To polish and give artistic touches to a crude cabinet, bringing out its beauty and defects, showing the knots and grain, gives credit to the artist; while to run away with the rough and unpolished jewels it contains, claiming as his own that which belongs to another, brings disgrace and ruin.
To drive successfully along the crooked and zigzag lanes of life, time and space must be taken to go round the corners. Fools can drive along a straight level, but it takes a wise man to round the down-hill corners without a spill over.
Gilt and crested harness does not improve the quality of a poor emaciated, bony, half-starved horse; so in like manner a few Oxford and Cambridge gilt touches put upon a sensual, backwood gipsy romantic tale, will not improve the condition of our gipsies and their children.
My wandering meditation being over, I now drew myself up to a gipsy “grand stand.” To all sensible, good men it appears as a horrible fall rather than the “grand stand.” Thousands of young men and women, trained by Christian, godly parents, have been brought to ruin by its rotten foundation and evil associations. It is a “stand” from which men and women can see—if they will open their eyes—the wrath of God, the roads to destruction, and the “course” to hell.
My first salutation was from three big grizzly poachers’ snaps, a kind of cross between a bloodhound, greyhound, and a bulldog, that lay at the entrance of a wigwam, in which lay a burly fellow marked with small-pox, and whose hair was close shaven off his head and from round his coarse, thick neck. This specimen of an English gipsy possessed a puggish kind of nose, a large mouth, and his clothes seemed “greasy and shiny.” The woman looked an intelligent, strong kind of woman, and well fitted, to all appearance, for a better life. Round a tin pot upon the greensward there were three other gipsy tramps, kneeling and gnawing meat off a bone like dogs, with bread by their sides. They did not growl like dogs, but they showed me their teeth and muttered, and this was quite sufficient. The occupation of this gang seemed to be that of attending to a cocoa-nut establishment, the profits of which, during the races, they had travelled from London by road in three days to secure. To me it appeared all were fish that came to their net; and if they did not come of their own accord, they would not think twice before fetching them. This gipsy wigwam was the kitchen, drawing-room, dining-room, bedroom, &c., for four men, one woman, and two big girls, not one of whom could read and write. The only little gleam of light which shone from the conversation in this dark abode was when they referred to some gipsies, who, they said, had been “putting on a pretence of religion in order to fill their pocket,” and they knew one who “saved over £800 since he had been religious.” “If I must be religious, I would be religious, and no mistake about it,” said another. At this they began to swear fearfully. I mentioned several gipsies who had given up their old habits, and, as I told them, had begun to lead better lives. “Never,” they said, with a vengeance; to which I answered, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” I then shook hands, and wended my way to the next establishment. This was an old cart covered over entirely with calico from the ridge to the ground. Connected with this van there were two men and a boy, who, it seems, are novices at the cocoa-nut profession. To me it appeared that they were tired of the hard work and tightness of town life, and were trying their fortune at gipsying and idle-mongering. On the course there would be nearly twenty cocoa-nut “saloons.” Connected with three of the vans on the course there were sixteen children and eight men and women, only one of whom could read and write. In one of the three vans there was a poor little girl of about nine summers evidently in the last stage of consumption. Her cheeks were sunken, shallow, and pale; her fingers were long and thin; her eyes glassy bright, and black hair hung in tangled masses over her shoulders. I gave the poor girl a penny as she stood at the door of the filthy van, for which, with much effort she said, “Thank you, sir,” and sat down on the floor. I said to the mother, formerly a Smith, but now a G—, “Why don’t you get the poor child attended to?” She replied as follows: “Well, sir, gipsy children have much more to put up with now than they formerly had. They cannot half stand the cold and damp we used to do. They are always catching cold. I only bought a bottle of medicine this morning for which I paid half a crown, and I cannot be expected to do more. She has been staying some time with her grandmother at Bristol, but we did not like leaving her there in case anything happened to her. If she is to die, we gipsies like our children to die in the van or tent with us, as may be. We like to see the last of them. We have hard times of it, we poor women and children have, I can assure you, sir.” The woman had now begun to do some washing in earnest, not before it was needed, and while she was scrubbing away at the rags in a tin pail, she began to tell me some of her history and that of her grandfather. She said that her mother had “had fifteen children, all born under the hedge-bottom, nearly all of whom are alive.” I asked her if any of her family could read and write, and she said, “No, excepting the poor little girl you see, and she can read and write a little, having been to a day school in Bristol for a few weeks last winter. I wish they could read and write, sir, it would be a blessed thing if they could.” She now referred to her grandfather. At this her eyes brightened up. She said, “My grandfather was a soldier in the Queen’s service”—the poor gipsy woman did not understand history so well as cooking hedgehogs in a patter of clay—“and fought in the battle when Lord Nelson was killed. And do you know, sir, after Lord Nelson was killed, he was put into a cask of rum to be preserved, while he was brought to England to be buried; and I dare say that you will not believe me—my grandfather was one of those who had charge of the body; but he got drunk on some of the rum in which Lord Nelson was pickled, and he was always fond of talking about it to his dying day.” I said, “Do you like rum.” “Yes, we poor gipsies could live upon rum and ‘’bacca.’” In the van in which the poor gipsy child and its mother lived there were a man, a baby a few weeks old, and four other children, huddling together night and day in a most demoralizing and degrading condition. While standing by the side of this tumble-down van I found that vans and tents, in which people eat, live, sleep, and die, are put to other shocking, filthy, and sickening purposes during fairs and races than habitations for human beings to dwell in. Sanitary officers, moralists, and Christians must be asleep all over the country. In going by and round one van I noticed an old woman storming away at some children with an amount of temper and earnestness that almost frightened me. Immediately I arrived at the door, and almost before I could say “Jack Robinson,” she dropped down into a position with which miners and gipsies are so familiarly accustomed, and began to tremble, shed “crocodile tears,” and tell a pitiful tale of the sorrows and troubles of her life, intermixing it with “my dear sirs,” “good mans,” “God bless yous.” Every now and then she would look up to heaven, and present a picture of the most saintly woman upon earth. When I asked her how old she was, she said she was a long way over seventy, but could not tell me exactly. She further said that she had had sixteen children, all born under the hedge-bottom, nearly all of them gipsies up and down the country, some of whom were grandmothers and grandfathers at the present time. And then she would begin another pitiful tale as follows, “If you please, my good sir, will you give me a copper, I do assure you that I have not tasted anything to eat this day, and I am almost famished with hunger.” And then with trembling emotion she said, wringing her hands, “I shall die before morning.” After my visits to the other vans, and before going home, I turned unexpectedly to have another peep at the old gipsy woman, whom I found to be a long way off dying, and in all probability I shall see her again before she passes over to the great eternity.
