After similar greetings from the others we parted. Only one out of the large number of gipsies there could read and write, and he had taken to gipsying from the boarding-school at the age of seventeen, and, sad to say, neither his wife nor one of their eight children could tell a letter; and he further said that he was sure there was not one gipsy in a hundred who could read a sentence. To the gipsies I would say with a writer in _Hand and Heart_, Ah!

“Mistaken mortals, did you know
Where joy, heart’s ease, and comforts grow!”

[Picture: An English gipsy king—“krális”—lying in wait in his palace,
králisko-kair]

In May, 1880, I visited one of the largest towns in the midland counties, with the object of ascertaining the probable number of shows, vans, and other movable abodes there were in and round the outskirts of the town, and found close about thirty. These, together with others in various parts of the country, would in all probability bring the number to nearly forty-five. No doubt other counties would furnish similar results. In showing the number of those who live in these vans I will quote the following seven cases as a specimen. The numbers were given to me by a man and his wife, who own and live in one of the vans about the size of a carrier’s dray, following the profession of “knock-’em-down.” B—, man, wife, and eleven children of all ages and sizes; S—, man, wife, and four children; J—, man, wife, and five children; P—, man, wife, and seven children; B—, man, wife, and four children; E—, man, wife, and seven children; N—, man, wife, and five children. By these figures it will be seen that there are forty-three children and fourteen men and women, with four-fifths at least of English blood in their veins, living in these seven vans. Few of these persons can read or write. I should think scarcely half a dozen could write their own names. In the case of the man B—, two children could just put three letters together, and two could just write their own names, and this was the extent of their education. Some of the “popgun” owners I have known personally for some years. One of the sons worked for me, and would by this time have been earning his £1 per week; but instead of this the whole family of twelve have taken to this libertine kind of wandering existence, with a prospect that does not look very encouraging, and many others are doing the same thing. These cases are given to show what is going on all over the country. In some instances the parents would send their children to school, but they say they cannot afford to pay for a week’s schooling when the children can only attend a day or two. It seems hardly fair to make those who of all others should have their education encouraged to pay three times as much as town residents, which is the case when the children attend three different schools in one week. These ramblers are on the increase, and it is high time they were taken in hand. James, a man well known, and who travels with a “ginger-bread stall,” said, when I told him my object and what the results would be, as he filled my hand full of his best “Grantham ginger-bread,” “God bless you, man, for it, and I wish with all my heart it would come to pass to morrow. Will it be three months first?” I told him that I thought it would be a much longer time than that, at which he shook his head, and said it was a “bad job.”

The gipsies of England have nothing in the past to thank us for, except the policeman’s cudgel and the “wheel of fortune” in the big “stone jug.” No one has taken them by the hand to lift and lead them out from among the dead men’s bones and demoralizing scenes in the midst of which they have been content with hellish delight to revel. Thank God, a few kind-hearted friends are beginning to notice them in their degraded condition, and to write to me on the subject. One of the leading woollen manufacturers of Scotland wrote to me in 1881 as follows:

“DEAR SIR,—

“I can testify to the horrible social state of the van population at
described in your occasional communications to the _Times_. This
class of people overflow in Scotland, and for some years I have had
occasion to observe their habits and habitations. But hitherto no
persons in authority seem to take any interest in the matter, though
it is one of grave social importance. We have visits of people who
live in vans, who bring to the town such entertainments as shooting
galleries, hobby horses, and any kind of trumpery exhibitions. These
concerns are made up of families who pig together in their vans in a
state which defies decency or sanitary rules. Whole families house
in these small boxes upon wheels, usually in size about eight or nine
feet by five feet. One lady recently tried to converse with some
children of this class, and found they were ignorant of everything
that was good. A gentleman interviewed one of the male heads of one
family or group. He said his wife had had seventeen children, all
born in the van in different counties of England. Within a few yards
of my own door a van just lately stood for a night, in which slept
one woman and five men or lads. The man—if he were the father—said
they dealt in horses, and belonged to Hull, and they travelled the
country living in their van, which was about eight feet by five feet.
What I complain of is that, while local residents are made subject to
various rules, educational and social, police, and sanitary order,
these people should escape all kinds of supervision, and be literally
a law unto themselves. I can well understand the strong reasons you
have for calling public attention to such an evil.”

The Rev. John L. Gardiner, vicar of Sevenoaks, wrote me in 1880 stating the guardians in his place were thinking of moving the authorities to take some steps for ameliorating their condition. In 1880 I received the following letter from a right worthy, good, and true working man living in Derby:

“DEAR SIR,—

“I doubt not but that you will feel surprised at receiving a letter
from me, an entire stranger to you; but I feel certain that the
subject which I wish to bring before you will be a sufficient apology
for my intrusion on your valuable time. I have very recently seen in
the public journals allusions to another appeal from you on behalf of
our poor gipsy and van children, whom you are striving to reclaim
from a life of utter ignorance, and I wish you a hearty Godspeed in
your noble endeavours. I doubt not, if it could be ascertained,
there are thousands of these poor children in our land of boasted
Christianity growing up in ignorance and crime, and enduring the
greatest amount of misery that we could imagine. I have no doubt but
that a large percentage of our worst criminals emanate from this
class of poor children. When I think of these poor outcasts, and
think that they are my brothers and sisters, made by the same Divine
hand and bearing His own image, and for whom Christ died that they
should be raised up to Him, I feel my heart burn within me, and I
often pray to God that He would raise up some one able to plead their
cause.”

