"The condition of the Gipsies is a sufficiently gloomy one. We may pass

over those degenerate members of the race who have elected to pitch

permanent tents in the slums and rookeries of great towns, because, in

the first place, they are degenerate, and in the second, their children

ought to be within reach of School Board visitors who do their duty

diligently. It is only the Gipsy proper who has the opportunity of

evading this vigilance. His opportunity is an excellent one, and he

fully avails himself of it. Gipsy households, if they can be so called,

are of the most fluid, not to say intangible character. The partnerships

between men and women are rarely of a legal kind, and the constant habit

of aliases and double names make identification still more difficult. As

a rule, the race is remarkably prolific, and though the hardships to

which young children are exposed thin it considerably, the proportion of

children to adults is still very large. Hawking, their chief ostensible

occupation, cannot legally be practised until the age of seventeen, and

until that time the Gipsy child has nothing to do except to sprawl and

loaf about the camp, and to indulge in his own devices. Idleness and

ignorance, unless the whole race of moralists have combined to represent

things falsely, are the parents of every sort of vice, and the average

Gipsy child would appear to be brought up in a condition which is the _ne

plus ultra_ of both. It is true that Gipsies do not very often make

their appearance in courts of justice, but this is partly owing to the

cunning with which their peccadilloes are practised, partly to their

well-known habit of sticking by one another, and still more to the mild

but very definite terrorism which they exercise. Country residents, when

a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know that a certain amount of

blackmail in this way or that has to be paid, and that in their own time

the strangers, if not interfered with, will go. Interference with them

is apt to bring down a visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the 'red

cock,' whose crowings usually cost a good deal more than a stray chicken

here and a vanished blanket there. So the Ishmaelites are left pretty

much alone to wander about from roadside patch to roadside patch to pick

up a living somehow or other, and to exist in the condition of

undisturbed freedom and filth which appears to be all that they desire.

"The gloss has long been taken off the picture which imaginative persons

used to varnish for themselves as to the Romany. Nor, perhaps is any

country in Europe so little fitted for these gentry as ours. England is

every year becoming more and more enclosed, and the spaces which are not

enclosed are more and more carefully looked after. Whether in our

climate open-air living was ever thoroughly satisfactory is a question

not easy to answer. But even if we admit that it might have been merry

in good greenwood under the conditions picturesquely described in

ballads, the admission does not extend to the present day. There is no

good greenwood now, except a few insignificant patches, which are pretty

sharply preserved; and the killing of game, except on a small scale and

at considerable risk, is difficult. The cheapness of modern manufactures

has interfered a good deal with the various trades of mending, mankind

having made up their minds that it is better to buy new things and throw

them away when they fail than to have them patched and cobbled.

Fortune-telling is a resource to some extent, but even this is meddled

with by the Gorgio and his laws. The _raison d'etre_ of the vagabond

Gipsy is getting smaller and smaller in England, and as this goes on the

likelihood of his practices becoming more and more undisguisedly criminal

is obvious. The best way to prevent this is, of course, to catch him

young and educate him. A century or two ago the innate Bohemianism of

the race might have made this difficult, if not impossible. But it is

clear that even if the Gipsy blood has not been largely crossed during

their four centuries of residence in England, other influences have been

sufficient to work upon them. If they can live in towns at all, they can

live in them after the manner of civilised townsmen. A Gipsy at school

suggests odd ideas, and one might expect that the pupils would imitate

some day or other, though less tragically, the conduct of that promising

South African prince who, the other day, solemnly took off his trousers

(as a more decisive way of shaking our dust from his feet), and began

vigorously to kill colonists. But it is by no means certain that this

would be the case. The old order of Gipsy life has, in England, at any

rate, become something of an impossibility and everything of a nuisance.

It has ceased to be even picturesque."

The following is a copy of my paper upon the "Condition of Gipsy

Children," as read by me before the Social Science Congress, held at

Manchester on October 7th, 1879. Although it was at the "fag end" of the

session, and the last paper but two, it was evident the announcement in

the papers that my paper was to be read on Tuesday morning had created a

little interest in the Gipsy children question, for immediately I began

to read it in the large room, under the presidency of Dr. Haviland, it

was manifest I was to be honoured with a large audience, so much so,

that, before I had proceeded very far with it, the hall was nearly full

of merchant princes--who could afford to leave their bags of gold and

cotton--and ladies and gentlemen desirous of listening to my humble tale

of neglected humanity, and the outcasts of society, commonly called

"Gipsies' children." Dr. Gladstone, of the London School Board, opened

the discussion and said that he could, from his own observation and

knowledge of the persons I had quoted, testify to the truthfulness of my

remarks. Dr. Fox, of London, Mr. H. H. Collins, Mr. Crofton, and other

gentlemen took part in the discussion, and it was the unanimous feeling

of those present that something should be done to remedy this sad state

of things; and the chairman said that the result of my labours with

regard to the Gipsies would be that something would be done in the way of

legislation. The paper caused some excitement in the country, and was

copied lengthily into many of the daily papers, including the _Leicester

Daily Post_, _Leicester Daily Mercury_, _Nottingham Guardian_,

_Nottingham Journal_, _Sunday School Chronicle_, _Record_, and others

nearly in full, and was read as follows:--

"As it is not in my power to open out a painful subject in the flowery

language of fiction, romance, and imagery, in musical sounds of the

highest pitch of refinement, culture, and sentiment, I purpose following

out very briefly the same course on the present occasion as I adopted on

the three times I have had the honour to address the Social Science

Congress with reference to the brick-yard and canal-boat children--viz.,

that of attempting to place a few serious, hard, broad dark facts in a

plain, practical, common-sense view, so as to permeate your nature till

they have reached your hearts and consciences, and compelled you to

extend the hand of sympathy and help to rescue my young clients from the

dreadful and perilous condition into which they have fallen through long

years of neglect.

[Picture: A Farmer's Pig that does not like a Gipsy's Tent]

"Owing to a superstitious regard and dislike the Gipsies had towards the

Census, and their endeavours to evade being taken, no correct number has

been arrived at; and it is only by guess work and conjecture we can form

any idea of the number of Gipsies there are in this country. The Census

puts the number at between 4,000 and 5,000. A gentleman who has lived

and moved among them many years writes me to say that there cannot be

less than 2,000 in the neighbourhood of London, whose Paradises are in

the neighbourhood of Wormwood Scrubs, Notting Hill Pottery, New Found

Out, Kensal Green, Battersea, Dulwich Common, Lordship Lane, Mitcham

Common, Barnes Common, Epping Forest, Cherry Island, and like places. A

gentleman told me some time since that he gave a tea to over 150 Gipsies

residing in the neighbourhood of Kensal Green. A Gipsy woman who has

moved about all her life says she knows about 300 families in ten of the

Midland counties. Another Gipsy, in a different part of England, tells

me a similar story, and says the same proportion will be borne out all

over the country. Of hawkers, auctioneers, showmen, and others who live

in caravans with their families, there would be, at a rough calculation,

not less than 3,000 children; taking these things along with others, and

the number given in the Census, it may be fairly assumed that I am under

the mark when I state that there are not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and

women, and 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and other children moving about the

country outside the educational laws and the pale of civilisation.

"Some few Gipsies who have arrived at what they consider the highest

state of a respectable and civilised life, reside in houses which, in 99

cases out of 100, are in the lowest and most degraded part of the towns,

among the scum and offscouring of all nations, and like locusts they

leave a blight behind them wherever they have been. Others have their

tents and vans, and there are many others who I have tents only. A tent

as a rule is about 7ft. 6in. wide, 16ft. long, and 4ft. 6in. high at the

top. They are covered with pieces of old cloth, sacking, &c., to keep

the rain and snow out; the opening to allow the Gipsies to go in and out

of their tent is covered with a kind of coverlet. The fire by which they

cook their meals is placed in a kind of tin bucket pierced with holes,

and stands on the damp ground. Some of the smoke or sulphur arising from

the sticks or coke finds its way through an opening at the top of the

tent about 2ft. in diameter. The other part of the smoke helps to keep

their faces and hands the proper Gipsy colour. Their beds consist of a

layer of straw upon the damp ground, covered with a sack or sheet, as the

case may be. An old soapbox or tea-chest serves as a chest of drawers,

drawing-room table, and clothes-box. In these places children are born,

live, and die; men, women, grown-up sons and daughters, lie huddled

together in such a state as would shock the modesty of South African

savages, to whom we send missionaries to show them the blessings of

Christianity. As in other cases where idleness and filth abounds, what

little washing they do is generally done on the Saturday afternoons; but

this is a business they do not indulge in too often. They are not

overdone with cooking utensils, and the knives and forks they principally

use are of the kind Adam used, and sensitive when applied to hot water.

They take their meals and do their washing squatting upon the ground like

tailors and Zulus. Lying, begging, thieving, cheating, and every other

abominable, low, cunning craft that ignorance and idleness can devise,

they practise. In some instances these things are carried out to such a

pitch as to render them more like imbeciles than human beings endowed

with reason. Chair-mending, tinkering, and hawking are in many instances

used only as a 'blind;' while the women and children go about the country

begging and fortune-telling, bringing to their heathenish tents

sufficient to keep the family. The poor women are the slaves and tools

for the whole family, and can be seen very often with a child upon their

backs, another in their arms, and a heavily-laden basket by their side.

Upon the shoulders of the women rests the responsibility of providing for

the herds of ditch-dwelling heathens. Many of the women enjoy their

short pipes quite as much as the men.