An English gipsy Duchess—Smith—“rheumaticky and lame”
Among the rest, sitting upon a low stool and drinking beer, there was a big, bony, coarse Frenchman, whom I found out to be a Communist. He was ostensibly selling calico, lace, and other trifles. His eyes were fiery, mouth ugly, on account of its having been put to foul purposes, and his demeanour that of an excited Fenian maddened by revenge and murder. Round him were a number of poor ignorant folks who could neither read nor write, and as they listened to his lies and infamy about the clergy, ministers, the well-to-do tradesmen, professional gentlemen, noblemen, and royalty, they opened their eyes and mouths as if horrified at his words and actions. Among other things he said the clergy of the Church of England were in receipt of over £20,000,000 per annum out of the pockets of the poor. I questioned him as to the source from which it came, and if he could point out the items in the Budget. At this he began to get excited and said, “It came from direct and indirect taxes.” I said, “Can you give me one instance or give me particulars in any shape setting forth the direct taxes in this country collected for the benefit of the clergy to the amount you say?” Instead of replying to this question he began to stutter and stammer, and appeared before me with his fists shut, exhibiting all sorts of mountebank megrims to the terror of some of the listeners and amusement of others. In the end I calmed him down, and he asked me if I would buy a parrot of him if I saw him again in two years’ time. One of those who stood by said, “He has got parrots enough of his own without buying more.”
Connected with one of the cocoa-nut establishments, and owned by a good-hearted gipsy from London, there were the clowns, fools, hunchbacked old women, and other simpletons to catch the “foolish and the gay.” At the back of this establishment there were all sorts of painted devices, or I should rather say “daubed” devices, upon the sheets, full of satire which the fools with plenty of money could not read. One was a barber shaving his customers; another was a donkey, after he had been well fed, turning his heels towards his silly friends and kicking them in the face and sending them sprawling upon the ground with their pockets empty; and many others with the flags of “Old England” flying in all directions. I learned some time after that the owner of this establishment during the two days’ races cleared nearly twenty pounds out of fools and cocoa-nuts, giving thousands of young folks of both sexes a taste for gambling, and then clearing off to London with smiles and chuckles, and his poaching dogs at his heels, leaving his customers to say the next morning, “What fools we have been, to be sure!” If I had been at the door of their bedroom I should have bawled out, “No greater fools in existence could possibly be. When you went upon the race-course you had money if you had not any sense; this morning you have neither money nor sense, and now you are neither more nor less than a third of a shrivelled-up sausage without any seasoning in your nature, unsuitable for pickling and not worth cooking, fit for nothing but the dunghill, and food for cats and dogs.” I now took another stroll amongst the gipsies at the other end of the “course,” and came up against one who owned the “steam-flying dobby-horses;” but before I began to chat with him one of the gipsy women whispered in my ear, “It is his wife that has made him; she is very good-looking and one of the best women in the world; no one can tell why it was that she took up with the man as his second wife. He would not have been worth twopence had it not been for her. She is a rare good un, an’ no mistake. You must not tell him that I say so. She sees to all the business and he dotes over her. He is not a bad sort of a chap.” I soon began to chat with the “dobby-horse” owner, and he was not long before he began to tell me of his cleverness and what he had passed through, as follows: “You see, sir, a few years ago I had to borrow three shillings and sixpence to help me to get away from this town, now I’ve turned the tide and got at the top of the hill. These ‘shooting galleries,’ ‘dobby-horses,’ ‘flying boxes,’ vans, and waggons are my own.” Pointing with his finger to a new van, he said, “I made that myself last winter, and have done all the painting upon the ‘horses’ myself.” The steam organ, the steam whistle, the shouting, screaming, and hurrahing, and his face having been in the wars, made it difficult for me to hear him. He now spoke out louder and referred to family affairs and some of his early history. “I left Bagworth when I was a lad, owing to the cruel treatment of a stepmother, and wandered up and down the country in rags and barefooted, sleeping in barns, and houses, and piggeries, and other places I could creep into; and in course of time I fell in with the gipsies and married one. But she was a wretch; oh! she was a bad un, and I was glad when she died. I am thankful I have got a better one now. She is a good un; but I must not say anything about her, we get on well together, and she keeps me straight.” “Bang bang” and “crack crack” went the bullets out of the rifle guns close to our ears, against the metal plates, through a long sheet iron funnel of about twelve inches diameter. “Now then,” cried out a little sharp, dark-eyed, nimble woman of about thirty-five years—of course upon this point I had no means of knowing or guessing exactly; I had not examined her teeth. She might say she was only twenty-eight, a favourite age with some maids looking out for husbands—“be quick and rub out the marks upon the plate.” And away the old man trotted at his wife’s bidding, as all good husbands who are not capable of being masters should do. A “slap” and a “dash” with the old gipsy’s brush, and all the “pops” were for over obliterated. What a blessed thing it would be for themselves and future generations if all the sins committed upon the racecourse that day could have been wiped out as easily. Why not?
Upon the “course” there were, at a very rough calculation, nearly fifty families of gipsies in vans, tents, and carts, in which vans, tents, &c., there lived over a hundred and fifty children and one hundred men and women sleeping inside and huddling together with their eyes open, like rabbits at the bottom of a flour cask, when no other eye sees them but God’s. While the jockeys were riding to death upon classical horses with the devil at their heels, to a place where, as Dr. Grosart says in the Sunday at Home, “The surges of wrath crash on the shores infernal,” I mused, pondered, and then wended my way home for meditation and reflection, and, as a writer in the Churchman’s Penny Magazine says—
“We take Thy providence and word
As landmarks on our way.”
Some men’s lives, it would seem, are decreed by Providence to be spent among the “extremes” of life and the associations of the world. Some are walking, talking, humming, and singing to themselves of the joys of heaven, the pleasures of the world, and the consoling influences of religion under the bright sunlight of heaven, as they, with light tread, step along to the goal where they will be surrounded with endless joy, where the tears of sorrow, bereavement, and anguish are unknown, and where the little dancing, prattling joys of earth have been transplanted into the angelic choir of heaven. There are others to be seen sitting under the shade upon some ditch bank with their elbows upon their knees, and their faces buried in their hands, enveloped in meditation and reflection with reference to the doings and dealings of Providence towards them on their journey of life, with an outlook at times that does not seem the least encouraging and hopeful, ending in mysteries and doubts as to the future, and the part they will be called upon to play in the ending drama. There are many who seem to be groping their way among the dark and heavy clouds which have been filled by God, in His wisdom, weighted with trouble and circumstances of earth and self; and while pacing among the clouds and darkness which have settled upon them almost too heavy to be borne, they imagine their lot to be the hardest in the world. Such I thought, has been my lot, as I tripped along, with bag in hand, over the green carpet, while the warbling little songsters were singing overhead, and a bright spring sun shining in my face, bringing life into, on every hand, the enchanting beauty of the orchards, hedgerows, and meadows, sending forth delicious scents, and lovely sights of the daisies, primroses, and violets, and a thousand other heavenly things, on my way to the station on a lovely spring morning to ramble among the gipsies and others upon the Warwick racecourse.
In the train, between Welton and Leamington, I met with some sporting “company’s servants.” One said, “Y. and G. were two of the greatest scamps in the world. When once the public backed a horse, they were sure to ‘scratch it.’” They discussed minutely their “bobs,” “quids,” losses, crosses, and gains. One of the sporting “company’s servants” was a guard, and he said, “I generally gets the ‘tip’ from some of the leading betting men I know, who often travel by my train to the races, and I’m never far wrong.” Another “company’s servant,” related his betting experiences. “One Sunday,” said he, “I was at Bootle church, near Liverpool, and heard the preacher mention in his sermon ‘Bend Or,’ and warned his congregation to have nothing to do with races, and I concluded that there was something in the horse, or he would not have mentioned his name in the pulpit. So on Monday morning I determined to put three ‘bob’ on ‘Bend Or,’ and the result was I had twelve ‘bob’ and a half, that was a good day’s work for me, which I should not have got if it had not been for our parson.” I said to the “company’s servant,” “Do you really think that racing is profitable for those engaged in it, taking all things into consideration?” “Well,” he said, “to tell you the truth, sir, I do not think it is. I have often seen dashing, flashing betting characters compelled to leave their boxes at the station in pawn for a railway ticket to enable them to get home.”
