I had heard of a gipsy Smith who had settled down, and was now residing in one of the “courts” of Daventry. I hunted him up, and found him in a little cottage residing by himself. The cottage was nice and clean. When I went in I was invited to sit upon a chair. The old gipsy had just come home with some work. He was lighting the fire, and I said to him, “I suppose you could do very well with a Hotchi-witchi just now, could you not, Mr. Smith?” The old man turned up his bronzed face, and with a laugh said, “I just could, my dear good gentleman. I was looking for one this morning, but could not find one.” I said, “Could you do with a Kanéngro?” The old man replied, “I could if I had one; but I never goes after them now. I don’t much care for them. I would rather have Hotchi-witchi.” After a general conversation for a few minutes, I said, “How long have you given up travelling?” He replied, “Nearly thirty years. I like it better now.” “How long have you lived by yourself?” The old man’s lips began to pucker and tears came into his eyes. After wiping his face, he said falteringly, “It is nearly four years since I lost my dear good bedfellow. We had lived together over forty years. She was a good creature, and I mean to meet her in heaven, bless the Lord. I’ve been a bad one in my time, but I’ve given up all bad ways, and have attended the Wesleyan chapel and the Salvation Army nearly two years, bless the Lord; it was the best day’s work that ever I did when I found Him.” The old gipsy now gave me a little of his history. “My grandfather was a Welsh gipsy, and used to attend Northampton and Daventry market and fairs with horses and ponies, and in course of time my father and grandfather began to travel round the midland counties and the Staffordshire Potteries. I was born under the hedge in Gayton Lane, between Kingsthorpe and Boughton Green. The gipsy’s lot is a hard one, I can assure you, my good gentleman. I’ve seen a deal in my time. I attended Boughton Green fair for thirty years, and for eighteen years of this time in succession I never knew two of my cousins to leave the fair without fighting. I’ve seen murder upon the ‘Green’ more than once. It will never be known in this world how many murders have been committed upon the ‘Green.’ There has been some fearful bloodshed and rows done, I can assure you. The gipsies are very vengeful and spiteful, if they ever take it in their heads to be so. Two of my cousins, D— and N—, quarrelled, when they were children down ‘Spectacle Lane,’ over a few sticks.
“They parted, and never met each other again for twenty years, and then it was at a Boughton Green fair. When the fair was over they went into a field to have their old grievance out in blows. They had not been fighting long before D— was put senseless upon the ground. N— went to his tent, and after a few minutes I followed him, and said to my cousin, ‘N—, you have killed D—; you had better be off.’ He went then and there, and has never been took. We buried my cousin, and the day I shall never forget. It was a day, I can assure you. I don’t know where my cousin is now, but I have seen him lots of times since then. The past is a blank, but I mean to get to heaven to meet my dear good old creature. I wish I could read; what a great pity it is that none of us poor gipsies can read. Bless the Lord, although I cannot read I prize the Bible, God’s book; it’s the best book in the world.” The old man now took down a small pocket Bible off his kitchen shelf, and clasped it to his breast and said, “Although I cannot read I puts it in my chair when I says my prayers, and the dear Lord blesses it to my soul and makes me feel happy.”
After partaking of a cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter in the humble “British Workman” in High Street, I made my way to the Byfield carrier, Mr. W—, to secure my “berth” in his cart, which was pretty closely packed with groceries, servants’ boxes and trunks, nails, balms, and paraffin, “chaps,” girls, and their mothers. There seemed to be no “cousins” in our party. I was pretty well wet through from head to foot, and it was perhaps fortunate that we were closely packed, as by which means I was, in all probability, prevented taking a severe cold. At a jog-trot rate we began to move out of Daventry at the heels of a grey horse, whose sides stuck out with fatness and with a “coat” as sleek as a mole. Mr. W— looked well to his steed, while Mrs. W— chatted, joked, and chaffed with her company inside. Up hills and down dales lay our course. Parsons and squires, as usual, were the theme, in the first instance, for conversation and gossip. The Rev. Mr. So-and-So was a very good man in the pulpit but a bad one out of it, and a worse landlord. And they began to enumerate cases of hardship inflicted by him. I must confess that I should not like to be a clergyman with a large family in a small poor parish with a small stipend, and with “charity money” to deal out to a number of dissatisfied, idle, grumbling poor people. A clergyman nowadays has to mix up with the grand and fashionable, to visit the poor, dispense charity with smiles, write any number of letters for the parishioners, assist the sexton, take a lead in the choir, preach his own sermons, superintend the bell-ringers, keep the parish accounts, blow up the roadmen, visit “new comers,” allay scandal, hush gossip, settle squabbles, be liberal, stand insults, know everybody’s business, and know nobody’s business. Must not pay too much attention to young ladies for fear of trouble at home. He must be handsome, lovely, and charming, with a rich melodious voice; hide the faults of evil-doers occupying big pews, lecture evil-doers in little pews; never enter a “dissenting” chapel, give Methodists the “cold shoulder” privately, fraternize with them publicly; take wine with the rich, be teetotal among the poor; give the “tip-top” price for his goods; and above all things, and under all circumstances, the parson must never look cross. If at any time he feels angry he must “keep it to himself inwardly and never show it.” These are the qualifications for a minister of the gospel according to the ideas and motives of Church dwarfs and Sunday saints.
Parsons were now dispensed with, and darkness was creeping over us as we passed by Sir Charles Knightly, Baronet’s, beautiful estate at Fawsly. The next leading topic of our dames and damsels was, as might be expected, the appearance of certain ladies at the usual maidenhood ages. We had not gone far before I knew most of the ages of the “young” dames in the cart, who were much surprised to find that I was younger than they were. “Lor bless me!” said one, “there is no accounting for looks nowadays, for I was talking to a lady the other day, and telling her how young she looked, and that I wished I had as good a black head of hair as she had; but lor and behold you, when I went home with her, I found out that the black hair was a wig, and her own hair was as white as mine. I never was more astonished and surprised in all my life. I could not help but stare at her, she did not look like the same woman, Mrs. W—; I should not have known her if I had not known her so well, and what had made the change. Since then I have guessed but little at women’s ages.” We now pulled up to allow one or two of our party to get out. Our legs had been so crushed and mixed up with each other’s that we were almost left in doubt as to whose legs we were standing upon, Mrs. W— naïvely remarking, as the young damsels were stepping down, “Now mind and see that you got out upon your own legs; don’t run away with some one else’s.”