"Judging from the conversations I have had with the Gipsies in various

parts of the country, not more than half living as men and wives are

married. No form or ceremony has been gone through, not even 'jumping

the broomstick,' as has been reported of them; and taking the words of a

respectable Gipsy woman, 'they go together, take each other's words, and

there is an end of it.' I am also assured by Levi Boswell, a real

respectable Gipsy, and a Mrs. Eastwood, a Christian woman and a Gipsy,

who preaches occasionally, that not half the Gipsies who are living as

men and wives are married. When once a Gipsy woman has been ill-used,

she becomes fearful, and as one said to me a few days since, 'we are

either like devils or like lambs.' In the case of some of the adult

Gipsies living on the outskirts of London an improvement has taken place.

There is some good among them as with others. A Gipsy in Wiltshire has

built himself a house at the cost of 600 pounds. Considerable difficulty

is experienced sometimes in finding them out, as many of the women go by

two names; but in vain do I look for any improvement among the children.

Owing to the act relating to pedlars and hawkers prohibiting the granting

of licences for hawking to the youths of both sexes under seventeen, and

the Education Acts not being sufficiently strong to lay hold of their

dirty, idle, travelling tribes to educate them--except in rare

cases--they are allowed to skulk about in ignorance and evil training,

without being taught how to get an honest living. No ray of hope enters

their breast, their highest ambition is to live and loll about so long as

the food comes, no matter by whom or how it comes so that they get it.

In many instances they live like pigs, and die like dogs. The real

old-fashioned Gipsy has become more lewd and demoralised--if such a thing

could be--by allowing his sons and daughters to mix up with the scamps,

vagabonds, 'rodneys,' and gaol birds, who now and then take their flight

from the 'stone cup' and settle among them as they are camping on the

ditch banks; the consequence is our lanes are being infested with a lot

of dirty ignorant Gipsies, who, with their tribes of squalid children,

have been encouraged by servant girls and farmers--by supplying their

wants with eggs, bacon, milk, potatoes, the men helping themselves to

game--to locate in the neighbourhood until they have received the tip

from the farmer to pass on to his neighbours. Children born under such

circumstances, unless taken hold of by the State, will turn out to be a

class of most dangerous characters. Very much, up to the present, the

wants of the women and children have been supplied through gulling the

large-hearted and liberal-minded they have been brought in contact with,

and the result has been that but few of the real Gipsies have found their

way into gaols. This is a redeeming feature in their character; probably

their offences may have been winked at by the farmers and others who do

not like the idea of having their stacks fired and property destroyed,

and have given the Gipsies a wide berth. Gipsies, as a rule, have very

large families, generally between eight and sixteen children are born in

their tents. Owing to their exposure to the damp and cold ground they

suffer much from chest and throat complaints. Large numbers of the

children die young before they are 'broken' in.' And it is a 'breaking

in' in a tremendous sense, fraught with fearful consequences. With

regard to their education, the following cases, selected from different

parts of the country, may be fairly taken as representative of the entire

Gipsy community. Boswell, a respectable Gipsy, says he has had nine sons

and daughters (six of whom are alive), and nineteen grandchildren, and

none of them can read or write; and he also thinks that about half the

Gipsy men and women living as husbands and wives are unmarried. Mrs.

Simpson, a Gipsy woman and a Christian, says she has six sons and

daughters and sixteen grandchildren, and only two can read and write a

little. Mrs. Eastwood says she has nine brothers and sisters. Mr.

Eastwood, a Christian and a Gipsy, has eight brothers and sisters, many

among them have large families, making a total of adults and children of

about fifty of all ages, and there is scarcely one among them who can

tell a letter or read a sentence; in addition to this number they have

between them from 130 to 150 first and second cousins, among whom there

are not more than two who can read or write, and that but very little

indeed, and Mr. Eastwood thinks this proportion will apply to other

Gipsies. Mrs. Trayleer has six brothers and sisters, all Gipsies, and

not one can read or write. A Gipsy woman, whose head-quarters are near

Ashby-de-la-Zouch, has fifteen brothers and sisters, some of whom have

large families. She herself has fifteen sons and daughters alive, some

of whom are married. But of the whole of these brothers and sisters,

nieces, nephews, grandchildren, &c., numbering not less than 100 of all

ages, not more than three or four can read or write, and they who can but

very imperfectly. Mrs. Matthews has a family of seven children, nearly

all grown-up, and not one out of the whole of these can read or write;

thus it will be seen that I shall be under the mark when I state that not

five per cent. of the Gipsies, &c., travelling about the country in tents

and vans can either read or write; and I have not found one Gipsy but

what thinks it would be a good thing if their tents and vans were

registered, and the children compelled to go to school--in fact, many of

them are anxious for such a thing to be brought about. In the case of

the brick-yard and canal-boat children, they were over-worked as well as

ignorant. In the case of the Gipsy children, these children and roadside

arabs, for the want of education, ambition, animation, and push, are

indulging in practices that are fast working their own destruction and

those they are brought into contact with, and a great deal of this may

lay at the door of flattery, twaddle, petting, and fear.

"The plan I would adopt to remedy this sad state of things is to apply

the principles of the Canal Boats Act of 1877 to all movable

habitations--_i.e._, I would have all tents, shows, caravans,

auctioneers' vans, and like places used as dwellings registered and

numbered, and under proper sanitary arrangements and supervision of the

sanitary inspectors and School Board officers in every town and village.

With regard to the education of the children when once the tent or van is

registered and numbered, the children, whether travelling as Gipsies,

auctioneers, &c., are mostly idle during the day; consequently, a book

similar to the half-time book, in which their names and attendance at

school could be entered, they could take from place to place as they

travel about, and it could be endorsed by the schoolmaster showing that

the child was attending school. The education obtained in this way would

not be of the highest order; but through the kindness of the

schoolmaster--for which extra trouble he should be compensated, as he

ought to be under the Canal Boats Act--and the vigilance of the School

Board visitor, a plain, practical, and sound education could be imparted

to, and obtained by, these poor little Gipsy children and roadside arabs,

who, if we do our duty, will be qualified to fill the places of those of

our best artisans who are leaving the country to seek their fortunes

abroad."

The following is a leading article in the _Birmingham Daily Mail_,

October 8th:--"Mr. George Smith, whose exertions on behalf of the canal

population and the children employed in brick-yards have been accompanied

with so much success, is now turning his attention to the education of

the Gipsies. He read a paper on this subject at the Social Science

Congress, yesterday, suggesting that the same plan of registration which

had proved advantageous in the case of the canal-boatmen and their

families should be adopted for the more nomadic class who roam from place

to place, with no settled home and no local habitation. The Gipsies are

a strange race, with a romantic history, and their vagabond life is

surrounded with enough of the mysterious to give them at all times a

special and curious interest. In the days of our infancy we are

frightened with tales of their child-thieving propensities, and even when

years and reason have asserted their influence we are apt to regard with

a survival of our childish awe the wandering 'diviners and wicked

heathens' who roam about the country, living in a mysterious aloofness

from their fellow-men. Scores of theories have been propounded as to the

origin of the Gipsy race, whence they sprang, and how they came to be so

largely scattered over three of the four quarters of the globe. Opinion,

following in the wake of the learned Rudiger, has finally settled down to

the view that they came from India, but whether they are the Tshandalas

referred to in the laws of Menou, or kinsmen of the Bazeegars of

Calcutta, or are descended from the robbers of the Indus, or are

identical with the Nuts and Djatts of Northern India, has not been

ascertained with any degree of certainty. The Gyptologists are not yet

agreed upon the ancestry of this ancient but obscure race, and possibly

they never will be. We know, however, that the Gipsies have wandered up

and down Europe since the eleventh century, if not from a still earlier

period, and that they have preserved their Bohemian characteristics,

their language--which is a sort of daughter of the old Sanscrit--their

traditions, and the mysteries of their religion during a long career of

restless movement and frequent persecution. And they have kept, too,

their indolent, and not too creditable habits. Early in the twelfth

century an Austrian monk described them as 'Ishmaelites and braziers, who

go peddling through the wide world, having neither house, nor home,

cheating the people with their tricks, and deceiving mankind, but not

openly.' That description would hold good at the present day. The

Gipsies are still a lazy, thieving set of rogues, who get their living by

robbing hen-roosts, telling fortunes, and 'snapping up unconsidered

trifles' like Autolycus of old. Pilfering, varied with a rude sort of

magic, and the swindling arts of divination and chiromancy for the

special behoof of credulous servant-girls, are the stock-in-trade of the

modern Zingaris. Without education, and without industry, they transmit

their vagrant habits to generation after generation, and perpetuate all

the vices of a lawless and nomadic life.

"It is very easy to give a romantic and even a sentimental colouring to

the wandering Romany. The 'greenwood home,' with its freedom from all

the restraints of a conventional state of society, is not without its

attractive side--in books and in ballads. Minor poets have told us that

'the Gipsy's life is a joyous life,' and plays and operas have been

written to illustrate the superiority of vagabondage over civilisation.

But the pretty Gitana of the stage is altogether a different sort of

being from the brown-faced, elf-locked, and tawdrily dressed female who

haunts back entries with the ostensible object of selling clothes-pegs,

but with the real motive of picking up whatever may be lying in her way.

There is but small chance of Bohemian Girls finding themselves in

drawing-rooms nowadays. The last experiment of the kind was made by the

writer of a charming book on the Gipsies, who was so fascinated by one of

their number that he married her; but the wild, restless spirit was

untameable, and the divorce court proved that the supposed precept of

fidelity, which is said to guide the conduct of Gipsy wives, is not

without its exceptions. The Gipsies have nothing in common with our

conventional ways and habits, and whether it is possible ever to remove

the barrier that separates them from civilisation is a question which

only experiment can satisfactorily answer. Mr. Smith's scheme is not the

first, by many, that has been made to improve the conditions of Gipsy

life. Nearly half a century ago the Rev. Mr. Crabb, of Southampton,

formed a society with the object of amalgamating the Gipsies with the

general population, but the scheme was comparatively futile. Still, past

failure is no reason why a new attempt should not be made. Mr. Smith

says there cannot be less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000

to 20,000 Gipsy children moving about the country, outside the

educational laws and the pale of civilisation, and not five per cent. of

them can either read or write. Their mode of life is such as 'would

shock the modesty of South African savages,' for men, women, and grown-up

sons and daughters lie huddled together, and in many cases they 'live

like pigs and die like dogs.' There is certainly room enough here for

education, and education is the only thing that is likely to have any

practical results.