After leaving the train and the Avenue Station behind me, I made my way to my friends, Mr. and Mrs. John Lewis, for “labour and refreshment,” when, during my midnight tossings, nocturnal wanderings, and rambles in wonderland, the following rough and crude germs of thought prevented me getting the sweet repose which tired nature required:—
The beautiful snowdrop of heaven, and the first in God’s garden, is a pretty lively child growing up good and pure in the midst of a wretched family, surrounded by squalor, ignorance, and sin.
They are enemies, and beware of them, who, in your presence, laugh when you laugh, sing when you sing, and cry, without tears, when you cry.
A scientific Christian minister preaching science instead of the gospel, causing his flock to wander among doubts and hazy notions, is a scriptural roadman sitting upon a heap of stones philosophizing with metaphysical skill upon the fineness of the grain, beauty, and excellent qualities of a piece of granite, while the roads he is in charge of are growing over with grass, bewildering to the members of his church as to which is the right road, and leading them into a bog from which they cannot extricate themselves, and have to cry out for the helping hand to save, ere they sink and are lost.
Every glass of beer drunk in a public-house turns a black hair white.
When a man or woman draws the last sixpence out of his or her pocket in a public-house, they pull out a cork that lets tears of sorrow flow.
A publican’s cellar is the storehouse of sorrows.
A Christian minister who preaches science instead of Christianity and the Bible, is going through a dark tunnel with a dim lamp at the wrong end of his boat.
Beer and spirits make more gaps in a man’s character than righteous women can mend.
The finest pottery has to pass through three crucial stages during manufacture before it can be said to be perfect. First is the “biscuit oven,” whereby the vessels are made hard and durable. Second is the “hardening-on kiln,” or an oven with an even, moderate heat to harden or burn on the surface the various designs and colours which have been placed there by artistic hands. And the third is the “glost oven,” which brings out the transparent gloss and finish, and gives beauty to the gold, oxide, cobalt, nickel, manganese, ochre, stone, flint, bone, iron, and clay, &c. So in like manner it is with the highest type of a Christian character. First, there is the family circle with its moulding and parental influence: this may be called the “biscuit oven,” fixing on the preparation for the fights and hardships of life. Second, there is the school and educational progress, which may be compared to the “hardening-on kiln.” And third, there is the work of the Holy Spirit: this may be compared to the “glost oven,” which gives the gloss, touch, and transparency to the vessel. Each of these stages will include the progressive steps of manufacture leading up to them.
Spectacles are of no use to a man in the dark. So in like manner scientific problems cannot help a man to see his way if he is in spiritual darkness.
Acrobatic Christians are those whose spiritual backbone and moral uprightness have been damaged by contortions, megrims, twirlings, and twisting their Christian character to suit circumstances.
So long as a man keeps upright the law of gravitation has but little power over him; immediately he begins to stoop its influence is soon manifest. So in like manner it is with an upright Christian, and so long as he keeps his perpendicular position by walking erect in God’s love and favour he is all right, and the influence of hell trebled cannot bend or pull him down; immediately he stoops to listen to the voice of the charmer, and gives way to the gravitation of hell—sin—down he goes, and nothing but a miracle will bring him upright again.
A hollow, hypocritical, twirl-about Christian, with no principle to guide him, is as an empty, shallow vessel pushed out to sea without either compass, rudder, or sails.
A man who, Christ-like, stoops to pick up a fallen brother, or who guides and places a youth upon a successful path, leading to immortality, is a man among men whom God delights to honour, as Jupiter was among the heathen gods, and he will be doubly crowned. His crown upon earth will be studded with lasting pleasure, shining brighter than diamonds; but his crown in heaven will be studded and illumined with the everlasting smiles of those he has saved, surpassing in grandeur all the precious stones in creation.
When a professing Christian visits the tap-room and places of light amusement with the hope of finding safe anchorage from the storms of life, it may be taken as an indication that he is at sea without a rudder, and the temporary one manufactured in a gin-palace out of frothy conversation will not bring him safe to land.
To hold up good works without faith and prayer as a shelter from an angry God for wrong-doing, is like holding a riddle over your head as a protection from a thunderstorm.
A man indulging in a lifetime of sin and iniquity, and then praying to God and giving alms in the last hours of his existence in the hope of securing eternal life and endless joy, is like a fowl with a broken neck and wings struggling to pick up golden grain to give it life and strength to fly to roost.
Love and spite dwelling in the heart can no more make a perfect Christian than poisoned vinegar and cream can make pure honey.
Every huntsman who jumps a fence makes it easier for those who choose to follow; and so it is with wrongdoers who jump the bounds of sin and folly. They are teaching those who follow to shun the plain, open path, and to take to the walls, fences, and ditches, which end in a broken neck, amidst the applause of fools.
Hotbeds of envy and hatred, heated with burning passion, have been productive of more evil results, direful consequences, bloodshed, cruel deaths, and foul murders than all the poison extracted from fungi, hemlock, foxgloves, and deadly nightshade have done since the world began, or could do, even if envy and hatred were to die to-day and poisons worked death to the end of time.
The morals and good deeds of a wicked, sensual, selfish man are the artificial flowers of hell.
Some professing Christians have only sufficient Christianity to make a pocket mirror, which the possessor uses in company as a schoolboy would to make “Jack-a-dandies.”
Crowns of credit or renown lightly won sit lightly upon the head, and are easily puffed off by the first breath of public opinion.
A man who trusts to his own self-righteousness to get him to heaven is wheeling a heavily and unevenly laden wheelbarrow up a narrow, slippery plank over a deep ravine, with a wheel in the front of his wheelbarrow that is twisted, loose, and awry.
The devil plays most with those he means to bite the hardest.
Singing heavenly songs in earthly sorrows brings joy tinged with the golden light of heaven on the mourner.
To get the cold, poisonous water of selfishness from our hearts God has often to furrow and drain our nature and affections by afflictions and cross purposes.
Too-much conceited young Christians with little piety, like young “quickset” hedges, become of more use to the Christian Church and the world after they have been cut down by persecution and bent by troubles and afflictions.
Sin in the first instance is as playful as a kitten and as harmless as a lamb; but in the end it will bite more than a tiger and sting more than a nest of wasps.
A Christian professor outside the range of miracles and under the influence of the devil is he who is trying to swim to heaven with a barrel of beer upon his back.
As fogs are bad conductors of light, sight, and sound, so in like manner is a Christian living in foggy doubts a bad conductor of the light, sight, and sounds of heaven.
Cold, slippery Christians who have no good object before them, and without a noble principle to guide them, are like round balls of ice on a large dish; and to set such Christians to work is a worse task than serving the balls out with a knitting needle.
Crotchety, doubting, scientific Christians are manufacturers of more deadly poisons than that produced from pickled old rusty nails.