We were now seated, and off we began to jog again. We had not got far before the company began to ask each other if they were “saved.” The word “saved” is a word well known to me from childhood, and at its sound I pricked up my ears, and began to ask questions about it. And the answers I received were as follows: “Why, bless you, dear sir, have you not heard of the great stir that has been going on among the children connected with the Methodist and Congregational chapels in Byfield? We are woke up at eleven o’clock at night by the children singing about the streets Moody and Sankey’s and Salvation hymns—
and away they go all round the village disturbing everybody. The young things ought to be in bed. The girls have got so excited that they go about shouting and singing in the daytime. One girl I knew went into the garden to get some cabbages, and while she was getting them up, the devil came to her, and told her that she was not ‘saved,’ and the girl knelt down in the middle of the garden at dinner-time, and there and then began to pray, cry, sing, and shout. After a time she jumped up and said she was saved. ‘Then,’ said the girl, ‘Master Devil, I am saved.’ Another girl went into the garden to get some potatoes, and the good, or some other spirit, came to her, and said that unless she was saved all the potatoes in the garden would go rotten. She there and then stuck the fork into the ground, and began to pray to God to save her. She had not prayed long before she got up and shouted out, ‘I am saved! bless the Lord!’”
I asked how all this was brought about, and the answer I got was, that “The children began to sing in the streets some hymns, and to hold children’s prayer-meetings, under the direction of nobody but themselves; and the movement began to spread about, and bigger folks attended the meetings, and now the place is almost in an uproar; everybody is asking each other, or nearly so, if they are saved.”—I kept putting in a word for the children, bless their little hearts!—“Tea-meetings and prayer-meetings are held, the chapels are filled, and it is all through the children. I don’t like so much shouting and going on in this way.” I hope the good work is still going on, notwithstanding the old woman’s cold water.
It was now pitch dark, and we were winding our way down the narrow lanes in Byfield to the carrier’s home, with whom and his good wife I was to stay for the night, where we arrived “safe and sound,” but cold and damp.
On the hearth there were six beautiful cats, named after her husband’s friends. A month before this they had eight cats; and Mrs. W— says next year she hopes to keep a dozen. The big-hearted, genial woman is an ardent admirer of animals. She said she never had but one valentine in her life, inside of which were pictures of cats, dogs, rabbits, and birds; and it was addressed to her as “Mrs. W—, Cat and Dog Fancier.”
After a good warming and an excellent supper, “the good woman of the house,” Mrs. W—, began to tell me a little of their family history, while her good husband was seeing to his horses, which were petted like children. My hostess related her story as follows: “My father lived to be ninety-four years of age, and my mother died last August at the age of ninety-two. I have had fifteen brothers and sisters, all of whom are dead but three. I have not been out of mourning for sixteen years.” She now fetched the photographs, walking-sticks, and other things of her parents, for me to look at, and then continued her sorrowful story. “My mother,” she said, “was a great sufferer for some years, but she bore it all so meekly. She never murmured once during her illness, and was always talking about heaven. Once she said to me, ‘Why don’t you kiss your father? He is in the room and wants to shake hands with you; why don’t you kiss him?’ Just before she died she called me to her and said, ‘I am going to die, my child. I am going to your father.’ And then she said, faintly, ‘“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” My girl, trust in Jesus. Come a little nearer to me.’ And she then whispered in my ear, ‘Meet me in heaven,’ and passed away like a child going to sleep.”
“What is this that steals upon my frame?
Is it death? Is it death?”
Tears were now forcing their way down the good woman’s face, and in the midst of sobs and sighs a tremulousness was manifest, and she quietly stole upstairs to pray, and to ask Jesus to dry her tears.
After she had left me I was upon the hearthstone alone. The ring-dove, nineteen years old, perched in its cage by the fireside, began to “coo—coo—coo;” the cats began to “pur—pur—pur;” the dog to snore; the kettle to sing; and the lamp shed a cheerful light upon the whole. I stole away to rest my weary bones upon a snowy-white feather bed, and under an extra lot of blankets and fine linen sheets. How different, I thought, as I wandered into dreamland, from the lot of the poor gipsy child, whose sheets are old rags, and whose feathers are damp and almost rotten straw, with mother earth for a bedstead, and the canopy of heaven for curtains.
At seven o’clock I turned out and got my breakfast, and with the morning dawn and a lovely sun shining in my face, I took a stroll through the ancient village to stare at the loitering villagers, gaze at the thatched roofs, eye over the tradesmen, to peep at a very ancient, curious, antiquated stone upon the green, which the roots of a huge tree were toppling over, enjoy the feast of some beautiful scenery, and make some inquiries about the empty house pleasantly situated in the village. I paid my bill—two shillings—and gave the little servant and mine hostess some picture-cards and little books, and then seated myself in the carrier’s cart to be drawn round the village before we trotted off to Banbury fair. Out in the way, the nurse-girls, mothers, and children shrieked out with laughter as they tossed upon their knees the round-faced, chubby, live, kicking, squeaking balls of love, embodiments of pleasure and trouble, singing and shouting—
“Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady get on a white horse,
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.”
On the way and in carts there were crowds of human beings, pretty and plain, big and little, tall and thin, short and stout, some dressed in silks and black cloth, some in rags and tatters; some were smiling all over their faces, and others looked as cross and sour as if they lived on nothing but vinegar and crabs and slept on thorns and thistles. Lovers and haters, pleasure-seekers and thieves, labourers, farmers, tradesmen, and gentlemen, were hurrying helter-skelter to Banbury fair. Some were crying, some were laughing, some were shouting, roaring, puffing, and panting; others were in carriages, with liveried servants as attendants; some were on horseback and donkeyback; others were in horse-carts, donkey-carts, and waggons; and among the number there was a little thin man of sixty winters, standing about two feet six high with his boots on, and by his side was his wife, about five feet high, stout, plump, and about thirty years old. I should not be surprised to hear that she had “not agreed to stop again.” She was well able to carry him on her back, as gipsies do their children, instead of which she looked down upon him and allowed him to trudge along in the mud and rain. She had no love for the little fellow, or she would have carried him in her arms; in fact, she seemed inclined to walk on the other side of the road.
In the throng and crush we arrived at Banbury. I paid my fare—all the way from Daventry, one shilling and sixpence—shook hands with my kind friends, and made my way into the crowd of sightseers, gipsies, mendicants, tramps, the fashionable, and the gay.