"It is proposed that the principles of the Canal Boats Act shall be

applied to all movable habitations; that is, that all tents, shows,

caravans, auctioneers' vans, and like places used as dwellings, shall be

registered and numbered, and put under proper sanitary supervision. Mr.

Smith points out that when once a tent or van had been registered and

numbered, it could be furnished with a book similar to a half-time book,

in which the names of the children having first been entered, the

attendances at school could be endorsed by the schoolmaster--for which

extra trouble he should be compensated--as the children travelled about

from place to place. By this means something tangible would be done to

prevent the roadside waifs from growing up in the ignorance which is the

parent of idleness. Why should these ten or fifteen thousand little

nomads be allowed to remain in the neglected condition which has

characterised their strange race for centuries? It is time that the

spell was broken. There are no traditions of Gipsy life worth

perpetuating; there is no sentimental halo around its history which it

would be cruel to dispel. In past ages the Gipsies have been subjected

to harsh laws and barbarous edicts; it remains for our more enlightened

times to deal with them on a humaner plan. It is only by the expanding

influence of education that the little minds of their children can gain a

necessary experience of the utility and dignity of honest labour. When

they have received some measure of instruction they will be fitter to

emerge from the aimless and vagabond life of their forefathers, and break

away from the squalor and precarious existence which has held so many

generations of them in thrall. Mr. Smith's idea is worthy the attention

of legislators. It does not look so grand on paper, we admit, but it is

a nobler thing to educate the young barbarian at home than to make war

upon the unoffending barbarian abroad. The instincts and habits which

have been transmitted from father to son for hundreds of years are not,

of course, to be eradicated in a day, or even in a generation; but the

time will, perhaps, eventually come when the Gipsies will cease to exist

as a separate and distinct people, and become absorbed into the general

population of the country. Whether that absorption takes place sooner or

later, nothing can be lost by conferring on the young 'Arabs' of the

tents the rudiments of an education which will hereafter be helpful to

them if they are desirous of abandoning their squalor and indolence, and

of earning an industrious livelihood. Their dread of fixed and

continuous occupation may die out in time, and closer intimacy with the

conditions of industrial life may teach them that civilisation has some

compensations to offer for the sacrifice of their roaming propensities,

and for taking away from them their 'free mountains, their plains and

woods, the sun, the stars, and the winds' which are the companions of

their free and unfettered, but wasted and purposeless lives."

The _Weekly Dispatch_, in a leading article, October 13th, says:--"Mr.

George Smith, of Coalville, has an eye for the nomads of the country.

His name must already be unfavourably known throughout most of the canal

barges of the United Kingdom. If he is not the Croquemitaine of every

floating nursery journeying inland from the metropolis he ought to be,

for it was mainly he who thrust a half-time book into the hands of the

bargee and compelled him, by the Canal Boats Act of 1877, to soap his

infants' faces and put primers in their way. With Smith of Coalville,

therefore, it may be expected that each juvenile of the wharves and locks

now associates his most unhappy moments. The half-time book of the act

comes between him and the blessed state of his previous ignorance.

Registered and numbered, supervised and inspected, he has been put on the

road to know things that must necessarily disillusionise him of the black

enchantments of life on the water highway. It is allowable to hope,

however, that having recovered from the first discomforts of civilising

soap and primers, he will yet live to appreciate Mr. Smith's name as one

associated with kindly intent and generous aspirations in his behalf. A

generation of bargemen who had a less uncompromising vocabulary of oaths,

who could beguile some of the tedium of their voyaging with reading, and

who in other important respects showed the influences of half-time, would

be a smiling reward of philanthropy and an important addition to our

civilisation. That Mr. Smith anticipates some such reward is evident

from the eagerness with which he has been pushing the principle in

another quarter. At the Social Science Congress he has just propounded a

scheme of educational annexation for Gipsy children similar in every

respect to that applied to the occupants of the canal-boats. That is, he

would have every tent and van numbered and furnished with a half-time

book, and he would ordain it as the duty of School Board visitors to see

that the Gipsies render their children amenable to the terms of the act

to the extent of their wandering ability, under threat of the usual

penalties. The prospect which he foresees from such treatment is that a

body of wanderers numbering not much below 20,000 will be rescued from a

position which, he says, would at present shock South African savages,

and will thus be brought in to honest industry and 'qualified to fill the

places of our best artisans, who are leaving the country to seek their

fortunes abroad.' It is impossible not to wish Mr. Smith's scheme well,

especially as he contends that the Gipsies themselves are not averse to

having their children educated; but it is equally impossible to be

sanguine as to results. The true Gipsy, who is not to be confounded with

the desultory hawker of English origin, has many arteries of untameable

blood within him. He has never as yet shown the slightest concern about

the English phases of civilisation which Mr. Smith would like to press

upon his notice. Such ideas as those of God, immortality, and marriage

are as unknown to him as the commonest distinction between mine and

thine. He is a well-looking artistic vagabond, to whom a half-time book

and a penalty will in all probability be no better than a standing joke

to be cracked with impunity at the expense of the rural School Boards."

[Picture: Gipsies' Winter Quarters near Latimer Road, Notting Hill]

The _Sportsman_ of October 16th, 1879, has the following notice:--"Mr.

George Smith, of Coalville, whose philanthropic efforts on behalf of 'our

canal-boat population' are well known, has lately turned his attention to

the wandering Gipsy tribes who infest the roadside, with the view to

procuring at least a modicum of education for their children. He says

that the Gipsies are lamentably ignorant, few of them being able even to

write their names. By certain proceedings which took place at

Christchurch Police-court on Tuesday, it would almost seem that some of

the dark-faced wanderers already are educated a little too much. At all

events, they occasionally manifest an ability to 'take a stave' out of

the rest of the community. At the court in question a Gipsy woman named

Emma Barney was brought to task for 'imposing by subtle craft to extort

money' from a Bournemouth shopkeeper named Richard Oliver. It seems that

Oliver is troubled with pimples on his face, and that Emma Barney--not an

inappropriate name, by the way--said she could cure these by means of a

certain herb, the name of which she would divulge 'for a consideration.'

Before doing so, however, she required Richard's coat and waistcoat, and

some silver to 'steam in hot water,' after which the name of the herb

would be given--on the following day. It is needless to say that the

coat, waistcoat, and silver did not return to the Oliver home, and that

the pimples did not depart from the Oliver face. The 'Gipsy's home' for

the next two months will be in the county gaol. It is a curious

reflection, however, that such strange credulity as that displayed by the

Bournemouth shopkeeper in this case can be found in the present year of

grace, with its gigantic machinery for educating the masses."

The following leading article, taken from the _Daily Telegraph_, under

date October 17th of last year, will show that crime is far from abating

among the classes of the Gipsy fraternity:--"The melancholy truth that

there exists a 'breed' of criminals in all societies was well illustrated

at Exeter this week. Sir John Duckworth, as Chairman of the Devon

Quarter Sessions, in charging the grand jury, had to tell them that the

calendar was very heavy, the heaviest, in fact, known for many years.

There were forty-five prisoners for trial, whereas the average number is

twenty-five, taking the last five years. Sir John could assign no

particular reason for such a lamentable increase, though he supposed the

prevailing depression of trade might have had something to do with it.

But he pointed out a very notable fact indeed, which sprang from an

examination of the gaol delivery, and this was that out of the forty-five

prisoners twenty had been previously convicted. Such a percentage goes

far to prove that the criminal propensity is innate, and to a certain

degree ineradicable by punishments; and this only enhances the immense

importance of national education, by which alone society can hope to

conquer the predatory tendency in certain baser blood, and to supply it

with the means and the instincts of industry. In justice, however, to

the existing generation of criminals, we ought also to remember that such

serious figures further prove the difficulty encountered by released

prisoners in living honestly. A rat will not steal where traps are set

if it can only find food in the open, and some of these twice-captured

vermin of our community might tell a piteous tale of the obstacles that

lie in the way of honesty."

The _Weekly Times_, under date October 26th, 1879, has the following

article upon the Gipsies near London. The locality described is not one

hundred miles from Mary's Place and Notting Hill Potteries. The writer

goes on to say that "There are at the present time upwards of two

thousand people--men, women, and children, members of the Gipsy

tribe--camped in the outlying districts of London. They are settled upon

waste places of every kind. Bits of ground that will ere long be

occupied by houses, waste corners that seem to be of no good for

anything, yards belonging to public-houses, or pieces of 'common' over

which no authority claims any rights; or if there are rights, the

authority is too obscure to interfere with such poor settlers as Gipsies,

who will move away again before an authoritative opinion can be

pronounced upon any question affecting them. The Gipsies, in the winter,

certainly cause very few inconveniences in such places as the metropolis.