The loudest and most quickening sounds to be heard upon earth are from a beautiful sweet child as it lies in the stillness of the loving arms of death.
Breakfast being over, with my “Gladstone bag” I begun my tramp-trot to the “course,” and while walking leisurely under the tall trees in one of the avenues at Leamington, on my way to the racecourse, a circumstance occurred—which my friend the gipsies say “forbodes good luck and a fortune, and that I shall rise in the world and have many friends.” Gipsies say and do queer things. To see, say they, the tail of the first spring lamb instead of its face forebodes “bad luck” to the beholder through the year. In the tramcar there was a little dog with a silver collar round its neck, evidently without an owner. The pretty little white English terrier whined about in quest of its master or mistress, but neither was to be found. In the tramcar there was a police inspector on his way to do double duty at the racecourse. This kind-hearted man tried hard by coaxing, sop, and caresses to be a friend to the dog; but no, and for the life of him the dog could not be brought round to look upon the inspector as a friend. Immediately the tramcar stopped, the little dog bounded off in search of its owner, but none was to be found, and the last I saw of the inspector and the lost dog was up one of the streets at Warwick, with the dog ahead and its tail between its legs, and the inspector scampering after it as fast as he could run, calling out, “Stop it,” “Stop it,” “It’s lost;” and away they both went out of sight, and neither the one nor the other have I seen since.
I once worked for a master in the slave yards of Brickdom in Staffordshire, who owned a bulldog. This dog took it into his head one day to leave its cruel master, and seek fresh lodgings of a better kind. Spying its opportunity, off it started out of the brickyard as if it was shot out of a gun; and the master for whom I slaved could not whistle, and knowing that I could whistle as well as I could cry and sing, bawled out to me, “Whistle him, whistle him, or I’ll black your eye! I’ve lost a dog worth five shillings; whistle him!” Of course, under the circumstances, trembling with fear and fright, I could not “whistle” very loud. The consequence was, the dog was lost, and I got a “good kick and a punch.” If the inspector could have whistled for the lost dog in the tones of its mistress, it would have saved his legs and brought the dog back to its comfortable home.
I was no sooner upon the racecourse, paddling through the quagmire, than I was brought face to face with some of the gipsies—the Hollands and the Claytons. I had not long been talking to them before one of the old Hollands came up to me and said, “I know who you are, Mr. Smith of Coalville; lend’s your hand, and let’s have a good shake. I would not mind giving five shillings for your likeness.” I told him he need not be at the expense of giving five shillings for a flattering photograph; he could have a good stare at the original, with all its faults, blemishes, and scars, for nothing. In my hands were a lot of picture cards for the gipsy children, given to me by the Religious Tract Society, upon which were a lot of texts of Scripture, in pretty patterns. Some of them read as follows: “My son, forget not my law;” “Thou art my trust from my youth;” “Thou God seest me;” “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet;” “My son, give me thine heart;” “Wisdom is more precious than rubies;” “Enter not into the path of the wicked;” “Even a child is known by his doings;” “Feed my lambs;” “Hear instruction, and be wise;” “Show piety at home;” “The Lord bless and keep thee;” “The Lord preserveth all them that love Him;” “I will guide thee with mine eye;” “The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil;” and many more. Immediately I had begun to distribute them among the children clustered round me, Alfred Clayton came up to me, as close as he could get, and he said, as I read out some of the texts to the children “I do like them; I could die by them; I’d sooner have some of them than a meal’s meat at any time. Do give me some, Mr. Smith, and I’ll get somebody to read them to me, and will take great care of them. I’ll have them framed and hung up.” The Hollands now asked me to go into their van, which invitation I gladly accepted. I was no sooner seated than Mrs. Holland, a big strong woman with pipe in her mouth, began to tell me how many children they had had, and that she had “been a nurse for the Lord,” for she had “had twelve children, nine of whom had died before they were three years old, and three are living, two of whom you see.” At this point she flew off at a tangent in language not suited for this book. Any one hearing her would think that she was a somewhat queer and strange kind of “nurse for the Lord.” Mr. Holland the elder told me of one poor gipsy woman, who, through her unfaithfulness and bad conduct, had come to an untimely end, so much so that it was with much difficulty and risk her rotten remains were placed in a coffin. Sad to say, her sins were not buried with her. Her family carry the marks upon them. After chatting about all sorts of things and old times, with the Leicestershire gipsies from Barlestone and Barwell, I turned in with some gipsy Smiths from Gloucestershire, whose van and tents were on the other side of the “grand stand.” I found that in three of the vans there were twenty-one children of various sizes and ages, and nine men and women sleeping and huddling together in wretchedness. One of the gipsy women told me that she had had “nineteen children all born alive.” As they sat round the fire upon the grass, I began to give them some cards, and while I was doing so, one of the men, Reservoir Smith, broke out in language not very elevating, and said among other things, “What use are picture cards to either the children or us; there is not one in the whole bunch that can tell a letter; and as for saying prayers, they do not know what it is and where to begin. We cannot pray ourselves, much less teach our children. Who are we to pray to? Parsons pray, and not we poor folks.” A gipsy woman must needs have her say in the matter, and said as follows, “Do not mind what he says master, if you will give me some of the cards we will have them framed; they will do to look at if we cannot read them.” At this they clustered round me—men, women and children; and I distributed cards and pence to the little ones as far as my stock would allow, with which all were delighted.
In the midst of this large group of idle men and women, ragged, dirty, unkempt, and ignorant children with matted hair, there were two of the Smith damsels—say, of about eighteen or twenty years—dressed in all the gay and lively colours imaginable, whose business was not to attend to the cocoa-nut “set outs,” but to wheedle their way with gipsy fascination amongst the crowd of race-goers, to gain “coppers” in all sorts of questionable ways of those “greenhorns” who choose to listen to their “witching” tales of gipsydom. Their “lurchers” and “snap” dogs came and smelt at my pantaloons, and skulked away with their tails between their legs.
Upon the course there were over thirty adult gipsies, and nearly forty children living in tents and vans, and connected in one way or other with the gipsy Smiths, Greens, Hollands, Stanleys, and Claytons, not one of whom—excepting one Stanley—could read and write a simple sentence out of any book, and attended neither a place of worship nor any Sunday or day school. When I explained to them the plan I proposed for registering their vans, and bringing the children within reach of the schoolmaster, they one and all agreed to it without any hesitation, and said as follows, that “it would be the best thing in the world, and unitedly expressed more than once, ‘Thank you, sir,’ ‘Thank you, sir.’”