The first gipsy I met with was an old friend, “Righteous Smith”—which name was printed on the van—and his large family, at a cocoa-nut establishment. One of the daughters, dressed in lively colours, was in charge of the balls, and shouting out to the “chaps” as they passed forward, “Try your luck, gentlemen!” and the father shouted out, “Now, gentlemen, bowl away! all bad nuts returned.” In response to their bewitching entreaties some old cricketers tried their hand, and, much to the chagrin of “Righteous Smith,” they sent the nuts “spinning away” rather more freely than was profitable and pleasant for “Righteous,” to the extent of putting his good name in the shade. This family of gipsies have, I should think, about three parts of Romany blood in their veins. Their van was a good one, and beautifully clean, and will pass muster when the new order of things comes about, for which I am working night and day, and which, I am thankful to say, is casting its shadows before it. The eight cocoa-nut establishments were owned by cross-bred Romanies, and one or two of the families lived in vans fairly clean. There were over thirty families living in the vans attending the fair, in which there would be an average of three children, one man, and one woman in each van. In five of the vans there were two men and two women in each. A number of those who owned small short shooting galleries and “rock stalls” slept with their children under the stalls.
From this cocoa-nut going “concern” I strolled among the shows, bosh, nonsense, and cheap Jacks. The introduction to one of the sparring establishments was by an old woman screaming out, “We are just going to begin.” By her side was a dandily dressed and painted doll, setting herself off to the best advantage. On some steps between the two women there stood a man painted as a fool, and dressed in tight indecent sparring costume. “Darkey,” with his pug nose, short hair, low narrow forehead, high cheekbones, deep sunken eyes, glistening fire like a black glass bead in the centre of a white china button under the glare of a lamp, which he frequently turned sharply, quickly, and inquisitively to me as if anxious to know my movements. If he had been an uncaught thief, and conscience was telling him that I was a detective, he could not have eyed me over more quickly and closely than he did.
Gentlemen with diamond rings, poachers, and blackguards formed the company. A ring was formed, and “Darkey” and a “Johnny Straw” set to work with their gloves “milling” each other, and just as their “savage” was getting up, the curtain to outsiders was drawn. How long the big and little fools kept at the “milling” process I did not stay to see. What fools there are passing through the world as gentlemen, to be sure, to witness such debasing exhibitions with “pure frolic” and laughter, while their money is being drawn out of their pocket imperceptibly by idle vagabonds.
Not far from this “boxing establishment” there was another “set-out” waiting for a second dose of fools, with a “champion boxer” as a “draw.” Money went freely into the coffers, while the owners of stalls upon which useful articles were exposed for sale “had a bad time of it;” even the celebrated “Banbury cake” was “a drug in the market.”
Over the door, as a sign at one of the shows belonging to Mr. Great Frederick Little, where a nude man was exhibiting himself—“girls and ladies not allowed to enter”—stood two calves’ heads over a skeleton, and what surprised me most was that the good Banbury folks and country Johnnies could not see the satire that was being played upon them. “Calves and bones” for a sign; and I think, judging from the dejected appearance of the people as they came out of the establishment, they felt like “calves and bones” themselves; at any rate they did not look any the wiser—certainly they looked sadder.
Turning from this concern, I was jostled into a crowd of folks to witness a man named Turnover Snuff, Esq., dressed in best blue cloth, with gold watches, guards, and rings, making fools of two well-dressed innocent youths, whom he had called up from the crowd and dressed in rags to eat buns for a prize, to be used as a “draw,” to enable him to pass off his showy goods under various colours, dodges, and pretexts. While the youths were forcing the buns down their throats he was cracking jokes, which the people, with their mouths open, swallowed as gospel. What this “Cheap Jack” said in action, if not in words, was, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, you see that these two youths have come up here at my bidding, to make fools of themselves, and to eat these buns I am forcing down their throats, to cause you to twitter and laugh with your eyes shut to the things that are to follow; so in like manner I want all of you to shut your eyes and open your mouths to receive all the lies I want to force down your throats, that I may extract the coin from your pockets for my ‘Cheap Jack’ articles; so we will now proceed to business, ladies and gentlemen.”
There were one or two exhibitions in the fair of a good genuine character, and the rest were “rubbish,” of which it might be said of the performers, as a writer in the Sword and Trowel for 1876 says:
“See, I am as black as night;
See, I am darkness, dark as hell.”
In the fair I ran against the sanitary and local canal boat inspector—Mr. Daniel Dixon—whom I asked to give me his independent views of the gipsies and show-people attending the fair. In company with the medical officer of health he visited the vans, and the following particulars may be taken as a fair sample and average of the thirty vans in the fair, in accordance with what he says:
“According to promise, I forward you the particulars of our visits to the shows and vans visiting our fair on Thursday; and I also took a little more trouble to be along early on Friday morning. I was certainly astonished to see the people turn out of some of these places, some of the smaller vans turning out the greatest number. I give you a few instances of the number who turned out of the smaller vans. In Nos. 1, 2, 6, 13, and 19 there were 5 men, 5 women, and 22 children, making a total of 32 in the 5 vans. Education totally neglected. They were dirty, neglected, and uncared for. One van was as clean as could be expected.
“In 1879, 40 vans visited our fair.
“In 1880, 50 vans visited our fair, in which there were 38 men, 32 women, and 43 children.
“In 1881 there were 130 persons in 36 vans. While some of the vans were remarkably clean and well fitted up, there were some totally unfit for habitation, and certainly ought not to be allowed. The gipsy tribe was fairly represented, and evidently some of them are fairly blest with an amount of property which surprises me. There were a few surly people who did not like our visit, and gave us unmistakable signs of displeasure, but the majority were civil.
“If you can devise a plan whereby these people can receive any education, you will render valuable service, morally and religiously, to society at large.”
After referring to the value of the Canal Boats Act, and the amendments I propose, Mr. Dixon said that he should be pleased to further my efforts at any time.
A minister of the town writes me to say that a number of vans left the town on Thursday night or early on Friday morning. In the 15 vans he visited he found 48 children and 22 men and women, only six of whom could read and write a little. The rest were growing up as ignorant as heathen, and with the exception of two of the vans, dirt and wretchedness abounded in their homes. He said also that the conduct of the gipsies and other travellers at this fair has been better than in former years.
Notwithstanding the reports that have been in circulation, enough to shake the nerves of timid folks, I am received kindly and civilly by all the gipsies. One gipsy woman named Smith in a jocular term said, “Mr. Smith, we have been told that you are going to take all our children away from us and send them to school; you will require a mighty big school, bigger than any in the world, to hold them, I can assure you.”