They do not cause rents to rise. They are satisfied to put up their tent

where a Londoner would only accommodate his pig or his dog, and they

certainly do not affect the balance of labour, few of them being ever

guilty of robbing a man of an honest day's work. Yet, with all their

failings, the Gipsies have always found friends ready to take their part

in times of trouble, and crave a sufferance on account of their hard lot,

and the scanty measure with which the good things of this life have been,

and still are, meted out to them. Constrained by an irresistible force

to keep ever moving, they fulfil the fate imposed upon them with a degree

of cheerfulness which no other class of people would exhibit. As the

approach of winter reduces outdoor pursuits to the fewest possible

number, the farm labourer finds it difficult to employ the whole of his

time profitably, and those who only follow an outdoor life for the

pleasures it yields naturally gravitate towards the shelter of large

towns in which to spend the winter months of every year. So when the

cold winds begin to blow, and the leaves are falling, the Gipsies come to

town, and settle upon the odd nooks and corners, and fill up the unused

yards, and eat and drink, and bring up children, in the very places where

their fathers and grandfathers have done the same before them. The young

men get a day's work where they can; the young women hawk wool mats,

laces, or other women's vanities; while the more skilful go round with

rope mats, and every form of chair or stool that can be made of rushes

and canes. The old folks do a little grinding of knives, or tinker pots

and pans; and, if a fine day or a pleasure fair calls forth all the

useful mouths and hands from their tents and caravans, the babies will

take care of themselves in the straw which makes the pony's bed until

some member of the camp returns home in the evening. So the winter

months pass away, and in the spring, when the cuckoo begins to call,

these restless-footed people, whose origin no man is acquainted with, go

forth again, and in the lanes and woods, or on the commons of the

country, pass their summer, earning a precarious subsistance--honestly if

they can--content with hard food and poor clothes, so that they may feel

the free air of heaven blowing about them night and day, while the sun

paints their cheeks the colour of the ancient Egyptians. Our Gipsies

have always been a favourite study with ethnological folk; poets have

sung their wild, free life, and painters have taken them as types of the

happy, if the careless; while philanthropists have occasionally gone

amongst them, and told pitiful tales of their degradation, ignorance, and

misery. It was not from any feeling of romance or pity that we were

induced the other day to accept an invitation from Mr. George Smith, of

Coalville, to spend a few hours amongst some of these people. Mr. George

Smith's life has been devoted to the amelioration of the condition of

many very poor and almost entirely neglected classes of the community,

and it was pleasant to have the opportunity of going with such a

simple-hearted hero amongst those in whom he takes a deep interest.

Having devoted many years of his life to the poor brick-yard children,

and afterwards to the children labouring in canal-boats, he has found one

more class still left outside every Act of Parliament, and beyond every

chance of being helped in the right way to earn an honest living and

become industrious members of society. These are the Gipsies and their

children, who have been let alone so severely by all so-called

right-thinking men and women that there is great danger of their becoming

a sore evil in our midst. Unable to read or write--their powers of

thought thereby cramped--with no one to look after them, separated from

the people in whose midst they live, there can be little wonder that they

should grow up with certain loose notions about right and wrong, and a

manner of life the reverse of that which prevails amongst Christian

people; but, now that Mr. George Smith has got his eyes and his heart

fixed upon them, there will surely be something done which, in the near

future, will redeem these people from many of the disadvantages under

which they labour, and add to the body corporate a tribe possessed of

many amiable characteristics. Mr. Smith never takes up more than one

thing at a time, and upon the accomplishment of it he concentrates all

his energies. This attribute is the one which has enabled him to carry

to successful conclusions the acts for the relief of the brick-yard and

the canal-boat children; but while he is about a work he becomes

thoroughly possessed by his subject, and the most important event that

may happen for the country, or for the world, loses all value in his eyes

unless it bears directly upon the accomplishment of the object in hand.

Thus it happened that, from the time we sallied out together in search of

a Gipsy camp, until the moment we parted at night, Mr. Smith thought of

nothing, spoke of nothing, remembered nothing, saw nothing, but what had

some relation to the Gipsies and their mode of life. The Zulus were to

be pitied because theirs was a sort of Gipsy life; and the Gipsies' tents

were nothing more than kraals. All his stories were of what Gipsies he

had met, and what they had said; and even our fellow-travellers in the

train were only noticeable because they looked like some Gipsy man or

woman whom he had met elsewhere. We had a short ride by rail, and a

tramp through a densely-populated district, and then we came to the

camping-ground we wanted. It was a spacious yard, entered through a

gate, and surrounded with houses, whose back yards formed the enclosure.

There were three caravans and three kraals erected there, and as it was

Sunday afternoon nearly all the inhabitants were at home. Those who were

absent were a few children able to go to Sunday-school, whither they went

of their own free will and with the approval of their parents. The

kraals were not all constructed on the same pattern--two were circular in

form and the third was square. This was on the right hand at entering,

and had at one time been a tumble-down shelter for a calf, who had many

years before gone the way of all beef--into a butcher's shop. There were

tiles on the low roof--in places--but plenty of openings were left for

the rain to come in, and for the smoke from the fire in the bucket to

find a way out if it chose. The floor was common earth, and very uneven

in places. Alice, the mistress of this abode, was a woman over fifty,

with a face the colour of leather, and vigour enough to do any amount of

work. As we entered, she told Mr. Smith a piteous tale of the loss of

her spectacles, without which she solemnly declared she could not read a

line. She left the spectacles one day when she was going 'hopping,'

hidden under a tile above her head, and when she returned the case was

there, but the spectacles were gone. She carried her licence to hawk in

her spectacle-case, until the time came when she could happily beg the

gift of a pair of new ones. Her husband, a white-haired old man, with a

look of innocent wonder in his face, sat on a lump of wood, warming his

hands over the fire. He said little--his wife scarcely allowing an

opportunity for any one else to speak--but seemed to consider that he was

a fortunate man in having such a remarkable wife. There was a handsome

young woman sitting in the only chair in the place, daughter of the old

couple; and her brother lay extended on a bed made of indescribable

things in one portion of the cabin, where the tiles in the roof showed no

openings to the sky. His wife, a thoroughbred Gipsy, sat nursing a

baby--their first-born--on the edge of the bed. The wood walls were

covered with old clothes, sacking, and a variety of odd things, fastened

in their places by wooden skewers, and adorned with a few pots and pans

used in cooking. Here, for six or seven winters, this family had

resided, defying alike the frosts and snows and rains of the most severe

winters. Nor could they be made to admit that a cottage would be more

comfortable; that hut had served them well enough so many years, and

would be good enough as long as they lived. Besides, said Alice, the

rent was a consideration, and the whole yard only cost 2s. a week. This

woman was the mother of eighteen children, of whom eleven were living.

Drawn up close by was a caravan, in the occupation at the time of two

young women, thorough Gipsies in face and tongue, who chaffed us as to

the object of our visit, and begged hard for some kind of remembrance to

be left with them. But we did not accept their invitation to walk up,

but passed down the yard, by heaps of manure and refuse of all kinds, by

another kraal, where a bucket containing coal was burning, and a young

man lay stretched on a dirty mattress, and a little bantam kept watch

beside him, to the steps of another caravan, where, from the sounds we

heard, high jinks were going on with some children. At the sound of a

tap on the door there was an instant hush, and then a girl of nineteen,

who had a baby in her arms, asked us to come in. We looked up in

amazement; the girl's face appeared like an apparition--so fair, so

beautiful, so like some face we had seen elsewhere, that we were confused

and puzzled. In a moment the mystery was solved; we had seen that face

before in several of the choicest canvases that have hung in recent years

upon the walls of the Academy; we had met with the fairest Gipsy model

that ever stood before the students of the Academy, the favourite alike

of the young artist and the head of his profession. It can only fall to

the lot of a few to see Annie, the Gipsy model; but the curious may look

upon her counterpart, only of heroic size, in Clytie, at the British

Museum. Annie has a face of exquisite Grecian form, and a hand so

delicate that it has been painted more than once in the 'portrait of a

titled lady.' When she was a very little girl, she told us, hawking

laces in a basket one day, a gentleman met her at the West-end who was a

painter, and from that day to the present Annie has earned a living--and

at times of great distress maintained all the family--by the fees she

received as a model. Her mother had had nine children, of whom eight

were living; and three of the family are constantly employed as models.

Annie is one, the young fellow who was watched over by the bantam was

another, and a boy of four was the third. The father is of pure Gipsy

blood, but the mother is an Oxfordshire woman, and neither of them

possess any striking characteristic in their faces; yet all their girls

are singularly beautiful, and their sons handsome fellows. They have got

a reputation for beauty now, and ladies have, but without success, tried

to negotiate for the possession of the youngest. Never before had we

seen such fair faces, such dainty limbs, such exquisite eyes, as were

possessed by the Gipsy occupants of that caravan. Annie was as modest

and gentle-voiced and mannered as she was beautiful; and there came a

flush of trouble over her fair face as she told us that not being able to

read or write had 'been against' her all her life. There was more

refinement about Annie and her mother than we had discovered amongst

others with whom we had conversed. Thus, Annie, speaking of her

grandfather, laid great emphasis on the assertion that he was a fine man.

He lived to be 104, she said, and walked as upright as a young man to his

death. He went about crying 'chairs to mend,' in that very locality, up

to within a short time of his death, and all the old ladies employed him

because he was so handsome. She was playing with a baby girl as she

talked with us, and the child fixed her black eyes upon her sister's

face, and crooned with baby pleasure. 'What is baby's name,' we asked?

'Comfort,' replied Annie. 'We were hopping one year' said the mother,

'and there was a young woman in the party I took to very much, and her

name was Comfort. Coming away from the hop grounds, the caravans had to

cross a river, and while we were in the water one day the river suddenly

rose, the caravans were upset, and eleven were drowned, Comfort amongst

the number. So I christened baby after her in remembrance.' All the

family were neatly dressed, and once, when Annie opened the cupboard door

for an instant, we caught sight of a dish of small currant puddings."