Rain was now coming down, and the races were about to commence; therefore my gipsy congregation had begun to find its way to the various cocoa-nut establishments to begin business in earnest. With this exodus going on around me, and in the midst of oaths, swearing, betting, banging, cheating, lying, shouting, and thrashing, I turned quickly into Alfred Clayton’s van to have a friendly chat with him with “closed doors.” The conversation I had with him earlier in the afternoon led me to think that some kind of influence had been at work with him that one does not see in a thousand times among gipsies. Evidently a softening process had taken hold of him which I wanted to hear more about. With his wife and another gipsy friend in charge of his cocoa-nut business, we closed the door of the van, and he began his tale in answer to my questions. I asked him whether they had always been gipsies. To which he answered as follows: “My grandfather was a ‘stockiner’ at Barlestone, and lived in a cottage there; but in course of time he began to do a little hawking, first out of a basket round the villages, and then in a cart round the country. He then took to a van; and the same thing may be said of the Claytons. Originally they were ‘stockiners’ at Barwell, a village close to Barlestone, and began to travel as my grandfather and father had done. Thus you will see that the two families of gipsies, Claytons and Hollands, are mixed up pretty much. My father is, as you know, a Holland, and my mother a Clayton, whose name I take. At the present time, out of the original family of Hollands at Barlestone, and the original family of Claytons at Barwell, there are seven families of Hollands travelling the country at the present time, and fifteen families of Claytons travelling in various parts of Staffordshire and other places.” From the original two families it will be seen that there are over a hundred and fifty men, women, and children who have taken to gipsying within the last fifty years, not half a dozen of whom can read and write, with all the attendant consequences of this kind of a vagabond rambling life; which the more we look into, it is plain that Christianity and civilization, as we have put them forth to reclaim those of our own brothers and sisters near home, have proved a failure, not on account of the blessed influences of themselves being not powerful enough, but in the lack of the application of them to the gipsies by those who profess to have received those world-moving principles in their hearts. In the midst of this dark mass of human beings moving to and fro upon our lovely England, one little cheering ray is to be seen. Alfred Clayton tells us this. When he was staying at Leicester with his van some three years since, he stole like a thief in the night into the “Salvation Warehouse” at the bottom of Belgrave Gate, and while he was there an influence penetrated through the hardened coats of ignorance and crime, and the ramification of sin in all its worst shape to the depth of his heart, and awakened a chord of sympathy in his nature which has not died out, or wholly left him to this day. “Jesus the name high over all” caused him to open his ears in a manner they had never been opened before, and wonder what it all meant. This visit to the “Salvation warehouse” was not lost upon him, or without its effects upon his conduct. One cold wintry day, some two years ago, he was staying with his wife and family in this van on the roadside between Atherstone and Hinckley, when a youth, apparently about eighteen years old, came limping along the road, dressed in what had once been a fashionable suit of clothes, but now was little better than rags. His face was thin and pale, and his fingers long, and his neck bare. Upon his feet were two odd old worn-out shoes, and without stockings upon his legs; and as the forlorn youth neared the van and its occupants at dusk, he said, “Will you please give me a bit of bread, for I feel very hungry.” Clayton said, without much inquiry and hesitation, “Come into the van and warm yourself,” and while the youth was doing so, they got ready a crust of bread and cheese and some tea, which were devoured ravenously. Clayton learned that the stranger was related to one of the leading manufacturers named at Leicester, and well known as being rich; but unfortunately for the poor youth, his father died, and his stepmother had sold everything and cleared away to America, leaving this well-educated lad without any money, or means of earning money, to grapple with the world and its difficulties for a livelihood as best he could. Clayton, in the kindness of his heart, took the youth into the van, and he travelled up and down the country with them as one of their own during the space of two years, when owing to “his being a gentleman,” and a “capital scollard,” he was helpful to the gipsy family in more ways than one. After the two years’ gipsying spent by the youth with his kind friends the Claytons in rambling about the country, some kind friends at Atherstone took pity on him, and he is there to-day, gradually working his position back into civilized society, and a respectable member of the community, notwithstanding the treatment he has received at the hands of his cruel stepmother. After the meeting at the “Salvation Warehouse” Clayton had been seen and heard more than once, checking swearing and other sins so common to gipsies; but had never finally decided to leave gipsying and begin a better life until last Christmas. The steps which led up to his “great resolve,” he related to me as follows: “Mr. Smith, you must know that I have been about as bad a man as could be found anywhere. I felt at times, through drink and other things, that I would as soon murder somebody as I would eat my supper; in fact, I didn’t care what I did; and things went on in this way till my little girl, about three years old, and who I loved to the bottom of my heart, was taken ill and died. She had such bright eyes, a lovely face, and curls upon her head. She was my darling pet, and always met me with a smile; but she died and lies buried in Polesworth churchyard.” At this Clayton burst into crying and sobbing like a child. “I vowed,” said Clayton, “on the day, at the side of the grave, she, my poor darling, was buried, that I would not touch drink for a month, and do you know, Mr. Smith of Coalville, when the month was gone, I did not feel to crave for drink any more, and I have not had any up till now.” He now dried his eyes, and his face brightened up with a smile, and I said to him in the van, “Let us kneel down and thank God for helping you to make this resolution, and for grace to help you to keep it.” In the midst of the hum, shouting, and swearing of the races, we shut the door of the van; and after we had got off our knees, he knelt down again and again, and began to pray, with tears in his eyes, as follows:—
“O Lord Jesus, Thou knowest that I have been a bad sinner. O God, thou knowest I have been very wicked in many ways, and done many things I should not have done; but Thou hast told me to come to Thee and Thou wilt forgive me. Do my God forgive me for all the wrong I have done, and help me to be a better man, and never touch drink again any more, for Thou knowest it has been my ruin. Help me to live a good life, so that I may meet my little darling in heaven, who lies in Polesworth churchyard. Do, O Lord, bless my wife and my other little children, and make them all good. Oh do, my heavenly Father help my mother to give over swearing and bad things. Thou canst do it. Do Thou bless my father, and my brothers, and all my relations, and Mr. Smith in his work, and for being so good to us, so that we may all meet in heaven, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.
“Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.”
After Clayton had dried his eyes we got up, to behold, over the top of the bottom half of his van door, the riders, dressed in red, scarlet, yellow, green, blue, crimson, and orange, with a deep black shade to be seen underneath, galloping to hell with hordes of gamblers at their heels as fast as their poor, cruelly treated steeds could carry them, all leaving footprints behind them for young beginners to follow. I said to Clayton, “Are you not tired of this kind of life?” And he said he was. “It is no good for anybody,” said Clayton, “and I am going to leave it. This is my last day with the ‘cocoa-nuts.’ I shall start in the morning—Saturday—for Coventry and Atherstone, where I mean to settle down and bring my children up like other folks. I have taken a house and am going to furnish it, and a gentleman is going to give me a chance of learning a trade, for which I thank God.”
As the shouts of the hell-bound multitude were dying away, and the gains and losses reckoned up, Clayton’s three little gipsy children, with their lovely features, curls, and bright blue eyes, came toddling up the steps to the van door, calling out, “Dad, let us in; dad, let us in.” The door was opened, and the little dears comfortably seated by our side. I gave them a few pictures, some coppers, stroked their hair, and “chucked their chin,” and bade them good-bye in the midst of a shower of rain, to meet again some day with the bright sun shining overhead and a clear sky without a cloud to be seen anywhere. For the present I must say with John Harris in his Wayside Pictures—
“Where Thou leadest it is best;
Cheer me with the thought of rest,
Till I gain the upper shore,
And my tent is struck no more.”
I HAD heard much and often about the Boughton Green Fair, and the vast number of gipsies, semi-gipsies, and other tramps, scamps, vagabonds, hawkers, farmers, tradesmen, the fast and loose, riff-raff and respectable, gathered together from all quarters once a year upon this ancient Green for a “fairing.” Tradesmen and farmers exhibited their wares, live stock, and implements of husbandry; and others set forth their articles of torture, things of fashion, painted faces, “tomfoolery,” and “bosh,” to those who like to tramp thither in sunshine and storm with plenty of money in their pockets for revel and debauch.