A few yards from where we were standing there was a van, into which I was invited to tea by the poor woman, the “mistress of the house.” In this wooden tumble-down house upon wheels, about 9 ft. long by 5 ft. wide, and 6 ft. high, there were man, wife, and seven children in a most dirty and heartrending condition. The youngest was a baby only three weeks old, and was born in the van at Weedon.
I had a long chat with the good-natured woman. As I sat upon an old sack at the bottom of the van, with the children in rags and dirt creeping round me, and in the midst of an odour not at all pleasant to the olfactory organs, I felt as if my heart was almost ready to break at the sight of human woe and misery before me. To say that I could have wept hot briny tears would not convey in language telling enough the strong feeling of sympathy that crept over me, to the extent of almost freezing the blood in my veins. For a moment I seemed to lose sight of everything else in the fair, and it was with some difficulty I could refrain from crying out, as I stepped from amongst the poor little forgotten and neglected children, and out of this gipsy house, with a cocoa-nut which “Jack” would thrust into my bag, “Good Lord! when shall these sad things and these wretched and pitiable sights come to an end? Would to God that the trumpet which is to bring to life the dead would begin to ring! ring! ring! and thrill into our ears a nervous, disquieting solo, keeping on and on till it has awoke us all up—aye! ministers, philanthropists, Christians of every grade, moralists, members of Parliament, cabinet ministers, and peers—to a sense of our duty towards the little and big heathens at our own door, before our fate becomes as that of Belshazzar and Babylon.”
“Oh say, in all the bleak expanse
Is there a spot to win your glance
So bright, so dark as this?
A hopeless faith, a homeless race.”“Lyrics of Palestine,” Religious Tract Society.
I answer, No.
No children in lovely, beautiful England, the bright star of the West, stand so much in need of help as do our poor canal and gipsy children, who are living outside our factory, educational, and sanitary laws, and, with some bright exceptions, religious influences.
Some time ago a gipsy named Shaw was found in a Northamptonshire churchyard at midnight, asleep between the gravestones, with his fiddle by his side. When awakened by a wandering policeman crying out, “Now then, move on,” gipsy Shaw grunted and growled out, “Who’s there? What do you want, Mr. Devil? Wake these others up; they’ve been here longer than me, and when they goes I’ll go, and not till then, Mr. Devil; and so make yourself scarce.” The policeman saw, and in fact knew, that Shaw was a queer kind of customer, and he therefore let him snore and sleep among dead men’s bones till morning. On the following morning Mr. Policeman met gipsy Shaw with his fiddle (Boshomengro) under his arm, when he called out, “Halloo, Shaw, you’ve left your companions behind you after all.” “Yes,” said gipsy Shaw; “when I opened my eyes it was daylight, and the sun was shining in my face, and I thought over fresh considerations.”
At the present time the gipsies and other travellers in this country are among the dead men’s bones of backwood gipsy writers and their present-day sins and wrong-doings, with Mr. John Bull standing by, saying in effect to the lost gipsies and their children, “Snore on, sleep on; stick to your fiddles and the devil; care not a straw for either parsons or priests.”
If John Bull cares not, will not and won’t do for the children of travellers the same as he is doing for other children within his dominions, and what his Continental neighbours are doing for theirs, it is time the gipsies themselves “thought over fresh considerations,” and walked out into open day, and demanded the blessings of English civilized life in a way that will readily secure an attentive ear to the cries and wails of their children.
Thank God, a few writers of tales and stories of a healthy, interesting, elevating, and heavenly kind are coming to the rescue of the poor gipsy, canal, and other travelling children. May their name be Legion and their motto be Fairelie Thornton’s lines in the Sunday School Chronicle—
“Direct the words I say,
Oh, let them reach the heart;
Let there be wingèd words alway,
And light and life impart.”
On my way to Edinburgh in October, 1880, to read a paper before the Social Science Congress, upon the condition of our gipsies and their children, I took occasion to call at Leicester races on my way, and paddled ankle deep in mud and quagmire to try to ascertain how many gipsy and other travelling children there were upon the course living in tents and vans. At a rough calculation there would be fully four hundred children and two hundred men and women huddling together in eighty of these wretched temporary abodes. Not a score of the children, except a few snatches in the winter, were receiving any education other than such as is obtained upon a racecourse and its associations, giving and taking lessons in the initiatory stage of a gambler’s life. The following cases will give some idea of the state of morality amongst the wandering classes. Phillips, a gipsy from Maidstone, had in his van one woman and eleven children; Green, a gipsy from Bristol, had in his van two men, two women, and eleven children; Brinklow, a gipsy, had in his van two women and seven children; Lee, a gipsy from London, had in his tent two young men, one woman, and seven children; making a total of forty-seven men, women, and children of all ages and sizes, huddling together in these four tents and vans, not two of whom could read or write a sentence. Mrs. Brinklow said her eldest girl attended a Bible-class at Bristol in the winter, which led me to think that the gipsy girl could read, but on inquiry I found she could not tell a letter. Those who are spellbound by gipsy fascination and admire the “witching eyes” of picturesque human degradation and depravity, will consider this in the nineteenth century a state of civilization preparing us for the millennium, when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and all tears be wiped away.
Last autumn I visited the gipsies at Cherry Island, near London, and found about thirty tents, in which there were between one and two hundred gipsy children growing up worse than Zulus. For one minute let us get inside one of the gipsy tents in which these children are born, and in which they live and die. It is about seven feet wide, sixteen feet long, and where the round top is highest, is about four feet and a half in height. It is covered with pieces of old canvas or sacking to keep out the cold and rain, and the entrance is closed with a kind of curtain; the fire by which they cook their meals is placed in a tin bucket pierced with holes. Some of the smoke from the burning sticks goes out of an opening in the top of the tent that serves as a chimney, while the rest of it fills the place and helps to keep their faces and hands a proper gipsy colour. The bed is a little straw laid on the damp ground, covered with a sack or sheet, as the case may be; an old soap-box or tea-chest serves both as cupboard and table. Here they live, father and mother, brothers and sisters, huddled up together. They live like pigs, and die like dogs. Washing is but little known amongst them; and of such luxuries as knives and forks, chairs and tables, plates and cups, they are very independent. They take their meals, and do what work they do, squatting on the ground; and the knives and forks they use are of the kind that Adam used, and sensitive when dipped in hot water. Lying, begging, and pretended fortune-telling have as much to do with their living as chair-mending, tinkering, and hawking. The heaviest work falls to the lot of the women, who may often be seen with a child upon their backs, another in their arms, and a heavily-laden basket by their side. The men lounge about the lanes and hedges with their dogs, whilst the children grow up in such ignorance and sin as to deserve the name of ditch-dwelling heathens.