Early in 1880 a lady at Sherborne, Dorset, wrote me as follows:

“I have always taken a deep interest in them. I have again and again
wished that I could help to make them more intelligent and useful,
for they are not a stupid race. About two months since a poor young
woman of this class called at my house with a beautiful infant almost
naked. I relieved her, and inquired the whereabouts of their
encampments, which was about one and a half miles distant from my
home. I went over to see them, and I assure you my heart yearned to
do something to help to sweeten the atmosphere of their moral life.
There were youths and maidens, children, old women and old men; but
alas! I was powerless to do anything for them.”

A clergyman of high standing, near Salisbury, wrote me in 1880 to say that a committee of the Salisbury Diocesan Synod had commissioned him to collect information bearing on the neglected condition of the population accustomed for the greater part of the year to live in caravans and attend fairs in the diocese. “I could,” continued the worthy clergyman, “bring before you many proofs of the wretchedly ignorant and degraded condition of the class I am speaking of, which have come under my own personal notice; but I know I am writing to one better informed on the subject than any one.” Later on the Canon wrote me stating that the clerk of the market in Salisbury had told him that the stray population imported into the town as traders, showmen, &c., for an autumn fair amounted to about five hundred, and the fair was by no means a large one.

Last year a clergyman at Tavistock wrote me as follows:

“DEAR SIR,—

“Your letter in yesterday’s _Western Morning News_ respecting the
education of the canal boat children reminds me of the question of
the education of gipsy children, in which subject I believe you take
a very active interest. I occasionally visit the gipsy tents and
vans when they come into this neighbourhood, and find that a great
many of these people admit that they cannot read, and others say they
can read a little; but I fear that the great majority of the gipsy
population are quite unable to read, and have very hazy ideas on the
great principles of religion.

“It seems quite a reproach to the English nation to allow these
wandering people to continue in its midst without some efforts
towards Christianizing them. Although the subject is no doubt a
difficult one, it would not seem impracticable to get these gipsy
children to attend school at certain centres for portions of the
year. I don’t know what has been done in the matter, but I wish you
every success in your efforts for attaining this object, as well as
for obtaining the efficient carrying out of the Canal Boats Act.”

In 1881 a leading and active county magistrate of Danbury, Essex, wrote me as follows:

“DEAR SIR,—

“I observe that you say in your recent letter to the Secretary of the
Lord’s Day Observance Society, that the ‘extension of the principle
of the _Canal Boats Act_ to all _gipsy tents_, _vans_, and other
movable or _temporary dwellings_, should be brought about by all
means.’ I should he extremely pleased to aid in this work, for we
reside near Danbury Common, where all the worst features of the
vagrant life may be certainly seen. Numbers of little ones are daily
passing before us untaught, and suffering in health through exposure
to cold and wet, versed in arts of deception and quite inaccessible
to influence. During the severe weather lately we had several
ruffianly fellows on the common who defied interference with the most
lawless proceedings. They went about in gangs breaking up gates and
fences, and committing thefts and depredations all around the common.
Any ordinary police force is quite inadequate to check or control
them when a few reckless men chance to come together. They carried
away and broke up two pates from a farm of mine on the other side of
the common, and several occupiers on that side suffered severely from
their violence. But all this is really of little importance compared
with the question of _the children’s_ condition of ignorance and
general ill-being. I am sure that those who dwelt _under tents_ must
have perished or laid the foundation of fatal disease during the late
severe weather. It is clearly against public policy that parents
should be allowed thus to trifle with the health of their children;
and of course the same objection applies to their want of education.
There are gradations of well (or ill) being among these poor
wandering folks, as you no doubt are well aware. Some are in
comfortable vans, and earn an honest livelihood by some
handicraft—tinkering, basket-making; but those who possess scarcely
anything but the tent that covers them are in a miserable plight in
deep snow or in wet weather, and young children are placed in peril.
I will not weary you by enlarging on this topic, which must,
moreover, be sadly familiar to you. I desired to assure you, as I
now do, that I will do anything in my power to extend the legislation
which you have already had the happiness of effecting to those poor
outcasts who may doubtless through England be reckoned by thousands.”

Early in the present year a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman at Aberfeldy wrote me to say that he had been deeply impressed for some time by the necessity there was for the State to take in hand the gipsy and similar travellers, and had last year got the Presbyterians of Breadalbane to petition Parliament to take some action in the way of improving the condition of the gipsies.