Bidding the sparrows, linnets, swallows, and wagtails, fluttering and darting round our dwelling, good-bye as they were hopping, chirping, twittering, and gathering a variety of materials upon which to build their nests; and with my little folks at the door, I wended my way to the station.
“Then he kissed his olive branches,
Bade his wife good-bye,
And said, . . .
‘Heaven preserve you all!’”Wayside Pictures (Harris).
The sun was shining warmly, the roads dusty, and a few red faces covered with perspiration were to be seen panting along. Many of the men were dressed in black cloth, a little faded, of the “cut” and fashion out of date many years ago. Some had their coats hung upon their arm, with white shirt sleeves and heavy boots everywhere visible. Most fairly well-to-do farm labourers have for Sundays and mourning days a black suit, which lasts them for many years. In some instances the father’s black clothes become family “heirlooms”—at any rate, for a time—and then, when the father dies, they are turned into garments for the little children. Of course the father’s “black silk furred hat” cannot be made less, and to pad it to make it fit little Johnny’s head is an awkward process. I have seen many little boys with big hats upon their heads in my time. I suppose they have imagined that people would infer that they had big heads under the hats with plenty of brain power. This is a mistake. Big hats, with little brain and less common sense, and No. 10 rather high, often go together. Upon the road would be “Our Sal” with her “chap,” and his brother Jim, yawning, shouting, and gaping along, and, as my friends the boatmen would say, “a little beerish.” Some of the country labouring girls would have their shawls upon their arms, and they would be stalking along in their strong boots at the rate of four miles an hour, frolicking and screaming as Bill Sands, Jack Jiggers, Joe Straw, Matt Twist, and Ben Feeder jostled against them. They seemed to delight in showing the tops of their boots, with crumpled and overhanging stockings. There were other occupants of the road trudging limpingly after the cows, sheep, horses, donkeys, and mules, called “tramps” and “drovers,” who seemed to be, and really are, the “cast-offs” of society. These poor mortals were, as a rule, either as thin as herrings or as bloated as pigs, with faces red with beer-barrel paint; and they wore gentlemen’s “cast-off” clothing in the last stages of consumption, with rags flying in the wind. Their once high-heeled boots were nearly upside down, while dirty toes, patches, and rag-stuffing were everywhere visible.
In the train there was the usual jostle, bustle, and crush, and gossip. At Northampton station there was no little commotion, owing to the station-master having closed the station-yard against all cabs except those who ply regularly between the station and the town.
One cabman came to me and said that he would take me to the Green for a less fare than he charged others if I would get into his cab the first. I asked him his reason. “Because,” he said, “if you get in first others will follow, and I shall soon have a load.” I could not see the force of his argument, and found my way to another cab. I had no sooner seated myself than the cabman took off, or hid, his number. I asked him why he did that. His answer was, “So that if I drive fast the Bobbies shan’t catch the sight of my number. If they get my number and I am caught driving fast there will be either thirty ‘bob’ for me to pay, or I shall have to go to ‘quad’ for a fortnight.”
Some of the poor horses attached to the vehicles—cabs, waggonettes, carriers carts, carriages—were heavily laden with human beings, till they could scarcely crawl. Uphill, down dale, slashing, dashing, banging, whipping, kicking, and shouting seemed to be the order of the day; and on this vast mass of human and animal life poured—and myself among the crowd—till I found we were fairly among the gipsies upon the Green.
Having partaken of a starvation lunch in one of the booths, consisting of “reecy” fat ham, with a greasy knife and fork, dried bread and lettuce, served upon plates not over clean, and studded and painted with patches of mustard left by a former customer, and with warm ginger-beer as tame as skim milk to take the place of champagne, I began to take stock of the Green, which natural formation, together with those made apparently hundreds of years ago, seemed to excite my first attention.
The large circular holes, of about thirty feet diameter and one foot below the level of the surrounding ground, reminded me very much of ancient gipsy encampments. Boughton Green has been a favourite annual camping ground for generations, and may to-day be considered as the fluctuating capital of gipsydom in the Midlands, where the gipsies from all the Midland and many other counties do annually congregate to fight, quarrel, brawl, pray, sing, rob, steal, cheat, and, in past times, murder.
According to Wetton’s “Guide to Northamptonshire,” published some fifty-six years ago, it seems probable that the fair was formerly set out in canvas streets, after the manner of a maze, shepherd’s-race, or labyrinth; and as Boughton Green was close to a Roman station, this seems probable. This was the custom of the Roman fairs held close to their stations. This much seems to be inferred from Baker’s “History of Northamptonshire,” where he says, “The stretching canvas forms the gaudy streets.”
In the Northampton Mercury, June 5, 1721, the following advertisement appears: “The Right Hon. the Earl of Strafford has been pleased to give a bat, value one guinea, to be played for on Monday at cudgels, and another of the same price; and also 6 pairs of buckskin gloves at 5s. a pair, to be wrestled for on Tuesday; and a silver cup of the value of 5 guineas price to be run for on Wednesday by maiden galloways not exceeding 14 hands high, during the time of Boughton Fair. The ladies of the better rank to meet to raffle, see the shows, and then to adjourn to a ball at the Red Lion Inn, Northampton, in the evening.”
In Baker’s “History of Northamptonshire” the following poem appears relative to the fair—
“From every part stretched o’er the sultry way,
The labouring team the various stores convey.
Vessels of wood and brass, all bright and new,
In merry mixture rise upon the view.
See! pots capacious lesser pots entomb,
And hogsheads barrels gorge for want of room;
From their broad base part in each other hid
The lessening tubs shoot up like a pyramid.
Pitchforks and axes and the deepening spade
Beneath the pressing load are harmless laid;
Whilst out behind, where pliant poles prevail,
The merry waggon seems to wag her tail.”
Looked at from rising ground, far in the distance and with a keen sense for the picturesque and romantic, the moral and physical aspects of nature, and love of liberty, which gipsy life presents to those few unacquainted with its dark, degrading side—thank God, only a few—are food for admiration and wonder; to others the objects of pity and suggestive reflection. There can be no doubt that Cowper, the immortal poet, who lived at Olney, a few miles from Boughton Green and Higham Ferrers, as he was wont to take his daily walks, would often cross the path of the Northamptonshire gipsies. Sometimes there would accompany him his two lady friends who were jealous of each other’s influence—Lady Austin and Mrs. Unwin. Occasionally Lady Hesketh and some of the Throckmortons would be the cheerful companions in his despondency and gloom, and at other times he would sally forth single-handed in quest of food for his hares and leverets, in silent meditation upon the grand and beautiful surroundings. It is more than probable that while he saw from the beautiful elevation, a few miles outside Olney and Weston, the grey smoke rising from the gipsy encampment in the distance silently and quietly whirling, twirling, and ascending among the trees, to be lost among the daisies and hedgerows, the muses danced before him and brought forth the truthful, characteristic poem relating to gipsies—
“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
Slung between two poles, upon a stick transverse
Receives the morsel; flesh obscene hog
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 and wood, just saves
The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide
Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin
The vellum of the pedigree they claim.”