Gipsy quarters, Plaistow marshes
The winter drives many of the gipsies to encamp in the marshes, or in the disused brickfields near London. Anything more dismal and wretched than this life it is hard to think of. All the poetry of gipsying is clean gone then, and nothing is left but filth, poverty, vice, and misery. In Hackney Marshes and elsewhere about London you may find scores of these tents, often so rotten that a stiff wind would blow them away. Creeping into one of them, almost on all fours, you find half-naked gipsy children squatting upon the ground, busy at skewer-cutting, for which they get from tenpence to one shilling for fourteen pounds’ weight. Or else the family is at work in the more elaborate processes of making clothes-pegs. One chops sticks the right length; another trims them into shape and flings them into a pan of hot water; a child picks out the floating pieces and bites off the bark; and then a bigger lad fastens the two together with a strip of tin, and the clothes-peg is ready. So the dreary day goes by until the lurcher dog springs up, the unfailing attendant of the gipsy man, and the women of the family return with the scraps they have picked up in questionable ways at back doors, and with the proceeds of their sales. At night all lie down where they have worked, and sleep as they are, with but a rag between them and the bleak night of pitiless rain and snow. Here the gipsy children are born and brought up. Here they live and here they die, almost as far away from the track of any day-school or Sunday-school as if they were African savages.
The poor wandering outcast gipsy child can say with Phineas Fletcher in the “Fuller Worthies”—
“See, Lord, see, I am dead;
Tomb’d in myself, myself my grave:
A drudge, so born, so bred,
Myself, even to myself, a slave.”* * * * *
“Ask’st Thou no beauty but to cleanse and clothe me?
If, then, Thou lik’st, put forth Thy hand and take me.”
Two years ago I attended a village feast in the neighbourhood of Bedford, and found, as usual, a large gathering of gipsies and others of a similar class plying their avocation among the “knock’em downs,” “three shies a penny,” &c. On arriving at the place I found “a gipsy row upon the carpet,” and on going up to one of the gipsies to ask him what it was all about, a gipsy some fifty yards off, more like a madman than anything else, began to bawl out all sorts of hard things, and in doing so other gipsies began to cluster round us, and to all appearance I seemed to be in a fair way for being in the midst of a “Welsh fight.” So I said to the gipsy who was standing by me, “I’ll go to see what he wants.” “If you do,” the gipsy replied, “he will knock you down.” I said, “Then I will go to be knocked down,” and away I went, and while I was going along the mad gipsy was literally foaming with rage, and uttering oaths and curses on my head not quite as thick as hailstones. On arriving before his majesty I began to smile at him, and said as I put out my hand to him, “Will you shake hands?” At this he drew back a little, and said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Lend me your hand.” He again said, with more emphasis than before, “What do you mean?” Ultimately he put out his hand into mine, and the result was nothing would please him and the other gipsies but that we must drink some ginger-beer together. And while this was going on a gipsy from Barking Road, London, whom I had seen before, whispered in his ear who I was, and that I was trying to get their children educated. So nothing would serve them but to explain in a public-house bar how the education of the gipsy children was to be brought about, which plan seemed to please them amazingly; and at the end of my tale they again closed in upon me, but this time to thank and bless me. The foremost in doing so was the mad gipsy whom I faced in the storm, saying, as he shook hands with both hands in a rough fashion, “I do love you, that I do, for taking so much trouble over our children.” After similar greetings from the others we parted. Only one out of the large number of gipsies there could read and write, and he had taken to gipsying from the boarding-school at the age of seventeen, and, sad to say, neither his wife nor one of their eight children could tell a letter; and he further said that he was sure there was not one gipsy in a hundred who could read a sentence. To the gipsies I would say with a writer in Hand and Heart, Ah!
“Mistaken mortals, did you know
Where joy, heart’s ease, and comforts grow!”
An English gipsy king—“krális”—lying in wait in his palace, králisko-kair
In May, 1880, I visited one of the largest towns in the midland counties, with the object of ascertaining the probable number of shows, vans, and other movable abodes there were in and round the outskirts of the town, and found close about thirty. These, together with others in various parts of the country, would in all probability bring the number to nearly forty-five. No doubt other counties would furnish similar results. In showing the number of those who live in these vans I will quote the following seven cases as a specimen. The numbers were given to me by a man and his wife, who own and live in one of the vans about the size of a carrier’s dray, following the profession of “knock-’em-down.” B—, man, wife, and eleven children of all ages and sizes; S—, man, wife, and four children; J—, man, wife, and five children; P—, man, wife, and seven children; B—, man, wife, and four children; E—, man, wife, and seven children; N—, man, wife, and five children. By these figures it will be seen that there are forty-three children and fourteen men and women, with four-fifths at least of English blood in their veins, living in these seven vans. Few of these persons can read or write. I should think scarcely half a dozen could write their own names. In the case of the man B—, two children could just put three letters together, and two could just write their own names, and this was the extent of their education. Some of the “popgun” owners I have known personally for some years. One of the sons worked for me, and would by this time have been earning his £1 per week; but instead of this the whole family of twelve have taken to this libertine kind of wandering existence, with a prospect that does not look very encouraging, and many others are doing the same thing. These cases are given to show what is going on all over the country. In some instances the parents would send their children to school, but they say they cannot afford to pay for a week’s schooling when the children can only attend a day or two. It seems hardly fair to make those who of all others should have their education encouraged to pay three times as much as town residents, which is the case when the children attend three different schools in one week. These ramblers are on the increase, and it is high time they were taken in hand. James, a man well known, and who travels with a “ginger-bread stall,” said, when I told him my object and what the results would be, as he filled my hand full of his best “Grantham ginger-bread,” “God bless you, man, for it, and I wish with all my heart it would come to pass to morrow. Will it be three months first?” I told him that I thought it would be a much longer time than that, at which he shook his head, and said it was a “bad job.”