J. T. Pierce, Esq., J.P., county magistrate of Essex, writes me again under date October 2, 1882:

“Can you oblige me by forwarding a copy of the Bill amending your
Act, 40 and 41 Vict. c. 60? I am desirous of bringing the question
of _registration of vans_, &c., before my fellow magistrates at our
next quarter sessions. The children who dwell in small vans and
_under tents_ cannot receive education under the present state of
things, and it is seldom any of them are got into industrial schools.
Possibly the magistrates of different counties might help forward the
extension of your scheme in favour of these poor children. There is
a common here on which we get a large number of them every year, and
I have had a fair opportunity of seeing how urgent is the need of
legislation, unless the children are to remain in their present state
of ignorance and dirt. No thoughtful man can desire this, and you
have already done so much in this direction that every one who thinks
about it must wish to strengthen your hands for further work.”

The foregoing independent statements, given by persons I have never seen, extracted out of shoals of letters I have received, will faintly show what is going on all over the country among our English heathens and hell trainers; while sensual, backwood, romantic gipsy novelists have been drawing a film over our eyes.

I have received a number of suggestions as to how the gipsy problem should be solved. A Scotch Presbyterian minister suggests that the children should be sent to an industrial reformatory; in fact, he would obliterate them with an iron hand from the face of the earth. He goes on to say that the recent School Act is useless for them in Scotland. They can and do with ease evade all its requirements.

One kind-hearted lady, who writes to me from Brentwood, thinks that separate schools should be built for the gipsy and other travelling children. Neither of these suggestions are practicable and workable: the former is too severe for English liberty, and the latter too wild and scattered; and it would also be too costly, and in the end it would prove a failure.

On October 25, 1882, I sent Mr. Mundella copies of my Social Science Congress papers, with the hope of eliciting something from him as to what steps the Government proposed taking in the matter, and the following is his reply:

“PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE,
WHITEHALL,
_October_ 26, 1882.

“DEAR SIR,

“I am much obliged to you for the copies of the papers read by you in
the Health Department of the Social Science Congress on the Canal
Boats Act and on the gipsy children, and I will give the same my
careful attention. I shall be very thankful if anything can be done
to remedy the evils affecting the neglected children referred to in
your papers, and to whose interest you have given such long and
faithful service.

“I am, dear sir,
Yours faithfully,
A. J. MUNDELLA.

“_George Smith_, _Esq._”

I have thought since I took up the canal crusade in 1872, as my letters will show, and I cannot for the life of me do otherwise than think so now, that the Canal Boats Act Amending Bill I am humbly promoting could be made to include all movable habitations and temporary dwellings. The counsel to the Education Department, Mr. Ilbert, thought otherwise, and of course I have had to submit to the “ruling of the chair.” He thought that a separate Act would better meet the case of the gipsy and other travelling children. I am not now alone in my idea of including all movable dwellings in my Canal Amending Bill; for since I mooted the subject in my letters to the press and in other ways, friends have come round to see that there is something in the suggestion worthy of notice. Canal-boat cabins and vans are boxes in which are stived up human beings of all ages and sizes, without either regard for health, morals, sense or decency, packed closer than the poor unfortunate creatures in the black hole of Calcutta were. These moving homes are drawn, in many instances, by animals with only one step between them and the blood- or foxhound’s teeth. The only difference is, one home is moving through the country upon our magnificent, black, streaky canals, of the enormous width of about twenty feet, and an average of three feet deep. For the size of boats and boat cabins and other particulars I must refer my readers to my works, “Our Canal Population,” and “Canal Adventures by Moonlight,” and for the full particulars of gipsy tents, vans, &c., to my “Gipsy Life.”

The last Essex Michaelmas Quarter Sessions, with Sir H. Selwin Ibbetson, Bart., M.P., in the chair, was supported by between forty and fifty leading county magistrates. The following is taken from the _Chelmsford Chronicle_, October 20, 1882:

“THE CANAL ACT AMENDMENT BILL.—Mr. Pierce suggested that this Bill
should be referred to the Parliamentary Committee, with a view to
their considering whether clauses should not be recommended to
Parliament to be added for dealing with gipsy and travelling show-man
life as well as canal life. Mr. Pierce spoke of the miserable
squalor and unwholesome condition in which the gipsies and travelling
showmen lived, and said he thought it was necessary that their
children, who are absolutely uneducated, and who number about 30,000,
should be looked after. Seconded by Mr. G. A. Lowndes. This motion
was carried.”

In a leading article upon the subject the _Chronicle_ stated:

“An excellent suggestion was made to the court by Mr. Pierce. It was
that they should refer the Canal Boats Act Amending Bill to the
Parliamentary Committee, with a view to their recommending to
Parliament the addition of clauses bringing nomadic life—like that of
the gipsy and showman fraternity—within the scope of the measure. Of
gipsy life we have some experience in Essex, and we know that it
stands in sad need of regulation. Mr. Pierce stated, _inter alia_,
and on the authority of Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, that there
are about 30,000 children belonging to gipsies and travelling
showpeople, most of whom are being brought up wholly without
education. It is no less a duty to society than to the children
themselves that this state of things should be put an end to, for we
cannot hope to banish the ruder kinds of crime, such as the vagrant
classes are commonly guilty of, without first banishing ignorance.
In this view we hope that other public bodies will follow the
example, and that the promoters of the Bill about to be brought
forward will be induced to extend it so as to embrace the gipsy and
kindled classes.”