The publication of this poem, and the fact that large numbers of gipsy tramps were flitting about the country, with their wretched equipages, may have been the means of stirring the kind hearts of Smith, Crabb, Hoyland, William Allen, of Higham Ferrers, solicitor, and steward to Earl Fitzwilliam, and many others, some eighty or one hundred years ago, to try to reclaim the gipsies from their debasing habits and customs.
It has generally been supposed that the term “green,” given to the land upon which the annual fair is held, comes to us at this date on account of its greensward. This is an error. According to Baker’s and other histories of Northamptonshire, Boughton Green derives its name and title as follows. “In the time of Edward I., William de Nutricilla, abbot of St. Wandegisile, conveyed the lands to John de Boketon or Boughton, from whom they descended to Sir Thomas de Boketon his grandson, and who was succeeded by Sir Henry Green his son and heir, who was Lord Chief Justice of England.” Thus we see the probability of it being called at this ancient date, on account of the close relationship existing between the Boketon or Boughton and Green, Boughton and Green’s wake or fair. In course of time the “and” has been dropped, and we have now “Boughton Green fair.”
“Sir Henry Green obtained a grant or charter, dated 28th February, 1351 (25 of Edward III.), for an annual fair to be held on the manor for the space of three days, beginning with the vigil of the nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 23rd), and ending the day after it.” This being so, the adding of “green” to the fair can be easily accounted for. The site upon which the fair is held is seventeen acres.
Outside, and at the east end of the fair grounds, stands the remains of what was once, no doubt, a fine old Gothic church, dedicated then, as the new church in the village is now, to St. John the Baptist. The tower and spire of the old church fell about a century ago upon a gipsy Smith and his wife, whose sleeping quarters—instead of the gipsy tent—had been for some time beneath its crumbling ruins. The old villagers will tell you, with pride and pleasure upon their faces, that Boughton old church was, before Cromwell destroyed it, one of the seven oldest churches in England. Of course, this is a subject upon which I do not feel to be “master of the situation.” Such was the odium attached to gipsies a century ago, that it was not thought worthwhile to dig them out from beneath the mass of ruins that had fallen upon them; and from the time when the tower and spire fell, to the time when the crumbling refuse was cleared away a few years since, the bones of poor gipsy Smith and his wife had crumbled into dust and been scattered to the winds. It touches a tender and sympathetic chord, and draws forth a scalding tear down one’s face when one ponders over the many evenings the old gipsy couple had enjoyed their frugal meal—maybe of hedgehogs and snails, or the piece of a decaying pig—beneath the belfry, when the bells were pealing forth, soft and low, as the shades of evening were gathering round them, and they were preparing to rest their aimless and useless bones upon the straw in their dark, at times musical, and at other times dismal, abode among the dead. The churchyard and burial ground round the old church is well fenced in, and kept in beautiful order. Several gipsies are buried in the churchyard; but there is no stone to mark the exact spot. They are pretty close to each other, so I am told, at the east end of the church.
Close to the churchyard there is a spring of excellent water, called St. John’s Spring. So highly did our forefathers value it, that it was preserved specially as a rippling little fountain for supplying water for the holy rite of baptism. When I saw it, gipsies, tramps, show people, vagabonds, and all kinds of dirty and clean travellers, with their wretched companions, steeds, and poor bony beasts of burden, were quenching their thirst at this living stream, forcing its way out of the hillside. It seemed, as I stood by, looking at the pails put under its mouth for a filling, to force its way faster, and with greater gusto, delight, and pleasure into the dirty pails, owned by dirty hands and dirtier faces, whose filthy bodies were covered with stinking rags, than into clean pails carried by white hands and lovely smiling faces peering over them. One little dirty urchin put his mouth under it for “a drink.” No sooner was this done, than the holy spring covered his unholy dirty face with more clear water than he wanted, some of which found its way down his bosom and into his breeches; at this he “sobbed,” and sobbed right out that I could not help laughing. He turned up his piebald watery face as if in anger at my laughing at him. I said to him, “What is the matter with you?” “No—no—no—no—nought is the matter wi me. It’s co—co—co—cold, and you woodner laugh if you were like me. It’s wet my belly.”
The little fellow for once received a washing, contrary, no doubt, to his wish. After he had dried his face with the ragged remains of a dirty sleeve, he found his way back to the green—I expect his mother would scarcely know him—and I went for a stroll down “Spectacle Lane,” where gipsies formerly tented and camped in large numbers.
Down this pretty country lane there was a pleasant recess, a little higher than the road, under the trees, evidently formed by the gipsies on purpose to have their “tents high and dry.” Several tents could be nicely sheltered and partly secluded under the trees in each recess. Water and game would be plentiful in these lanes a century ago; in fact, I should imagine such was the case now.
At the bottom of “Spectacle Lane” stood a large, fine, old Gothic archway, called by the inhabitants in the neighbourhood “Spectacle Tower.” The object and purpose for which it was built has never been clearly made out. Judging from all the surrounding circumstances, it appeared to me that it had at one time been intended as a gateway to a mansion, abbey, or nunnery which has not been built; or, what is still more probable, it may have been erected as a flag-tower for Fairfax’s army on its way from Oxford through Northampton to the battle of Naseby, and from thence to Leicester. Prince Rupert had gone as far as Daventry to meet General Fairfax and his army, expecting, of course, that they would come by Daventry; instead of which Fairfax left Daventry to the left, and pushed on his way through Northampton and to Boughton Green, hoping to arrive in Leicester before Prince Rupert and the King. Fairfax may have expected that the memorable battle would have been fought in the neighbourhood of Boughton; if so, he, at any rate, reckoned without his host, as both armies came together at Naseby, and with what result any schoolboy knows.
Report says that Boughton Green church was razed to the ground by Cromwell’s army.
The fact of gipsies flocking to this, which was once a fine old Roman Catholic church, and nestling in tents under its shadows, together with the fact that old, monastic-looking farm-houses are to be seen in the neighbourhood, confirms the idea I set forth in my “Gipsy Life,” p. 146, viz., that on the gipsies landing in Scotland, about the year 1514, from the continent, some of them hypocritically professed the Roman Catholic faith in order to inveigle themselves into the good graces of the nobility, so that their pockets and pouches might be filled with as little trouble as possible; in fact, righteous gipsy Smith having come from India, he knew well, and does so still, how to turn religious sentiment to advantage, and hence he landed in Scotland from France as above instead of Dover and London, and wended his way through the Midland counties and southward; and hence we find Northamptonshire, in times later on, a central camping ground for these lawless tribes of aimless vagabonds.
About a century ago a number of gipsies were brought before the magistrates at Northampton; upon what charge has not been stated. This so enraged the gipsies upon Boughton Green and other parts of Northamptonshire, that they threatened to set fire to the town of Northampton. The end of it was that several of the gipsies, for their riotous conduct, forfeited their lives upon the gallows. See “Gipsy Life,” p. 154.