The gipsies of England have nothing in the past to thank us for, except the policeman’s cudgel and the “wheel of fortune” in the big “stone jug.” No one has taken them by the hand to lift and lead them out from among the dead men’s bones and demoralizing scenes in the midst of which they have been content with hellish delight to revel. Thank God, a few kind-hearted friends are beginning to notice them in their degraded condition, and to write to me on the subject. One of the leading woollen manufacturers of Scotland wrote to me in 1881 as follows:
“Dear Sir,—
“I can testify to the horrible social state of the van population at described in your occasional communications to the Times. This class of people overflow in Scotland, and for some years I have had occasion to observe their habits and habitations. But hitherto no persons in authority seem to take any interest in the matter, though it is one of grave social importance. We have visits of people who live in vans, who bring to the town such entertainments as shooting galleries, hobby horses, and any kind of trumpery exhibitions. These concerns are made up of families who pig together in their vans in a state which defies decency or sanitary rules. Whole families house in these small boxes upon wheels, usually in size about eight or nine feet by five feet. One lady recently tried to converse with some children of this class, and found they were ignorant of everything that was good. A gentleman interviewed one of the male heads of one family or group. He said his wife had had seventeen children, all born in the van in different counties of England. Within a few yards of my own door a van just lately stood for a night, in which slept one woman and five men or lads. The man—if he were the father—said they dealt in horses, and belonged to Hull, and they travelled the country living in their van, which was about eight feet by five feet. What I complain of is that, while local residents are made subject to various rules, educational and social, police, and sanitary order, these people should escape all kinds of supervision, and be literally a law unto themselves. I can well understand the strong reasons you have for calling public attention to such an evil.”
The Rev. John L. Gardiner, vicar of Sevenoaks, wrote me in 1880 stating the guardians in his place were thinking of moving the authorities to take some steps for ameliorating their condition. In 1880 I received the following letter from a right worthy, good, and true working man living in Derby:
“Dear Sir,—
“I doubt not but that you will feel surprised at receiving a letter from me, an entire stranger to you; but I feel certain that the subject which I wish to bring before you will be a sufficient apology for my intrusion on your valuable time. I have very recently seen in the public journals allusions to another appeal from you on behalf of our poor gipsy and van children, whom you are striving to reclaim from a life of utter ignorance, and I wish you a hearty Godspeed in your noble endeavours. I doubt not, if it could be ascertained, there are thousands of these poor children in our land of boasted Christianity growing up in ignorance and crime, and enduring the greatest amount of misery that we could imagine. I have no doubt but that a large percentage of our worst criminals emanate from this class of poor children. When I think of these poor outcasts, and think that they are my brothers and sisters, made by the same Divine hand and bearing His own image, and for whom Christ died that they should be raised up to Him, I feel my heart burn within me, and I often pray to God that He would raise up some one able to plead their cause.”
Early in 1880 a lady at Sherborne, Dorset, wrote me as follows:
“I have always taken a deep interest in them. I have again and again wished that I could help to make them more intelligent and useful, for they are not a stupid race. About two months since a poor young woman of this class called at my house with a beautiful infant almost naked. I relieved her, and inquired the whereabouts of their encampments, which was about one and a half miles distant from my home. I went over to see them, and I assure you my heart yearned to do something to help to sweeten the atmosphere of their moral life. There were youths and maidens, children, old women and old men; but alas! I was powerless to do anything for them.”
A clergyman of high standing, near Salisbury, wrote me in 1880 to say that a committee of the Salisbury Diocesan Synod had commissioned him to collect information bearing on the neglected condition of the population accustomed for the greater part of the year to live in caravans and attend fairs in the diocese. “I could,” continued the worthy clergyman, “bring before you many proofs of the wretchedly ignorant and degraded condition of the class I am speaking of, which have come under my own personal notice; but I know I am writing to one better informed on the subject than any one.” Later on the Canon wrote me stating that the clerk of the market in Salisbury had told him that the stray population imported into the town as traders, showmen, &c., for an autumn fair amounted to about five hundred, and the fair was by no means a large one.
Last year a clergyman at Tavistock wrote me as follows:
“Dear Sir,—
“Your letter in yesterday’s Western Morning News respecting the education of the canal boat children reminds me of the question of the education of gipsy children, in which subject I believe you take a very active interest. I occasionally visit the gipsy tents and vans when they come into this neighbourhood, and find that a great many of these people admit that they cannot read, and others say they can read a little; but I fear that the great majority of the gipsy population are quite unable to read, and have very hazy ideas on the great principles of religion.
“It seems quite a reproach to the English nation to allow these wandering people to continue in its midst without some efforts towards Christianizing them. Although the subject is no doubt a difficult one, it would not seem impracticable to get these gipsy children to attend school at certain centres for portions of the year. I don’t know what has been done in the matter, but I wish you every success in your efforts for attaining this object, as well as for obtaining the efficient carrying out of the Canal Boats Act.”
In 1881 a leading and active county magistrate of Danbury, Essex, wrote me as follows:
“Dear Sir,—
“I observe that you say in your recent letter to the Secretary of the Lord’s Day Observance Society, that the ‘extension of the principle of the Canal Boats Act to all gipsy tents, vans, and other movable or temporary dwellings, should be brought about by all means.’ I should he extremely pleased to aid in this work, for we reside near Danbury Common, where all the worst features of the vagrant life may be certainly seen. Numbers of little ones are daily passing before us untaught, and suffering in health through exposure to cold and wet, versed in arts of deception and quite inaccessible to influence. During the severe weather lately we had several ruffianly fellows on the common who defied interference with the most lawless proceedings. They went about in gangs breaking up gates and fences, and committing thefts and depredations all around the common. Any ordinary police force is quite inadequate to check or control them when a few reckless men chance to come together. They carried away and broke up two pates from a farm of mine on the other side of the common, and several occupiers on that side suffered severely from their violence. But all this is really of little importance compared with the question of the children’s condition of ignorance and general ill-being. I am sure that those who dwelt under tents must have perished or laid the foundation of fatal disease during the late severe weather. It is clearly against public policy that parents should be allowed thus to trifle with the health of their children; and of course the same objection applies to their want of education. There are gradations of well (or ill) being among these poor wandering folks, as you no doubt are well aware. Some are in comfortable vans, and earn an honest livelihood by some handicraft—tinkering, basket-making; but those who possess scarcely anything but the tent that covers them are in a miserable plight in deep snow or in wet weather, and young children are placed in peril. I will not weary you by enlarging on this topic, which must, moreover, be sadly familiar to you. I desired to assure you, as I now do, that I will do anything in my power to extend the legislation which you have already had the happiness of effecting to those poor outcasts who may doubtless through England be reckoned by thousands.”
Early in the present year a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman at Aberfeldy wrote me to say that he had been deeply impressed for some time by the necessity there was for the State to take in hand the gipsy and similar travellers, and had last year got the Presbyterians of Breadalbane to petition Parliament to take some action in the way of improving the condition of the gipsies.