In July, 1880, Mr. Joseph Cowen very kindly put a question to Mr. Dodson, the President of the Local Government Board, relating to the education of gipsy and other travelling children, and the sanitary arrangements of their homes, and Mr. Dodson replied, “There is considerable difficulty in dealing with gipsy tents and vans, but the matter has been brought under the notice of the Board, who will endeavour to deal with it when a suitable opportunity presents itself for that purpose.”

The Government had their hands pretty full last year—Ireland and the Irish at the beginning, Ireland and the Irish in the middle, and Ireland and the Irish at the end—nearly altogether Irish, which no one grudges to make our Brothers and Sisters on the Emerald Isle contented, prosperous, and happy. God grant that her noble sons and daughters may go ahead, and her “Moonlighters” be swallowed up in the greater light that rules the day. This being so, I kept myself pretty well occupied in piloting, altering, and manœuvring my Canal Amending Bill through its initiatory stages, and had no time to deal with the gipsy problem other than to try “at every turn and twist” to find a niche, nook, or a peg in the Bill upon which to hang the gipsy question, which to me did not, and does not even now, seem at all a difficult thing to do. The more I go into the details of the canal and gipsy question the simpler they become. All that is required, as in the case of the brickyard children, is to take hold of them and to begin to deal with them in a business fashion, as other questions are dealt with.

The subject is studded with prickles, but immediately it is grasped the prickles become harmless. In the distance they look like drawn glistening daggers, which, as you approach nearer to them, are no more dreadful than rushes in the meadow. Unearth the Guy Fawkes gipsy monster, and we shall soon find out a way to deal with gipsy vagabonds and to reclaim their children. Standing by whimpering, sobbing, and sorrowing over the children will not pull them out of the gutter; nor will covering them with backwood gipsy nonsense and trash make them white. The gipsies and their children are dark and down, and to whiten and raise them the law and the gospel must come in: first, the law, schoolmaster, and sanitary officer; and second, the Christian minister and the gospel.

In bygone days, under the reign of Elizabeth and the Georges, the hangman’s hemp and the whipper’s thong were used as a cure for the gipsy social evil, but with worse than no results. Recently, in Hungary, measures of another kind were adopted to compel the gipsies to make themselves scarce. Innumerable complaints had at times reached the chief of the police from the townsfolk of Szegedin, in Lower Hungary, with whose portable chattels and goods the gipsies persisted in making free. The police official was sorely perplexed how to deal with the wandering ragamuffins. The gipsies in Hungary, as well as in other parts of the world, have masses of hair—our present race of English gipsies cannot boast of the raven black hair as formerly—so the chief of the police conceived the idea of barbering their pates of all their locks. The gipsies were taken into custody and the town barbers were summoned to clear the heads of the swarthy gipsies of their present adornments. The orders were obeyed to the letter, regardless of either sex or age. In a few minutes the whole tribe with pates as smooth as an ostrich’s egg were conveyed to the town gates in a state of indescribable discomfiture. I “guess,” as Jonathan says, they will not for a long time visit Szegedin again. There is a wide difference between the Hungarian authorities and the Nottingham town authorities. Not being able to attend the recent Nottingham goose fair, I wrote to the town clerk and the chief constable for a few particulars, relating to the condition of the vast numbers of poor neglected gipsy and other travelling children who attended the borough fair. The town clerk deigned not to descend from his high pinnacle to order a reply to my letter. The chief constable, after some days had passed over, said he would send me some facts, which, though I reminded him of his promise more than once, are not yet to hand. Gipsy children may live and gipsy children may die, but these officials, I suppose, think that they shall go on for ever, and in the end, as a writer in _The Christian Age_ says, they will

“Rest where soft shadows lie and grasses wave;”

at least they hope so. Full particulars of the hardships and cruelties practised upon the gipsies for their wrongdoing will be found in my “Gipsy Life.”

Knowing full well as I do that nothing but salutary measures of the kind I propose, and have proposed for many long years, will meet the case, I had again the audacity to put the question to the Government, through Mr. Burt, with the object of eliciting from them the steps—if any—they proposed taking this Session for dealing with the gipsy problem.

“WELTON, DAVENTRY,
_November_ 16, 1882.

“MY DEAR MR. BURT,

“I shall be glad if you will put the enclosed questions to the
Government for me relating to the gipsy children. With kind regards,

“Very sincerely yours,
GEORGE SMITH, _of Coalville_.”

The questions and answers are taken from the _Times_, _Morning Post_, _Standard_, _Daily Chronicle_, and the leading papers throughout the country.