A visit to a batch of Gipsy wigwams, Wardlow Street, Garrett Lane,

Wandsworth, induced me to send the following letter to the London and

country daily papers, and it appeared in the _Daily Chronicle_ and _Daily

News_, November 20th, as under:--"The following touching incident may

slightly show the thorough heartfelt desire there is--but lacking the

power--among the Gipsies to be partakers of some of the sanitary and

educational advantages the Gorgios or Gentiles are the recipients of. A

few days since I wended my way to a large number of Gipsies located in

tents, huts, and vans near Wandsworth Common, to behold the pitiable

spectacle of some sixty half-naked, poor Gipsy children, and thirty Gipsy

men and women, living in a state of indescribable ignorance, dirt, filth,

and misery, mostly squatting upon the ground, making their beds upon peg

shavings and straw, and divested of the last tinge of romantical

nonsense, which is little better in this case--used as a deal of it

is--than paper pasted upon the windows, to hide from public view the mass

of human corruption which has been festering in our midst for centuries,

breeding all kinds of sin and impurities, except in the eyes of those who

see beautiful colours and delights in the aroma of stagnant pools and

beauty in the sparkling hues of the gutter, and revel in adding tints and

pictures to the life and death of a weasel, lending enchantment to the

life of a vagabond, and admire the non-intellectual development of beings

many of whom are only one step from that of animals, if I may judge from

the amount of good the 20,000 Gipsies have accomplished in the world

during the last three or four centuries. Connected with this encampment

not more than four or five of the poor creatures could read a sentence or

write a letter. In creeping almost upon 'all-fours,' into one of the

tents, I came across a real, antiquated, live, good kind of Gipsy woman

named Britannia Lee, who boasted that she was a Lee of the fourth

generation; and in sitting down upon a seat that brought my knees upon a

level with my chin, I entered into conversation with the family about the

objects of my inquiries--of which they said they had heard all

about--viz., to get all the Gipsy tents, vans, and other movable

habitations in the country registered and under proper sanitary

arrangements, and the children compelled to attend school wherever they

may be temporarily located, and to receive an education which will in

some degree help to get these poor unfortunate people out of the

heartrending and desponding condition into which they have been allowed

to sink. Although Mrs. Lee was ill and poor, her face beamed with

gladness to find that I was trying in my humble way to do the Gipsy

children good; and in a kind of maternal feeling she said she should be

pleased to show her deep interest in my work, and asked me if I would

accept all the money she had in the world, viz., one penny and two

farthings? With much persuasion and hesitation, and under fear of

offending her, I accepted them, which I purpose keeping as a token of a

woman's desire to do something towards improving her 'kith and kin.' She

said that Providence would see that she was no loser for the mite she had

given to me. He once sent her, in her extremity, a shilling in the

middle of a potato, which she found when cooking. With many expressions

of 'God bless you in your work among the children! You will be rewarded

some day for all your time, trouble, and expense,' we parted."

The London correspondent of the _Croydon Chronicle_ writes as under, on

November 22nd, touching a visit we both made to a number of poor Gipsy

children squatting about upon Mitcham Common. Among other things he

says:--"I have had a day in your neighbourhood with George Smith, of

Coalville. He is visiting all the Gipsy grounds he can find and reach,

for the purpose of gaining information as to the condition of the swarms

of children who live in squalor and ignorance under tents. He is of

opinion that he will be able to get them into schools, and do as much for

them generally as he has done for the brick-field and canal children; and

I have no doubt myself that he will succeed. Well, the other day he

asked me to have a run round with him, and we went to Mitcham Common to

see some of the families there. He told me that one of the Gipsy women

had been confined, and that she wanted him to give the child a name. He

did not know what to call it, so we had to put our heads together and

settle the matter. After a great deal of careful deliberation he decided

that when we reached the common the child should be called 'Deliverance.'

I have been told that this sounds like the name of a new ironclad, and

perhaps it would have done as well for one as for the other. The tents

were much of a character--some kind of stitched-together rags thrown over

sticks. Our visit was made on a fine day, when it was not particularly

cold, and the first tent we came to had been opened at the top. We

looked over (these tents are only about five feet high), and beheld six

children, the eldest being a girl of about eight or ten. The father was

anywhere to suit the imagination, and the mother was away hawking. These

children, sitting on the ground with a fire in the middle of them, were

making clothes-pegs. The process seemed simple. The sticks are chopped

into the necessary lengths and put into a pan of hot water. This I

suppose swells the wood and loosens the bark. A child on the other side

takes out the sticks as they are done and bites off the bark with its

teeth. Then there is a boy who puts tin round them, and so the work goes

on. When the day is done they look for the mother coming home from

hawking with anything she may have picked up. When they have devoured

such scraps and pickings as are brought, they lie down where they have

worked and as they are, and go to sleep. It is a wonderful and

mysterious arrangement of Providence that they can sleep. They have only

a rag between them and the snow. A good wind would blow their homes over

the trees. I do not wish to make any particularly violent remarks, but I

should like some of the comfortable clergymen of your neighbourhood, when

they have done buying their toys and presents for young friends at

Christmas, to walk to Mitcham Common and see how the children are there.

They would then find out what humbugs they are, and how it is they do the

work of the Master. One tent is very much like another. We visited

about half-a-dozen, and we then went to name the child. We stayed in

this tent for about ten minutes. It was inhabited by two families,

numbering in all about twenty. I talked a little time with the woman

lying on the ground, and she uncovered the baby to show it to me. I do

not know whether it is a boy or a girl, but 'Deliverance' will do for

either one or the other. She asked me to write the name on a piece of

paper, and I did so. With a few words, as jolly as we could make them,

we crawled out, thanks and blessings following George Smith, as they

always do."

[Picture: A Gipsy Tent for Two Men, their Wives, and Eleven Children, and

in which "Deliverance" was born]

Leading article in the _Primitive Methodist_, November 27th:--"Mr. George

Smith, of Coalville, is endeavouring to do a work for the children of

Gipsies similar to that he has done for the children employed in

brick-yards and the children of canal-boatmen--that is, bring them under

some sort of supervision, so that they may secure at least a small share

in the educational advantages of the country. Recently he published an

account of a visit to an encampment of the Gipsies near Wandsworth

Common, and it is evident that these wanderers without any settled place

of abode look on his efforts with some considerable approval. The

encampment was made up of a number of tents, huts, and vans, and

contained some sixty half-naked poor Gipsy children and thirty Gipsy men

and women, living in an indescribable state of ignorance, dirt, filth,

and misery, mostly squatting upon the ground, or otherwise making their

beds upon peg shavings and straw; and it turned out upon inquiry that not

more than four of these poor creatures could read a sentence or write a

letter. They are, however, not indisposed to be subject to regulations

that will contribute to their partial education, if to nothing more. In

passing from one of these miserable habitations to another, Mr. Smith

found an old Gipsy woman proud of her name and descent, for she was a

Lee, and a Lee of the fourth generation. To this old woman he explained

his purpose, sitting on a low seat under the cover of the tent with his

knees on a level with his chin. He wanted, he said, 'to get all the

Gipsy tents and vans, and other movable habitations in the country,

registered and under proper sanitary arrangements, and the children

compelled to attend school wherever they may be temporarily located, and

to receive an education which will in some degree help to get them out of

the low, heartrending condition into which they have been allowed to

sink.' Mrs. Lee listened with pleasure to this narration of Mr. Smith's

purpose, and, though in great poverty, desired to aid this good work.

Her stock of cash amounted to three-halfpence; but this she insisted upon

giving, so that she might contribute a little, at any rate, towards the

improvement of her people. We hope Mr. Smith may succeed in his work,

and succeed speedily, so that these Gipsy children, who are trained up to

a vagabond life, may have a chance of learning something better. And

evidently, from Mr. Smith's experience, there is no hostility to such a

measure as he wishes to have made law among the Gipsies themselves."

Owing to my letters, papers, articles and paragraphs, and efforts in

other directions during the last several months, the Gipsy subject might

now be fairly considered to have made good headway, consequently the

proprietor of the _Illustrated London News_, without any difficulty, was

induced--in fact, with pleasure--to have a series of sketches of Gipsy

life in his journal, the first appearing November 29th, connected with

which was the following notice, and in which he says:--"Our

illustrations, from a sketch taken by one of our artists in the

neighbourhood of Latimer Road, Notting Hill, which is not far from

Wormwood Scrubs, show the habits of living folk who are to be found as

well in the outskirts of London, where there are many chances of picking

up a stray bit of irregular gain, as in more rural parts of the country.

The figure of a gentleman introduced into this sketch, who appears to be

conversing with the Gipsies in their waggon encampment, is that of Mr.

George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, the well-known benevolent promoter

of social reform and legislative protection for the long-neglected class

of people employed on canal-barges, whose families, often living on board

these vessels, are sadly in want of domestic comfort and of education for

the children." The editor also inserted my Congress paper fully. The

following week another sketch of Gipsy life appeared in the same journal,

connected with which were the following remarks:--"Another sketch of the

wild and squalid habits of life still retained by vagrant parties or

clans of this singular race of people, often met with in the

neighbourhood of suburban villages and other places around London, will

be found in our journal. We may again direct the reader's attention to

the account of them which was contributed by Mr. George Smith, of

Coalville, Leicester, to the late Social Science Congress at Manchester,

and which was reprinted in our last week's publication. That well-known

advocate of social reform and legal protection for the neglected vagrant

classes of our population reckons the total number of Gipsies in this

country at three or four thousand men and women and ten thousand

children. He is now seeking to have all movable habitations--_i.e._,

tents, vans, shows, &c.--in which the families live who are earning a

living by travelling from place to place, registered and numbered, as in

the case of canal-boats, and the parents compelled to send their children

to school at the place wherever they may be temporarily located, be it

National, British, or Board school. The following is Mr. Smith's note

upon what was to be seen in the Gipsies' tent on Mitcham Common:--

"'Inside this tent--with no other home--there were two men, their wives,

and about fourteen children of all ages: two or three of these were

almost men and women. The wife of one of the men had been confined of a

baby the day before I called--her bed consisting of a layer of straw upon

the damp ground. Such was the wretched and miserable condition they were

in that I could not do otherwise than help the poor woman, and gave her a

little money. But, in her feelings of gratitude to me for this simple

act of kindness, she said she would name the baby anything I would like

to chose; and, knowing that Gipsies are fond of outlandish names, I was

in a difficulty. After turning the thing over in my mind for a few

hours, I could think of nothing but "Deliverance." This seemed to please

the poor woman very much; and the poor child is named Deliverance G---.