J. T. Pierce, Esq., J.P., county magistrate of Essex, writes me again under date October 2, 1882:
“Can you oblige me by forwarding a copy of the Bill amending your Act, 40 and 41 Vict. c. 60? I am desirous of bringing the question of registration of vans, &c., before my fellow magistrates at our next quarter sessions. The children who dwell in small vans and under tents cannot receive education under the present state of things, and it is seldom any of them are got into industrial schools. Possibly the magistrates of different counties might help forward the extension of your scheme in favour of these poor children. There is a common here on which we get a large number of them every year, and I have had a fair opportunity of seeing how urgent is the need of legislation, unless the children are to remain in their present state of ignorance and dirt. No thoughtful man can desire this, and you have already done so much in this direction that every one who thinks about it must wish to strengthen your hands for further work.”
The foregoing independent statements, given by persons I have never seen, extracted out of shoals of letters I have received, will faintly show what is going on all over the country among our English heathens and hell trainers; while sensual, backwood, romantic gipsy novelists have been drawing a film over our eyes.
I have received a number of suggestions as to how the gipsy problem should be solved. A Scotch Presbyterian minister suggests that the children should be sent to an industrial reformatory; in fact, he would obliterate them with an iron hand from the face of the earth. He goes on to say that the recent School Act is useless for them in Scotland. They can and do with ease evade all its requirements.
One kind-hearted lady, who writes to me from Brentwood, thinks that separate schools should be built for the gipsy and other travelling children. Neither of these suggestions are practicable and workable: the former is too severe for English liberty, and the latter too wild and scattered; and it would also be too costly, and in the end it would prove a failure.
On October 25, 1882, I sent Mr. Mundella copies of my Social Science Congress papers, with the hope of eliciting something from him as to what steps the Government proposed taking in the matter, and the following is his reply:
“Privy Council Office,
Whitehall,
October 26, 1882.“Dear Sir,
“I am much obliged to you for the copies of the papers read by you in the Health Department of the Social Science Congress on the Canal Boats Act and on the gipsy children, and I will give the same my careful attention. I shall be very thankful if anything can be done to remedy the evils affecting the neglected children referred to in your papers, and to whose interest you have given such long and faithful service.
“I am, dear sir,
Yours faithfully,
A. J. Mundella.“George Smith, Esq.”
I have thought since I took up the canal crusade in 1872, as my letters will show, and I cannot for the life of me do otherwise than think so now, that the Canal Boats Act Amending Bill I am humbly promoting could be made to include all movable habitations and temporary dwellings. The counsel to the Education Department, Mr. Ilbert, thought otherwise, and of course I have had to submit to the “ruling of the chair.” He thought that a separate Act would better meet the case of the gipsy and other travelling children. I am not now alone in my idea of including all movable dwellings in my Canal Amending Bill; for since I mooted the subject in my letters to the press and in other ways, friends have come round to see that there is something in the suggestion worthy of notice. Canal-boat cabins and vans are boxes in which are stived up human beings of all ages and sizes, without either regard for health, morals, sense or decency, packed closer than the poor unfortunate creatures in the black hole of Calcutta were. These moving homes are drawn, in many instances, by animals with only one step between them and the blood- or foxhound’s teeth. The only difference is, one home is moving through the country upon our magnificent, black, streaky canals, of the enormous width of about twenty feet, and an average of three feet deep. For the size of boats and boat cabins and other particulars I must refer my readers to my works, “Our Canal Population,” and “Canal Adventures by Moonlight,” and for the full particulars of gipsy tents, vans, &c., to my “Gipsy Life.”
The last Essex Michaelmas Quarter Sessions, with Sir H. Selwin Ibbetson, Bart., M.P., in the chair, was supported by between forty and fifty leading county magistrates. The following is taken from the Chelmsford Chronicle, October 20, 1882:
“The Canal Act Amendment Bill.—Mr. Pierce suggested that this Bill should be referred to the Parliamentary Committee, with a view to their considering whether clauses should not be recommended to Parliament to be added for dealing with gipsy and travelling show-man life as well as canal life. Mr. Pierce spoke of the miserable squalor and unwholesome condition in which the gipsies and travelling showmen lived, and said he thought it was necessary that their children, who are absolutely uneducated, and who number about 30,000, should be looked after. Seconded by Mr. G. A. Lowndes. This motion was carried.”
In a leading article upon the subject the Chronicle stated:
“An excellent suggestion was made to the court by Mr. Pierce. It was that they should refer the Canal Boats Act Amending Bill to the Parliamentary Committee, with a view to their recommending to Parliament the addition of clauses bringing nomadic life—like that of the gipsy and showman fraternity—within the scope of the measure. Of gipsy life we have some experience in Essex, and we know that it stands in sad need of regulation. Mr. Pierce stated, inter alia, and on the authority of Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, that there are about 30,000 children belonging to gipsies and travelling showpeople, most of whom are being brought up wholly without education. It is no less a duty to society than to the children themselves that this state of things should be put an end to, for we cannot hope to banish the ruder kinds of crime, such as the vagrant classes are commonly guilty of, without first banishing ignorance. In this view we hope that other public bodies will follow the example, and that the promoters of the Bill about to be brought forward will be induced to extend it so as to embrace the gipsy and kindled classes.”
In July, 1880, Mr. Joseph Cowen very kindly put a question to Mr. Dodson, the President of the Local Government Board, relating to the education of gipsy and other travelling children, and the sanitary arrangements of their homes, and Mr. Dodson replied, “There is considerable difficulty in dealing with gipsy tents and vans, but the matter has been brought under the notice of the Board, who will endeavour to deal with it when a suitable opportunity presents itself for that purpose.”
The Government had their hands pretty full last year—Ireland and the Irish at the beginning, Ireland and the Irish in the middle, and Ireland and the Irish at the end—nearly altogether Irish, which no one grudges to make our Brothers and Sisters on the Emerald Isle contented, prosperous, and happy. God grant that her noble sons and daughters may go ahead, and her “Moonlighters” be swallowed up in the greater light that rules the day. This being so, I kept myself pretty well occupied in piloting, altering, and manœuvring my Canal Amending Bill through its initiatory stages, and had no time to deal with the gipsy problem other than to try “at every turn and twist” to find a niche, nook, or a peg in the Bill upon which to hang the gipsy question, which to me did not, and does not even now, seem at all a difficult thing to do. The more I go into the details of the canal and gipsy question the simpler they become. All that is required, as in the case of the brickyard children, is to take hold of them and to begin to deal with them in a business fashion, as other questions are dealt with.