“TEMPORARY ABODES.

“Mr. Burt—To ask the President of the Local Government Board if the
Government intend taking any steps early next session for bringing
temporary abodes such as shows, tents, vans, and places of the kind,
under the influence of the sanitary officers.”

Mr. Dodson, the President, said he would “consider whether the law as it stood was in need of amendment in this respect; but he could not, on this any more than on any other subject, now give any undertaking as to the introduction of a Bill next session.”

“GIPSY CHILDREN.

“Mr. Burt—To ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on
Education if the Government intend taking any steps early next
session for bringing about the education of gipsy and other
travelling children living in vans, carts, shows, and other temporary
dwellings.”

Mr. Mundella said: “It is exceedingly difficult to devise any effectual scheme for the education of the nomadic population referred to in the question of my hon. friend, and up to the present we have received no suggestion for dealing with the subject which appears to be practical. The matter, however, is ‘under consideration,’ and we propose during the recess to confer with the Local Government Board respecting it.”

Mr. Burt wrote to me as follows:

“HOUSE OF COMMONS,
_November_ 22, 1882.

“MY DEAR MR. SMITH,

“You will see from the _Times_ to-day the answers given by Mr. Dodson
and Mr. Mundella. They are not so encouraging as one would like,
though it may do good to call attention to the subject.

“Very truly yours,
THOMAS BURT.”

Parliament having been opened February 15, 1883, I began to make a move towards getting my Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill before the House of Commons for the third time—last year it was introduced to the House of Lords by Earl Stanhope—and lost no time in seeing my friends Mr. Burt and others upon the subject, some of whose names are upon the back of the Bill. The names upon the Bill are as follows: Mr. Burt, Mr. S. Morley, Mr. John Corbett, Mr. Pell, and Mr. Broadhurst. Feeling anxious, and seeing no difficulty in the matter, I wrote to Mr. Burt on March 3, 1883, about introducing a clause in the Bill to include gipsy and other travelling children—my plans for improving the condition of the canal children and gipsy children being identically the same in _every __particular_ so far as the provisions of the Act are concerned—and he replied as under:

“HOUSE OF COMMONS,
_March_ 8, 1883.

“DEAR MR. SMITH,

“If you want a new clause or any alteration in the Bill, kindly write
it out on a copy of the Bill and forward it to me.

“I have seen Sir Charles Dilke, and he advises me to talk the matter
over with Mr. Hibbert. I shall do so as soon as I can see Mr.
Hibbert.

“I go to Newcastle to-morrow, returning on Monday night or Tuesday.

“I am not hopeful that the Government will do anything in the present
state of business.

“Yours truly,
THOMAS BURT.”

I added the following clause to the Bill, and at the same time I gave under the Bill more power to the Education Department than I had done in the previous Bills.

The new clause affecting gipsy children runs thus:

“11. The expressions ‘Canal Boats,’ ‘Canal Boat,’ and ‘Boat,’ in the
principal Act and this Act, and also in the regulations of the Local
Government Board and Education Department, shall include all
travelling and temporary dwellings not rated for the relief of the
poor.”

I forwarded copies of the Amended Bill to Sir Charles Dilke, the new President of the Local Government Board, and also to Mr. Mundella, the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, and here are their replies. A few days previously I had written to Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Mundella, urging them to take up the Bill; in fact, I have for years been pressing the Government to take up the Bill, as one that will do much good and bring them much credit. Of course I cannot expect them to do impossibilities. I know their hands are full; at the same time the period has come when the sixty thousand canal and gipsy children must be educated and cared for by “hook or by crook,” as being of primary importance for the country’s welfare to the thousand and one things that are now before Parliament.

“LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, WHITEHALL,
_March_ 14, 1883.

“DEAR SIR,

“I have to thank you for the copy of the Bill you have sent to Sir
Charles Dilke. In consequence of Mr. Ashton Dilke’s death he will
not be present in the House of Commons this week.

“Yours truly,
A. E. C. BODLEY.

“_George Smith_, _Esq._”

* * * * *

“PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE,
_March_ 14, 1883.

“SIR,

“Mr. Mundella desires me to thank you for sending him a copy of your
Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill enclosed in your letter of the 12th
inst.

“Yours faithfully,
H. T. BRYANT.

“_George Smith_, _Esq._”

My days of hard work, and scores of letters written in relation to the questions put to Mr. Dodson and Mr. Mundella, have brought forth the usual molehill of “under consideration.” The political fields of moral and social progress are full of crotchets and molehills. Would to God that either John Bull with his horns or John Straw with his spade would level them to the ground.

At any rate those mountainous molehills, six inches high, which are checking the van of social progress, laden as it is—aye, heaped up—with blessings for the thirty thousand poor little gipsy children who are starving to death in our midst, in the mud, rotten straw, filth, and rags of a soul-perishing and body-killing nature, amidst which the poor gipsy child has to live.