Strange to say, the next older child is named "Moses."'"

On December 13th, an additional sketch, showing the inside of a van, was

given, to which were added the following remarks:--"Another sketch of the

singular habits and rather deplorable condition of these vagrant people,

who hang about, as the parasites of civilisation, close on the suburban

outskirts of our wealthy metropolis, is presented by our artist,

following those which have appeared in the last two weeks. Mr. G. Smith,

of Coalville, Leicester, having taken in hand the question of providing

due supervision and police regulation for the Gipsies, with compulsory

education for their children, we readily dedicate these local

illustrations to the furtherance of his good work. The ugliest place we

know in the neighbourhood of London, the most dismal and forlorn, is not

Hackney Marshes, or those of the Lea, beyond Old Ford, at the East-end;

but it is the tract of land, half torn up for brick-field clay, half

consisting of fields laid waste in expectation of the house-builder,

which lies just outside of Shepherd's Bush and Notting Hill. There it is

that the Gipsy encampment may be found, squatting within an hour's walk

of the Royal palaces and of the luxurious town mansions of our nobility

and opulent classes, to the very west of the fashionable West-end, beyond

the gentility of Bayswater and Whiteley's avenue of universal shopping.

It is a curious spectacle in that situation, and might suggest a few

serious reflections upon social contrasts at the centre and capital of

the mighty British nation, which takes upon itself the correction of

every savage tribe in South and West Africa and Central Asia. The

encampment is usually formed of two or three vans and a rude cabin or a

tent, placed on some piece of waste ground, for which the Gipsy party

have to pay a few shillings a week of rent. This may be situated at the

back of a row of respectable houses, and in full view of their bedroom or

parlour windows, not much to the satisfaction of the quiet inhabitants.

The interior of one of the vans, furnished as a dwelling-room, which is

shown in our artist's sketch, does not look very miserable; but Mr. Smith

informs us that these receptacles of vagabond humanity are often sadly

overcrowded. Besides a man, his wife, and their own children, the little

ones stowed in bunks or cupboards, there will be several adult persons

taken in as lodgers. The total number of Gipsies now estimated to be

living in the metropolitan district is not less than 2,000. Among these

are doubtless not a small proportion of idle runaways or 'losels' from

the more settled classes of our people. It would seem to be the duty of

somebody at the Home Office, for the sake of public health and good

order, to call upon some local authorities of the county or the parish to

look after these eccentricities of Gipsy life."

On January 3rd, 1880, additional illustrations were given in the

_Illustrated London News_. 1. Tent at Hackney; 2. Tent at Hackney; 3.

Sketch near Latimer Road, Notting Hill; 4. A Bachelor's Bedroom, Mitcham

Common; 5. Encampment at Mitcham Common; 6. A Knife-grinder at Hackney

Wick; 7. A Tent at Hackney Marshes. "A few additional sketches,

continuing those of this subject which have appeared in our journal, are

engraved for the present number. It is estimated by Mr. George Smith, of

Coalville, Leicester, who has recently been exploring the queer outcast

world of Gipsydom in different parts of England, that some 2,000 people

called by that name, but of very mixed race, living in the manner of Zulu

Kaffirs rather than of European citizens, frequent the neighbourhood of

London. They are not all thieves, not even all beggars and impostors,

and they escape the law of vagrancy by paying a few shillings of weekly

rent for pitching their tents or booths, and standing their waggons or

wheeled cabins, on pieces of waste ground. The western side of Notting

Hill, where the railway passenger going to Shepherd's Bush or Hammersmith

sees a vast quantity of family linen hung out to dry in the gardens and

courtyards of small dwelling-houses, bordered towards Wormwood Scrubs by

a dismal expanse of brick-fields, might tempt the Gipsies so inclined to

take a clean shirt or petticoat--certainly not for their own wearing.

But we are not aware that the police inspectors and magistrates of that

district have found such charges more numerous in their official record

than has been experienced in other quarters of London; and it is possible

that honest men and women, though of irregular and slovenly habits, may

exist among this odd fragment of our motley population. It is for the

sake of their children, who ought to be, at least equally with those of

the English labouring classes, since they cannot get it from their

parents, provided with means of decent Christian education, that Mr.

George Smith has brought this subject under public notice. The Gipsies,

so long as they refrain from picking and stealing, and do not obstruct

the highways, should not be persecuted; for they are a less active

nuisance than the Italian organ-grinders in our city streets, whose

tormenting presence we are content to suffer, to the sore interruption

both of our daily work and our repose. But it is expedient that there

should be an Act of Parliament, if the Home Secretary has not already

sufficient legal powers, to establish compulsory registration of the

travelling Gipsy families, and a strict licensing system, with constant

police supervision, for their temporary encampments, while their children

should be looked after by the local School Board. These measures,

combined with judicious offers of industrial help for the adults and

industrial training for the juniors, with the special exercise of

Poor-Law Guardian administration, and some parochial or missionary

religious efforts, might put an end to vagabond Gipsy life in England

before the commencement of the twentieth century, or within one

generation. We hope to see the matter discussed in the House of Lords or

the House of Commons during the ensuing session; for it actually concerns

the moral and social welfare of more than thirty thousand people in our

own country, which is an interest quite as considerable as that we have

in Natal or the Transvaal, among Zulus and Basutos, and the rest of

Kaffirdom. The sketches we now present in illustration of this subject

are designed to show the squalid and savage aspect of Gipsy habitations

in the suburban districts, at Hackney and Hackney Wick, north-east of

London; where the marsh-meadows of the river Lea, unsuitable for

building-land, seem to forbid the extension of town streets and blocks of

brick or stuccoed terraces; where the pleasant wooded hills of Epping and

Hainault Forest appear in the distance, inviting the jaded townsman, on

summer holidays, to saunter in the Royal Chace of the old English kings

and queens; where genuine ruralities still lie within an hour's walk, of

which the fashionable West-ender knoweth nought. There lurks the free

and fearless Gipsy scamp, if scamp he truly be, with his squaw and his

piccaninnies, in a wigwam hastily constructed of hoops and poles and

blankets, or perhaps, if he be the wealthy sheikh of his wild Bedouin

tribe, in a caravan drawn from place to place by some lost and strayed

plough-horse, the lawful owner of which is a farmer in Northamptonshire.

Far be it from us to say or suspect that the Gipsy stole the horse;

'convey, the wise it call;' and if horse or donkey, dog, or pig, or cow,

if cock and hen, duck or turkey, be permitted to escape from field or

farmyard, these fascinated creatures will sometimes follow the merry

troop of 'Romany Rye' quite of their own accord, such is the magic of

Egyptian craft and the innate superiority of an Oriental race. These

Gipsies, Zingari, Bohemians, whatever they be called in the kingdoms of

Europe, are masters of a secret science of mysterious acquisition, as

remote from proved crime of theft or fraud as from the ways of earning or

winning by ordinary industry and trade. There is many a rich and

splendid establishment at the West-end supported by a different

application of the same mysterious craft. Solicitors and stockbrokers

may have seen it in action. It is that of silently appropriating what no

other person may be quite prepared to claim."

The following remarks appeared in the December number of _The

Quiver_:--"Mr. George Smith, who has earned a much-respected and worthy

name by his interest in and persevering efforts for the well-being of our

canal population, is bent on doing similar service for the Gipsy children

and roadside arabs, who are sadly too numerous in the suburban and rural

districts of the land. By securing the registration of canal-boats as

human domiciles, he has brought quite a host of poor little outcasts

within the pale of society and the beneficent influence of the various

educational machineries of the age. By bringing the multitudinous tents,

vans, shows, and their peripatetic lodgers under some similar

arrangements, he hopes to put civilisation, education, and Christianity

within reach, of the thousand ragged Ishmaelites who are at present left

to grow up in ignorance and degradation. These vagrant juveniles are

growing up to strengthen the ranks of the unproductive and criminal

classes; and policy, philanthropy, and Christianity alike demand that the

nomadic waifs should be encircled by the arms of an ameliorating law

which will give them a chance of escaping from the life of semi-barbarity

to which untoward circumstances have consigned them, and to place them in

a position to make something better of the life that now is, and to

secure some fitting preparation for the life that is to come. It is

evidently high time that something should be done, otherwise we must

sooner or later be faced with more serious difficulties than even now

exist. Our sympathies are strongly with the warm-hearted philanthropist;

and we trust that in taking to this new field of effort he will win all

needful aid, and that his endeavours to rescue from a life of crime and

vagabondage these hitherto much-neglected little ones will be crowned

with success.

"'The glories of our mortal state

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armour against fate--

Death lays its icy hands on kings:

Sceptre and crown

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made

With the poor crooked scythe and spade:

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.'--_Shirley_."