The subject is studded with prickles, but immediately it is grasped the prickles become harmless. In the distance they look like drawn glistening daggers, which, as you approach nearer to them, are no more dreadful than rushes in the meadow. Unearth the Guy Fawkes gipsy monster, and we shall soon find out a way to deal with gipsy vagabonds and to reclaim their children. Standing by whimpering, sobbing, and sorrowing over the children will not pull them out of the gutter; nor will covering them with backwood gipsy nonsense and trash make them white. The gipsies and their children are dark and down, and to whiten and raise them the law and the gospel must come in: first, the law, schoolmaster, and sanitary officer; and second, the Christian minister and the gospel.
In bygone days, under the reign of Elizabeth and the Georges, the hangman’s hemp and the whipper’s thong were used as a cure for the gipsy social evil, but with worse than no results. Recently, in Hungary, measures of another kind were adopted to compel the gipsies to make themselves scarce. Innumerable complaints had at times reached the chief of the police from the townsfolk of Szegedin, in Lower Hungary, with whose portable chattels and goods the gipsies persisted in making free. The police official was sorely perplexed how to deal with the wandering ragamuffins. The gipsies in Hungary, as well as in other parts of the world, have masses of hair—our present race of English gipsies cannot boast of the raven black hair as formerly—so the chief of the police conceived the idea of barbering their pates of all their locks. The gipsies were taken into custody and the town barbers were summoned to clear the heads of the swarthy gipsies of their present adornments. The orders were obeyed to the letter, regardless of either sex or age. In a few minutes the whole tribe with pates as smooth as an ostrich’s egg were conveyed to the town gates in a state of indescribable discomfiture. I “guess,” as Jonathan says, they will not for a long time visit Szegedin again. There is a wide difference between the Hungarian authorities and the Nottingham town authorities. Not being able to attend the recent Nottingham goose fair, I wrote to the town clerk and the chief constable for a few particulars, relating to the condition of the vast numbers of poor neglected gipsy and other travelling children who attended the borough fair. The town clerk deigned not to descend from his high pinnacle to order a reply to my letter. The chief constable, after some days had passed over, said he would send me some facts, which, though I reminded him of his promise more than once, are not yet to hand. Gipsy children may live and gipsy children may die, but these officials, I suppose, think that they shall go on for ever, and in the end, as a writer in The Christian Age says, they will
“Rest where soft shadows lie and grasses wave;”
at least they hope so. Full particulars of the hardships and cruelties practised upon the gipsies for their wrongdoing will be found in my “Gipsy Life.”
Knowing full well as I do that nothing but salutary measures of the kind I propose, and have proposed for many long years, will meet the case, I had again the audacity to put the question to the Government, through Mr. Burt, with the object of eliciting from them the steps—if any—they proposed taking this Session for dealing with the gipsy problem.
“Welton, Daventry,
November 16, 1882.“My dear Mr. Burt,
“I shall be glad if you will put the enclosed questions to the Government for me relating to the gipsy children. With kind regards,
“Very sincerely yours,
George Smith, of Coalville.”
The questions and answers are taken from the Times, Morning Post, Standard, Daily Chronicle, and the leading papers throughout the country.
“Temporary Abodes.
“Mr. Burt—To ask the President of the Local Government Board if the Government intend taking any steps early next session for bringing temporary abodes such as shows, tents, vans, and places of the kind, under the influence of the sanitary officers.”
Mr. Dodson, the President, said he would “consider whether the law as it stood was in need of amendment in this respect; but he could not, on this any more than on any other subject, now give any undertaking as to the introduction of a Bill next session.”
Mr. Mundella said: “It is exceedingly difficult to devise any effectual scheme for the education of the nomadic population referred to in the question of my hon. friend, and up to the present we have received no suggestion for dealing with the subject which appears to be practical. The matter, however, is ‘under consideration,’ and we propose during the recess to confer with the Local Government Board respecting it.”
Mr. Burt wrote to me as follows:
“House of Commons,
November 22, 1882.“My dear Mr. Smith,
“You will see from the Times to-day the answers given by Mr. Dodson and Mr. Mundella. They are not so encouraging as one would like, though it may do good to call attention to the subject.
“Very truly yours,
Thomas Burt.”
Parliament having been opened February 15, 1883, I began to make a move towards getting my Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill before the House of Commons for the third time—last year it was introduced to the House of Lords by Earl Stanhope—and lost no time in seeing my friends Mr. Burt and others upon the subject, some of whose names are upon the back of the Bill. The names upon the Bill are as follows: Mr. Burt, Mr. S. Morley, Mr. John Corbett, Mr. Pell, and Mr. Broadhurst. Feeling anxious, and seeing no difficulty in the matter, I wrote to Mr. Burt on March 3, 1883, about introducing a clause in the Bill to include gipsy and other travelling children—my plans for improving the condition of the canal children and gipsy children being identically the same in every particular so far as the provisions of the Act are concerned—and he replied as under:
“House of Commons,
March 8, 1883.“Dear Mr. Smith,
“If you want a new clause or any alteration in the Bill, kindly write it out on a copy of the Bill and forward it to me.
“I have seen Sir Charles Dilke, and he advises me to talk the matter over with Mr. Hibbert. I shall do so as soon as I can see Mr. Hibbert.
“I go to Newcastle to-morrow, returning on Monday night or Tuesday.
“I am not hopeful that the Government will do anything in the present state of business.
“Yours truly,
Thomas Burt.”
I added the following clause to the Bill, and at the same time I gave under the Bill more power to the Education Department than I had done in the previous Bills.
The new clause affecting gipsy children runs thus:
“11. The expressions ‘Canal Boats,’ ‘Canal Boat,’ and ‘Boat,’ in the principal Act and this Act, and also in the regulations of the Local Government Board and Education Department, shall include all travelling and temporary dwellings not rated for the relief of the poor.”
I forwarded copies of the Amended Bill to Sir Charles Dilke, the new President of the Local Government Board, and also to Mr. Mundella, the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, and here are their replies. A few days previously I had written to Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Mundella, urging them to take up the Bill; in fact, I have for years been pressing the Government to take up the Bill, as one that will do much good and bring them much credit. Of course I cannot expect them to do impossibilities. I know their hands are full; at the same time the period has come when the sixty thousand canal and gipsy children must be educated and cared for by “hook or by crook,” as being of primary importance for the country’s welfare to the thousand and one things that are now before Parliament.
“Local Government Board, Whitehall,
March 14, 1883.“Dear Sir,
“I have to thank you for the copy of the Bill you have sent to Sir Charles Dilke. In consequence of Mr. Ashton Dilke’s death he will not be present in the House of Commons this week.
“Yours truly,
A. E. C. Bodley.“George Smith, Esq.”