The greatest difficulties I know of are the dung heaps scattered about by sensational trash backwood gipsy writers. I can almost imagine our imported and other Demetriuses and damsels calling out on the steps of St. Stephen’s, Westminster, “Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth.” “Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people.” “Our craft is in danger to be set at nought.” “Let us hang the devil.”

The registration official overcomes “difficulties” when he registers a gipsy hawker’s van in order that he may extract £4 from him; and the policeman overcomes “difficulties” when he brings to bay before a bench of magistrates a gipsy child for stealing a turnip, or a gipsy poacher for making too free with a partridge. There are seas of “difficulties” to be waded through, it would seem, before the gipsy children are to be led to the school doors, and the sanitary inspectors to their suffocating, immoral, and unhealthy homes. It is un-English, wicked, and unjust to deliver the gipsy and other travelling children over to the policeman, without ever having taught them to know right from wrong in day and Sunday schools. A terrible day of reckoning and vengeance awaits us for our wrongdoings towards our present-day English gipsy children, think about it as lightly as we may.

The sanitary inspector steps into lodging-houses to prevent overcrowding. The factory inspector steps, without an invitation, into the workshop to prohibit the overworking of children. The Board of Trade officer will not allow overcrowding of ships, although they may be classed as A1 at Lloyd’s. Overcrowding in barracks and workhouses is not allowed, and the School Board officer steps into a labourer’s household—the head of which, with a large family surrounding him, only earns about 12s. per week—under pain of a fine and the “squire’s” displeasure, and orders the young urchins off “neck and crop” to school; while canal and gipsy children are left out in the cold.

Two years ago I invited twelve gipsy children, who were living in two vans and attending our feast, to tea on our hearthstone. Although three of the parents could read and write, and ten of the children were of school age, not one of the poor little things could tell a letter. All the van-dwellers were in the lowest depths of degradation, filth, and misery. They were surrounded with sunshine, and yet it never entered their wretched dwelling; at any rate they never opened their door with glad hearts and thankful song to receive its cheering rays.

The chimes and music of church bells seemed to have no other effect upon their lives than the bringing forth of the cries of misery, wails of anguish, and groans of despair. The beautiful robes with which nature was clothed made their ragged, wretched torn garments look as if they had been pulled to pieces, torn and stuck together by demons who had thrown off all moral restraint, and were following the downward tendencies of human nature to their hearts’ content. Three of the parents once had a comfortable settled home, but alas! alas! it seems to be all over, and a blacker future for the children awaits them, if the Government do not take the poor things by the hand and lead them a step forwards and upwards.

At the close of 1882 I visited, on a Sunday afternoon, a camp of gipsies upon Turnham Green. There were five vans and tents, and fourteen men and women and seventeen children squatting round their fires upon the wet and slushy grass. As I neared them, five of the gipsy children, half naked, came running towards me. One little curly-headed fellow, named Boswell, shouted out, “If you please, guv’-nor, have you come to teach us to read, the same as a kind lady did last summer? We wish you would. Have you brought us any picture books? Please read a bit to us.” After a few minutes chat with them, I emptied my bag of cards, and with a sorrowful heart left the gipsy children in their ignorance to speed their wishes into the air, so it appears. With a writer in the _Sunday Magazine_, I say with a deep, deep-drawn sigh—

“Oh the wandering waifs and strays,
In hiding day and night,
And lacking verdant shelter,
On their lives a blight;
Aye, creeping far and farther
From the eyes of men;
If they find a lodging,
’Tis in some horrid den!”

A little later on I went to Daventry and found a man—a tradesman—in the market-place, exhibiting a deformed pony rather than follow his own trade. Both man and wife could read and write—in fact, the woman had once been a Sunday-school teacher—but not one of their five children could read a sentence.

Only the other day, our good vicar’s respected wife, Mrs. Darnell, in company with her niece, Miss Stansfeld, took shelter in a cottage, rather than face two most repulsive-looking men and one woman with seven children, who were tramping the country in a most wretched and forlorn condition. Their only home consisted in an old handcart full of rags, upon which were perched, on a most bitterly cold and wet day, three poor gipsy children; and the other four children were trudging by the side of the hand-cart scarcely able to get one foot before the other. Their shoeless footprints seemed to cry out loud for help. Many gipsies camp upon Cannock Chase from time to time, and such is their character that people passing that way in dark hours generally take the precaution to be armed with pistols, and to have dogs by their sides.