To come back to Boughton Green fair. After having wandered about “Spectacle Lane” I called upon a gentleman, Mr. Jeys, who has resided for many years close to the green, and he told me that he has seen as many as forty to fifty tents and vans of gipsies camping in the lanes near to his house. It was down this lane that small-pox raged among the gipsies. Righteous Smith, with his two wives, Constant and Comfort, and a number of their twenty children, died of small-pox. Births, deaths, and murders have taken place upon the green. How many nobody knows, nor can any idea be formed of the number. Mr. Jeys told me of one case, being a gipsy row, ending in murder. Who had done it no one could tell, and where the gipsy was buried was a mystery. They hunted and searched, but, like the body of the Earl of Crauford and Balcarres, it could not be found, until Mr. Jeys’ gardener came across it in the garden. When the body of the gipsy was found it was laid straight out between two flag stones reared edgewise, and a large flagstone as a covering. The arms were folded, and upon the breast of the gipsy there was a pair of scissors, which had been carefully placed there by those who had buried the gipsy in the dark; for what purpose I cannot make out. Gipsies have queer notions about the death and burial of those belonging to them. The old-fashioned gipsies of bygone days, more than they do now, paid special regard to the dead, and on this account they carried the dead body of the gipsy nearly half a mile to bury it in a gentleman’s garden. The murdered gipsy in his lifetime was, no doubt, a scissor-grinder, and the placing of the scissors upon his breast was to remind them when he got to the other country of what trade the gipsy was—i.e., if skulking about the country with an old barrow grinding a few knives and scissors can be called a trade.
A few years since a gentleman farmer belonging to the neighbourhood was murdered upon the green, by whom it has never been found out. All sorts of conjectures, suspicions, and surmises have taken place upon the matter. Some say the gipsies did it; others say that some of the unfortunate class had a hand in the sad affair. At any rate he was found early next morning with his mouth crammed full of dust; his pockets were empty, and his soul had gone into the unknown world. His name is engraved upon the trunk of a tree close to the spot, which, owing to the growth of the tree and the hand of time, is fast disappearing. The greensward of Boughton Green is not a bed of roses; but, on the contrary, I am afraid, those who have met their last enemy upon this battleground of scamps have found it full of thorns—for such it has been to those who have been murdered or met with death in doubtful company.
At the fair held in 1826, George Catherall, of Bolton, who was known as Captain Slash, formed a large gang of about a hundred roughs—of whom it was composed, young or old, it has not been stated, or whether any, and how many of them, were gipsies—to rob and murder all upon the green on the night of June 28th who would not “turn it up.” They formed themselves, after being well primed with beer, into lines like soldiers, and on they went to do their murderous, Satanic work, calling cut, “Blood or money!” While they were carrying out their murderous designs, Captain Slash would frequently cry out, “Now, my lads, form yourselves into line soldier-like. Blood or money is what we want and what we shall have.” Many of those who had retired for the night under canvas, or under their stalls, were beaten, kicked, and not a few were rendered insensible. There were no policemen in those days, and it was fortunate that a body of shoemakers from Moulton were close at hand, or there would have been a larger number of the hawkers and stall-keepers murdered, there is no doubt. The Moulton shoemakers gave Slash and his gang what they did not expect. Daybreak showed what a murderous night had been spent upon the green. Blood, bludgeons, sticks, broken glass, tables, stools, were to be seen lying in all directions. The money taken at the fair was hid in all sorts of ways. The wife of a publican ran with her money all the way to Northampton in her night-dress. A hawker of scythe-stones and whetstones told me that he helped his father to put the money they had taken during the fair under their cart-wheels. Others dug holes into the turf with their knives; others hid their money in the hedge-bottom. Scores were scampering about in their night-dresses in all directions, with their hair on end, and almost frightened out of their senses, like stark mad folks. The children nestling for the night under the carts, tents, and in the booths, screeched and screamed about in the dark upon the grass half naked, like a lot of young rabbits when the weasels have been at their heels, horrible enough to frighten devils wild. The few old folks visiting the fair every year who can remember the sad scene talk of it at the present time with almost breathless silence. Some of them said to me, “If we were to live a thousand years we should never forget it.” Captain Slash was taken the next day to Northampton, and in the end he was hung upon the new drop. Accounts differ as to how he met his end. Some say that he died in sorrow and penitence. One gentleman named F— told me that he was not far from him when he was hanged, and walked close beside him on his way to the gallows. While jogging along on the top of a cart Slash seemed quite jovial, and as merry as if going to a wedding. He remarked that his mother had said to him more than once that “he would die with his boots on,” but he would make her a liar for once; and just before the fatal bolt was drawn he kicked his boots off among the crowd, and one of them hit a woman who stood next to my friend in the face and disfigured it. After this startling scene his nerves gave way, and he dropped tremblingly into eternity. To-day the skeleton of Captain Slash is to be seen in an asylum at Northampton as a warning to all wrongdoers. One or two of his gang were transported, some cleared out of the country, and the others got off “scot-free.”
The associations of bygone days of Boughton Green being disposed of, I now began to ramble among the gipsies and others upon the green. I had not gone far before I saw at the back of one of the vans a dirty, greasy-looking tramp of a fellow, with an apron on that might have been washed in boiling tallow and dried in smoke. In a large kettle before him there was a quantity of thick yellow stuff—what it was composed of, or how and by what means it was coloured, I could not tell—and by his side, in an old basket, there were pieces of almost rotten fish casting forth a sickly odour; and over a fire upon the ground there was an old frying-pan partly full of hot grease. I was puzzled to know what this was for, and what it all meant. I had not been puzzling long before I saw the greasy tramp taking pieces of the fish out of his basket and dip them into the thick yellow liquid; he then threw them into the pan upon the fire, whereupon a crackling noise commenced. After turning and twisting the pieces of fish about in the pan for some time, sometimes with his fingers and at other times with a stick, they were “browned” in order to be palatable to “greenhorns;” and as they were “cooked” he took them out of the pan and put them into a basket, and sallied forth among the throng and crush of “Johnnies,” calling out “Fine fish, fried and all hot! Fried fish, all hot.” A crowd soon gathered round him, and with a plentiful supply of pepper and vinegar he began business in earnest. Well-dressed farmers, shoemakers, men, youths, girls, and maidens of almost every grade clustered round him, and the eagerness with which they clutched and enjoyed the fried fish, bones, and vinegar would have formed a subject worthy of my friend Herbert Johnson, or W. H. Overend, the artists of the “Graphic” and “Illustrated London News.” “Smack” went their lips, and I turned away disgusted at the thought and sight at having found so many simple, gullible beings in the world, standing ready with open mouths to swallow the greasy morsels of dirty tramps. It is pleasing to note that all those who live by frying fish, and also those who live by eating it, are not of this stamp.
After strolling about for some time I turned among some of my old friends, Jack, Jim, Bill, Sal, Righteous, Piety, and Zachriali, gipsies of the cocoa-nut tribes engaged at cocoa-nut shying. All did not profess to be so low down in the social scale as the gipsies. Poor “Pea-soup Sal,” with a reddish face, who had imbibed a little too much from the beer barrel, and whose legs were not over-strong, particularly objected to being classed with the gipsies; in fact, as she propped herself up by the side of her box of cocoa-nut balls, she turned up her nose, curled her lip, and staggered at the idea of such “respectable people as they wer-wer-wer-were being rec-rec-rec-reckoned with the gip-gip-gip-gipsies. They are a ba-ba-ba-ba-bad lot.” Poor Sal was now overcome, and fell to the ground. For once in her life she was at any rate level with those gipsies who were squatting upon the floor. Her husband, who seemed to be a common-sense sort of a man, and apparently fairly educated, came to her relief. If he had not done so, I would not have given much for the cocoa-nuts, and less still for poor unfortunate Sal.