The following is my letter, relating to the poor little Gipsy children's

homes, as it appeared in the _Daily News_, _Daily Chronicle_, and other

London and country daily papers, December 2nd:--"Amongst some of the

sorrowful features of Gipsy life I have noticed lately, none call more

loudly for Government help, assistance, and supervision than the wretched

little rag and stick hovels, scarcely large enough to hold a

costermonger's wheelbarrow, in which the poor Gipsy women and children

are born, pig, and die--aye, and men too, if they can be called Gipsies,

with three-fourths, excepting the faintest cheering tint, of the blood of

English scamps and vagabonds in their reins, and the remainder consisting

of the blood of the vilest rascals from India and other nations. A real

Gipsy of the old type, of which there are but few, will tell you a lie

and look straight at you with a chuckle and grin; the so-called Gipsy now

will tell you a lie and look a thousand other ways while doing so. In

their own interest, and without mincing matters, it is time the plain

facts of their dark lives were brought to daylight, so that the

brightening and elevating effects of public opinion, law, and the Bible

may have their influence upon the character of the little ones about to

become in our midst the men and women of the future. Outside their

hovels or sack huts, poetically called 'tents' and 'encampments,' but in

reality schools for teaching their children how to gild double-dyed

lies,--sugar-coat deception, gloss idleness and filth, paint immorality

with Asiatic ideas, notions, and hues, and put a pleasant and cheerful

aspect upon taking things that do not belong to them, may be seen

thousands of ragged, half-naked, dirty, ignorant and wretched Gipsy

children, and the men loitering about mostly in idleness. Inside their

sack hovels are to be found man, wife, and six or seven children of all

ages, not one of them able to read or write, squatting or sleeping upon a

bed of straw, which through the wet and damp is often little better than

a manure-heap, in fact sometimes completely rotten, and as a Gipsy woman

told me last week, 'it is not fit to be handled with the hands.' In

noticing that many of the Gipsy children have a kind of eye-disease, I am

told by the women that it is owing to the sulphur arising from the coke

fire they have upon the ground in their midst, and which at times also

causes the children to turn pale and sickly. The sulphur affects the men

and women in various ways, sometimes causing a kind of stupor to come

over them. I have noticed farther that many of the adults are much

pitted with small-pox. It is a wonder to me that there is not more

disease among them than there appears to be, considering that they are

huddled together, regardless of sex or age, in the midst of a damp

atmosphere rising out of the ground, and impregnated with the sulphur of

their coke fires. Probably their flitting habits prevent detection. My

plan to improve their condition is not by prosecuting them and breaking

up their tents and vans and turning them into the roads pell-mell, but to

bring their habitations under the sanitary officers and their children

under the schoolmaster in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act, and

it has the approval of these wandering herds. The process will be slow

but effective, and without much inconvenience. Unless something be done

for them in the way I have indicated, they will drift into a state

similar to Darwin's forefathers and prove to the world that civilisation

and Christianity are a failure."

The following article appears in the _Christian World_, December 19th, by

Christopher Crayon (J. Ewing Ritchie), in which he says:--"The other day

I was witness to a spectacle which made me feel a doubt as to whether I

was living in the nineteenth century. I was, as it were, within the

shadow of that mighty London where Royalty resides, where the richest

Church in Christendom rejoices in its Abbey and Cathedral, and its

hundreds of churches, where an enlightened and energetic Dissent has not

only planted its temples in every district, but has sent forth its

missionary agents into every land, where the fierce light of public

opinion, aided by a Press which never slumbers, is a terror to them that

do evil, and a praise to them that do well; a city which we love to boast

heads the onward march of man; and yet the scene before me was as

intensely that of savage life, as if I had been in a Zulu kraal, and

savage life destitute of all that lends it picturesque attractions, or

ideal charms. I was standing in the midst of some twenty tents and vans,

inhabited by that wandering race of whose origin we know so little, and

of whose future we know less. The snow was on the ground, there was

frost in the very air. Within a few yards was a great Board school;

close by were factories and workshops, and the other concomitants of

organised industrial life. Yet in that small area the Gipsies held

undisputed sway. In or about London there are, it is calculated, some

two thousand of these dwellers in tents. In all England there are some

twenty thousand of these sons of Ishmael, with hands against every one,

or, perhaps to put it more truly, with every one's hands against them.

In summer-time their lot is by no means to be envied; in winter their

state is deplorable indeed.

"We entered, Mr. George Smith and I, and were received as friends. Had I

gone by myself, I question whether my reception would have been a

pleasant one. As Gipsies pay no taxes, they can keep any number of dogs,

and these dogs have a way of sniffing and snarling, anything but

agreeable to an unbidden guest. The poor people complained to me no one

ever came to see them. I should be surprised if any one did; but Mr.

George Smith, of Coalville, is no common man, and having secured fair

play for the poor children of the brick-fields--he himself was brought up

in a brick-yard--and for the poor, and sadly-neglected, inmates of the

canal-boats, he has now turned his attention to the Gipsies. His idea

is--and it is a good one--that an Act of Parliament should be passed for

their benefit--something similar to that he has been the means of

carrying for the canal and brick-field children. In a paper read before

the Social Science Congress at Manchester, Mr. Smith argued that all

tents, shows, caravans, auctioneer vans, and like places used as

dwellings should be registered and numbered, and under proper sanitary

arrangements, with sanitary inspectors and School Board officers, in

every town and village. Thus in every district the children would have

their names and attendance registered in a book, which they could take

with them from place to place, and when endorsed by the schoolmaster, it

would show that the children were attending school. In carrying out this

idea, it is a pity that Mr. Smith should have to bear all the burden. As

it is, he has suffered greatly in his pocket by his philanthropic effort.

. . .

"It is no joke going into a Gipsy yard, and it is still less so when you

go down on your hands and knees, and crawl into the Gipsy's wigwam; but

the worst of it is, when you have done so, there is little to see after

all. In the middle, on a few bricks, is a stove or fireplace of some

kind. On the ground is a floor of wood-chips, or straw, or shavings, and

on this squat some two or three big, burly men, who make linen-pegs and

skewers, and mend chairs and various articles, the tribe, as they wander

along, seek to sell. The women are away, for it is they who bring the

grist to the mill, as they tell fortunes, or sell their wares, or follow

their doubtful trade; but the place swarms with children; and it was

wonderful to see with what avidity they stretched out the dirtiest little

hand imaginable as Mr. Smith prepared to distribute some sweets he had

brought with him for that purpose. As we entered, all the vans were shut

up, and the tents only were occupied, the vans being apparently deserted

but presently a door was opened half-way, and out popped a little Gipsy

head, with sparkling eyes and curly hair; and then another door opened,

and a similar spectacle was to be seen. Let us look into the van, about

the size of a tiny cabin, and chock full, in the first place, with a

cooking-stove; and then with shelves, with curtains and some kind of

bedding, apparently not very clean, on which the family repose. It is a

piteous life, even at the best, in that van; even when the cooking pot is

filled with something more savoury than cabbages or potatoes; the usual

fare; but the children seem happy, nevertheless, in their dirty rags, and

with their luxurious heads of curly hair. All of them are as ignorant as

Hottentots, and lead a life horrible to think of. I only saw one woman

in the camp, and I only saw her by uncovering the top and looking into

the tent in which she resides. She is terribly poor, she says, and

pleads earnestly for a few coppers; and I can well believe she wants

them, for in this England of ours, and especially in the outskirts of

London, the Gipsy is not a little out of place. Around us are some

strapping girls, one with a wonderfully sweet smile on her face, who, if

they could be trained to domestic service, would have a far happier life

than they can ever hope to lead. The cold and wet seem to affect them

not, nor the poor diet, nor the smoke and bad air of their cabins, in

which they crowd, while the men lazily work, and the mothers are far

away. The leading lady in this camp is absent on business; but she is a

firm adherent of Mr. George Smith, and wishes to see the children

educated; and as she is a Lee, and as a Lee in Gipsy annals take the same

rank as a Norfolk Howard in aristocratic circles, that says a good deal;

but, then, if you educate a Gipsy girl, she will want to have her hands

and face, at any rate, clean; and a Gipsy boy, when he learns to read,

will feel that he is born for a nobler end than to dwell in a stinking

wigwam, to lead a lawless life, to herd with questionable characters, and

to pick up a precarious existence at fairs and races; and our poets and

novelists and artists will not like that. However, just now, by means of

letters in the newspapers, and engravings in the illustrated journals, a

good deal of attention is paid to the Gipsies, and if they can be

reclaimed and turned into decent men and women a good many farmers' wives

will sleep comfortably at night, especially when geese and turkeys are

being fattened for Christmas fare; and a desirable impulse will be given

to the trade in soap."

[Picture: A Gipsy girl washing clothes]

In the _Sunday School Chronicle_, December 19th, the kind-hearted editor

makes the following allusions:--"Mr. George Smith stirs every feeling of

pity and compassion in our hearts by his descriptions of the Gipsy

Children's Homes. It is one of the curious things of English life that

the distinct Gipsy race should dwell among us, and, neither socially nor

politically, nor religiously, do we take any notice of them. No portion

of our population may so earnestly plead, 'No man careth for our souls.'

The chief interest of them, to many of us, is that they are used to give

point, and plot, to novels. But can nothing be done for the Gipsy

_children_? Christian enterprise is seldom found wanting when a sphere

is suggested for it; and those who live in the neighbourhood of Gipsy

haunts should be especially concerned for their well-being. What must

the children be, morally and religiously, who _bide_, we cannot say

_dwell_, in such homes as Mr. George Smith describes?

"'In their own interest, and without mincing matters, it is time the

plain facts of their dark lives were brought to daylight, so that the

brightening and elevating effects of public opinion, law, and the Bible

may have their influence upon the character of the little ones about to

become in our midst the men and women of the future. Outside their

hovels or sack huts, poetically called "tents" and "encampments," but in

reality schools for teaching their children how to gild double-dyed lies,

sugar-coat deception, gloss idleness and filth, and put a pleasant and

cheerful aspect upon taking things that do not belong to them, may be

seen thousands of ragged, half-naked, dirty, ignorant, and wretched Gipsy

children, and the men loitering about mostly in idleness. Inside their

sack hovels are to be found man, wife, and six or seven children of all

ages, not one of them able to read or write, squatting or sleeping upon a

bed of straw, which through the wet and damp is often little better than

a manure-heap, in fact sometimes it is completely rotten, and as a Gipsy

woman told me last week, "it is not fit to be handled with the hands."

In noticing that many of the Gipsy children have a kind of eye disease, I

am told by the women that it is owing to the sulphur arising from the

coke fire they have upon the ground in their midst, and which at times

also causes the children to turn pale and sickly.'"