Think about it lightly as we may, the evils of gipsying are on the increase in this country. Fortune-telling and deceit are taking fast hold upon the “silly girls and young chaps.” Very recently the _Daily News_ reported a case in Dorsetshire where two gipsy women induced a dairyman’s wife to part with her sovereigns for a sheep’s heart studded with pins in mystic patterns outside, and crammed inside with bright farthings. The heart was to be hung in the chimney till Easter, when it was to be taken out and all the farthings to be turned into sovereigns. The woman’s husband broke the “spell” by pulling the heart out of the chimney before Easter. The _Graphic_, in the spring of 1882, reports a case of a “white witch” at Plymouth, who declared that the whole crew of a smack were under a “spell”—and the crew believed it—which “spell” only the gipsy witch could remove, and of course for money only. The _British Workman_ for October, 1882, shows a little of some of the evils of fortune-telling. At the Bradford county police-court recently, Delia Young, a gipsy, was charged with fortune-telling. For some weeks the prisoner, with a number of other gipsies, had been staying at a village named Wyke, and hundreds of persons of all ages and both sexes had visited her. Her fees ranged from ls. to 5s., the latter sum being charged when a “planet was ruled.” It was stated that her earnings must have averaged several guineas a day for many months. For the defence it was contended that the prisoner and her family had told fortunes at Blackpool during the season for twenty years. She was fined £5 and costs, with the alternative of two months’ imprisonment. The money was paid.

I have visited more than once the gipsies upon Plaistow marshes in company with Mr. —, and also with my son, and found about thirty families squatting about in their vans and tents, up to their knees in mud, and in a most heartrending condition. Farmers house their pigs in a much better condition than we found the poor lost gipsies tented and housed. Gipsy children came round us by the score. There would be not fewer than between a hundred and a hundred and fifty poor little creatures, growing up without ever visiting either the school or the church, although there were a magnificent school and church within a stone’s throw. The sanitary inspector, school board officer, and Christian ministers were unknown to those wretched, lost gipsy children. They are fully acquainted with the policeman and his doings. In one or two of the vans smallpox and fever appeared to me to be at work. Round the outskirts of London there will be nearly 3,000 gipsies tenting and squatting about. They generally find the lowest and swampy spots.

My scores of visits to various parts of the country during many years are not recorded here, but the same sorrowful tale is everywhere manifest.

It does seem that letters of blood and words of fire will be needed to arouse the hearts and consciences of my countrymen, and compel them to observe the dark side of human life which lies close to our eyes and noses; and to draw the veil of ignorance away which is preventing the sun of civilization carrying out its mission among our own outcasts.

“The darkness falls, the wind is high,
Dense black clouds till the western sky,
The storm will soon begin.
The thunders roar, the lightnings flash,
I hear the great round rain drops dash;
Are all the children in?”

_The Christian Freeman_, 1877 _and_ 1878.

I answer, “No! no!” and with a tear-fetching pang I again say, “No!” The canal and gipsy children are still outside the door, and our legislators do not care to open it, owing to the “difficulties” which prevent the latch from being lifted up. The nail is in the way, and the door is locked—

“Nobody kind words pouring
In that gipsy heart’s sad ear,
But all of us ignoring
What lies at our door so near.”

_The Christian Freeman_.

Rambles among the Scotch Gipsies at Yetholm.

THE 18th of December, 1882, was a bitterly _shil_ (cold) _divvus_ (day), partly frozen _ghie_ (snow) lay several inches on the _chik_ (ground). The _dúvel_ (sky) was gloomy and overcast as if threatening this _doŏvelesto-chairos_ (world) of ours with a fresh outburst of _vénlo_ (wintry) vengeance. Not a _patrin_ (leaf) was to be seen upon the _rook_ (tree). The _bával_ (wind) seemed at times to engage in a chorus of _shoolo_ (whistling) and howling, and other discordant _gúdli_ (noises). The few linnets, sparrows, bullfinches to be seen hopping about the _drom_ (road) in quest of _kóben_ (food), were almost starved to _méripen_ (death); _shil_ (cold) and _bok_ (hunger) had made them tame and _posh_ (half) _moólo_ (dead).

In a few minutes I stood at our door with my old grey coat over my arm, wondering whether I should in my state of health face my cold journey to Scotland. After a little reflection, quickened by “the path of duty is the path of safety,” which seemed to be more beautiful than ever, I started with my bag in hand to tramp my way to the railway station. I did not feel on the way in a humour for singing, with cap in hand, and in joyous strains, “Oh! this will be joyful,” but could have said with Wesley,

“If in this darksome wild I stray,
Be Thou my Light, be Thou my Way.”

In the train I duly seated myself, and we sped on till I arrived at Leicester, the seat of stockings and leather.

Leicester is a pleasant town, but, as in the case of other towns, there are a few—only a few, thank God!—fools in it whose light from farthing candles will become less as her wise men, good and true, increase. After my landing upon the platform I made my way to the house of my sister-in-law, and there rested my bones for the night. During my restless night, with the full blaze of a lamp shining in my face, some of the following aphorisms were entered in my notebook:—

The books of infidels, sceptics, socialists, and atheists may be compared to handfuls of sulphur cast into the fire of public opinion. They give a bluish flash for a moment, reflecting deathly and ghastly hues upon those who stand near; which sometimes cause children, and those of weak minds, narrow vision, and short sight to put their hands into the fire to see where the deathly colours come from.

Righteous kings and queens, doing God-like acts to elevate and beautify their subjects, may be compared to heavenly gardeners, whose business in life is to beautify human nature and society with an increasing number of moral tints and splendour, reflected by the heavenly throne, and to transmit the colouring rays to the human flowers growing up under their charge; thus making this beautiful earth more like Paradise every year.

The righteous deeds of a good king or queen, when they emanate from a heart filled with heavenly desires to render earthly subjects contented and happy, are seeds that the spirit of evil cannot kill. They will live and thrive to the end of time, and then they will be transplanted to heaven to bloom through eternity.

When a Christian is said to have taken to doubting God’s goodness, lovingkindness, and fatherly care, he may be said to have drawn down the blinds of his soul and dimmed his vision of the beauty, power, and love of Jehovah, the creator and upholder of all things in heaven, earth, and sea.

Those who through fraud, craft, and deceit obtain the crown of laurels won by others will find that, instead of the soft, beautiful leaves, it will turn into a hard crown of thorns, that will prick sharp and deep enough to touch the quick of the soul, ruffle the thoughts, disturb the mind, and trouble the conscience.

As bees in gathering honey from flowers often transmit many new and lovely colours to plants and flowers, so in like manner good children in passing into the world among all kinds of families, especially among the young, change and beautify by kind words, soft answers, and example the characters of those they are brought in contact with.

The words used in faith by good Christian fathers and mothers in blessing their children are jewels, pearls, and other precious stones, which will be strung together by angelic hands with golden threads, and worked into patterns that are to adorn the children as they walk over the plains of Paradise. They are the immortal flowers of earth, with a life within them that will transform them into the everlasting flowers of heaven, that will be strewn by little loved ones upon the path of saints as they walk the streets of the New Jerusalem.

It is not always the largest flowers which make the prettiest bouquet, or adorn a drawing-room to the best advantage. The little bird’s-eye, that grows among the thistles in the hedge-bottom, is prettier and more modest than the large sunflower; so in like manner it is not always the big, shining, dashing, flashing Christian, with few real good deeds, that is the most beautiful and lovely in God’s sight. The little Sunday-school scholar, with Jesus shining out of his actions, in a garret is the most beautiful and lovely to look upon, and illumines a modest quiet corner with the greatest effect.

Bees gather honey from the most unassuming flowers, which are oftentimes hid among thorns; so in like manner the sweetness of heaven is to be gathered from good and lovely children, brought up by Christian parents, living modestly and quietly in our back streets among the roughest and lowest of the low, more prickly than thorns, and more poisonous than poison.

Those short-sighted beings engaged in trying to get virtue out of a gin-palace will find it harder work than extracting honey out of a putrifying dead dog.

Double-faced Christians, engaged in trying to draw forth goodness out of sin, wherewith to quench the qualms of conscience, will find that they are engaged in a more difficult task than that of drawing pure spring water from a cesspool.

Words are leaves, prayers bloom, and deeds fruit. If the tree has grown up under religious influence the kernel contains seeds of immortality, but if reared under the influence of sin the kernel will be a rotten core and worse than useless.

To love and to sing is to live, and to hate and to swear is to die.

Bad deeds, though often written and rewritten, soil the hands of the scribe, corrupt his heart, taint the olfactory senses of the reader—although they may be as angels—with an unpleasant odour, offend their eyes, and become in the end illegible blotches, smudges, and smears.

Good deeds, performed with a good object, eat themselves clearly and legibly into the pages of history, which time turns into gold, and leave a pleasant impression upon the writers and readers—although they may be devils—that time and men’s hands cannot efface.

Those who write flashy, misleading lies of various hues, whether about gipsy, saint, or angel, will find that they are earning red-hot coppers, which “puffs” will not prevent burning the author’s fingers and scratching his conscience.

Worldly-minded human beings engaged in trying to weave a cloak of righteousness out of their own evil deeds wherewith to hide their deformities, ugliness, and consumption, may be compared to a poor old deformed woman trying to weave a golden cloak out of rotten straw to hide the wretchedness and misery of Seven Dials.

Those engaged in reclaiming children from sin and ignorance are making themselves a silver ladder upon which to climb to golden fame.

When our ways are clouded by mysteries and doubts, we may take it for granted that we have got off the road, and are wandering among marshes and swamps from which fogs and poisonous vapours arise.

Satan often ties firebrands to the tails of hypocritical professing Christians, and uses them as Samson did his foxes.

* * * * *

At 6.30 on Tuesday morning I stepped out of doors with my travelling paraphernalia upon some six-inches deep of newly fallen snow. My only light was the flickering gas, which was miserable indeed. Underneath the snowy carpet the roads felt, and in fact were, like a sheet of glass. If the new soles upon my shoes had been beeswaxed and polished I could not have slipped and slurred about more. Sometimes my bags were in the snow, and at other times I was trying the resisting force of the lamp-posts. Some of the workmen as they passed me rolled about as if they were “tight,” and I daresay they thought me to be a brother chip. After three-quarters of an hour’s exercise for patience, temper, and legs, I arrived “safe and sound in wind and limb” in a third-class compartment, and without any hot-water bottles to cheer my onward course.