The following brief account of the Hungarian Gipsies of the present day,

as seen by a writer under the initials "A. C.," who visited the Unitarian

Synod in Hungary last summer, is taken from the _Unitarian Herald_,

bearing date January 9th, 1880, and in which the author says:--"Not far

from Rugonfalva we came on a colony of exceedingly squalid Gipsies,

living in huts which a respectable Zulu would utterly despise. Their

appearance reminded me of Cowper's graphic sketch, which I am tempted to

quote:--

"'I see a column of slow-rising smoke

O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.

A vagabond and useless tribe there eat

Their miserable meal. A kettle, flung

Between two poles upon a stick transverse,

Receives the morsel--flesh obscene of dog,

Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined

From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race,

They pick their fuel out of every hedge,

Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched

The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide

Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,

The vellum of the livery they claim.'

"Transylvania is one great museum of human as well as natural products,

and this singular race forms an interesting element of its motley

population. It is supposed that the tribe found its way to Hungary in

the beginning of the fifteenth century, having fled from Central Asia or

India during the Mongol reign of terror. About the close of last century

Pastor Benedict, of Debreczin, mastered their language, and on visiting

England found that the Gipsies in this country understood him very well.

There are now about eighty thousand of them in Transylvania, but

three-fourths of this number have settled homes, and caste distinctions

are so strong that the higher grades would not drink from a cup used by

one of their half-savage brethren. On reaching the mansion of Mr.

Jakabhazi, at Simenfalva, who employs about one hundred and forty

civilised Gipsies on his estate, we had an opportunity after dinner of

seeing them return in a long procession from the fields. Some of the

women carried small brown babies, that appeared able to find footing

anywhere on their mothers' shoulders, backs, or breasts. These labourers

are almost entirely paid in food and other necessaries, and if kindly

treated are very honourable towards their master, and generally adopt his

religion. When smarting under any grievance, they, on the contrary,

sometimes change their faith _en masse_, and when conciliated undergo as

speedy a re-conversion. The women are, as a rule, very fond of

ornaments, and the men are, above all things, proud of a horse or a pair

of scarlet breeches. Of late years they have in a few districts began to

intermarry with the Wallachs, and the sharp distinction between them and

the other races in Hungary will, no doubt, gradually disappear."

The _Weekly Times_ again takes up the subject, and the following appears

on January 9th, 1880:--"We made a second expedition, with Mr. George

Smith, of Coalville, on Sunday, in search of a Gipsy encampment; and

though the way was long and tedious, and we were both lamed with walking

before we returned at night, yet we had not gone one step out of our way.

There is no encampment of these ancient and interesting people in the

neighbourhood of the hundred odd square miles which composes the site of

the metropolis, with which Mr. Smith is not acquainted, and to which we

verily believe he could lead a friend if he was blindfolded. The way we

went must remain somewhat of a secret, because the Gipsies do not care to

see many visitors on the only day of the week which is one of absolute

rest to them. All that we shall disclose about the way is, that we

skirted Mount Nod, and for a short distance looked upon the face of an

ancient river, then up-hill we clambered for many longish miles, until we

turned out of a certain lane into the encampment. There was a rude

picturesqueness in the gaping of the vans and tents. In the foreground

were the vans, to the rear the cloth kraals, with their smoky coverings

stretched over poles; from a hole in the centre the smoke ascended,

furnishing evidence that the open brazier was burning within. The vans

protected the approach to the camp, just in the same way that artillery

are planted to keep the road to a military encampment. Mr. Smith's face

seemed to be well known to these strange people, and we no sooner

appeared in sight than the swinging door of every van was edged with

faces, and forth from the strange kraals there crept child and woman,

youth and dog, to say a kindly word, or bark a welcome to the visitors.

But for the Gipsies' welcome we might have had an unpleasant reception

from the dogs. They were evidently dubious as to our character, their

training inclining them to bite, if they get a chance, any leg wearing

black cloth, but to give the ragged-trousered visitors a fawning welcome;

so they sniffed again and again, and growled, until driven away by the

voices of their owners. Perchance, during the remainder of the day, they

were revolving in their intelligent minds how it had come to pass that

the black cloth legs were received with evident marks of favour. Nor

were they able to settle the point easily, for whenever we happened to

look round the encampment during the afternoon, from the raised door-way

of a kraal where we happened to be couched, we noticed the eyes of one or

other of the four-footed guardians fixed intently on us. There were

about twenty vans and tents in all; and each paid one shilling a week to

the ground landlord. That money, with whatever else was required for

food, was obtained by hawking at this season of the year, and trade was

very bad. Winter must be a fearful experience for these children of the

air, and the field, the summer sun, the wild flowers, and the fruits of

harvest. Such rains as have descended, such snows as have been falling,

such cold winds as have been blowing, must discount fearfully the joys of

the three happier seasons of the year.

"Invitations to stoop and enter any 'tent' were freely tendered, and

'peeps' were indulged in with regard to a few. In one, a closed cauldron

covered the brazier fire, and two men and a dog watched with unceasing

vigilance. We tried to make friends here, but failed. There was a

steamy exudation from the cauldron which filled the air with fragrance,

and our curiosity overcame our prudence, but with no satisfactory result.

'A stew,' we suggested. 'Yes! it was summut stewing.' 'Couldn't we

guess what it was?' 'Not soon,' was the reply; 'a few bones and a potato

or two; perhaps a bit of something green. At such hard times they were

mostly glad to get anything.' But nothing more could be gleaned, and the

two men and the dog never lost sight of the cauldron while the visitors

remained. In a few cases the tents were pegged down all round, and

across the top, upon a stout line, there hung a few articles fresh from

the wash. The pegged cloth indicated that the female occupants were

within, but 'not at home,' nor would they be visible until the wind had

dried the garments that fluttered overhead. We tarried, and were made

quite at home in another kraal, where we gleaned many interesting

particulars of Gipsy life; and here we held a sort of smoking _levee_,

and were honoured by the company of many distinguished residents in camp.

We lay upon a bed of straw, which covered the whole of the interior, save

a little space filled with the brazier, in which a fire of coke was

burning; above was a hole, out of which the smoke passed. The straw had

been stamped into consistency by the feet of the family; there was no

odour from it, and in that particular was an improvement on the rush and

straw floors in the English houses of which Erasmus made such great

complaint. There was no chair, stool, or box on which to sit, and all of

us reclined Eastern fashion in the posture that was most convenient. The

owner of the kraal and his wife were very interesting people: the

mother's hair descended by little steps from the crown of her head, until

it stuck out like a bush, in a line with the nape of her neck, a dense

dead-black mass of hair. She had been a model for painters many a time,

she said, before small-pox marked her; and, since, the back of her head

had often been drawn to fit somebody else's face.

"'When I come again what shall I bring you?' said Mr. Smith, in most

reckless fashion, to the Egyptian Queen. 'Well,' said she, without a

moment's hesitation, 'if there is one thing more than another that I do

want, it's a silk handkercher for my head--a real Bandana.' The request

was characteristic. Of the tales we heard one or two were curious, one

positively laughable, and one related to a deed of blood. Mr. Smith,

going into a tent, found an aged Gipsy woman, to whom he told the object

of his visiting the Gipsies, and what he hoped to accomplish for the

children, and she forwith handed him a money gift. On more than one

occasion a well-polished silver coin of small value, a penny, or a

farthing has been quietly put into Mr. Smith's hands, in furtherance of

his work, by some poor Gipsy woman. The story which made us laugh was of

a Gipsy marriage. It is one of the unwritten laws of Gipsy life that the

wife works while the husband idles about the tent. The wife hawks with

the basket or the cart and sells, while the husband loiters about the

encampment or cooks the evening meal. But one young Gipsy fell in love

with an Irish girl named Kathleen, and from the day of their marriage Tom

never had an idle moment. In vain did he plead the usages of Gipsy

married life. Kathleen was deaf to all such modes of argument, and drove

her husband forth from tent and encampment, by voice or by stake, until

she completely cured him of his idleness, and she remained mistress of

the field. Whenever a young Gipsy is supposed to be courting a stranger,

the fate of Tom at the hands of Kathleen is told him as a warning.

During the afternoon we were continually exhorted to see 'Granny' before

we left. Every one spoke of her with respect, and when we were about to

leave, Patience offered to show us 'Granny's tent.' Repentance joined

her sister, and before we were up and out of the tent opening, we saw

Patience at a tent not far off; she dived head and shoulders through an

opening she made, and then appeared to be pulling vigorously. Her

activity was soon explained. We thrust our heads through the opening,

and were face to face with a shrivelled-faced old woman, whose cheeks

were like discoloured parchment, and whose hands and arms appeared to be

mere bones. But her eye was bright, and her tongue proved her to be in

possession of most of her faculties. She could not stand or walk, nor

could she sit up for many minutes at a time, and the action of Patience

was caused by her hastily seizing the old woman by her arms as she lay on

her straw floor, and dragging her into a sitting position. If the old

dame had been asleep, Patience had thoroughly aroused her. She greeted

us with Gipsy courtesy, and told us she was 'fourscore and six years of

age.' Her name, in answer to our query, she said was 'Sinfire Smith.'

'Why, that's the same as mine,' said Mr. Smith. 'O, likely,' said

Sinfire, 'the Smiths is a long family.' For four score and six years

poor Sinfire has led a Gipsy life, and though her house now is only a

tent, and her bed and bedding straw, she made no moan, and there was

nothing she wished to have."

"Farewell, farewell! so rest there, blade!

Entomb me where our chiefs are laid;

But, hark, methinks I hear the drum,

I would that holy man were come."--HARRIS.

"What sound is that as of one knocking gently?

Yet who would enter here at hour so late?

Arise! draw back the bolt--unclose the portal.

What figure standeth there before the gate?

"He bears to thee sweet messages from Heaven,

Whispers of love from dear ones folded there,

And tells thee that a place for thee is waiting,

That thou shalt join them in their home so fair."

A. F. B.--"Sunday at Home."