"There is, no doubt, much about the tramp that is picturesque. A romantic imagination pictures him as a sort of peripatetic philosopher, with more of Jacques in him than of Autolycus; living in constant communion with Nature; sleeping in the open air; subsisting on the scantiest fare; slaking his thirst at the running brook; and only begging to be allowed to live his own childlike and innocent life, as purposeless as the butterflies, as happy as the swallows, as destitute of all worldly ends and aims as are the very violets of the hedge-row. AEsthetic enthusiasm of this kind is apt to be severely checked by the prosaic realities of actual existence. The tramp, like the noble savage, is a relic of uncivilised life with which we can very well afford to dispense. There is no appreciation of the country about him; no love of Nature for its own sake. In winter he becomes an inmate of the workhouse, where he almost always proves himself turbulent and disorderly. As soon as it becomes warm enough to sleep in a haystack, or under a hedge, or in a thick clump of furze and bracken, he discharges himself from 'the Union' and takes to 'the roads.' From town to town he begs or steals his way, safe in the assurance that should things go amiss the nearest workhouse must always provide him with gratuitous board and lodging. Work of any kind, although he vigorously pretends to be in 'want of a job,' is utterly abhorrent to him. Home county farmers, led by that unerring instinct which is the unconscious result of long experience, know the tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the bona-fide 'harvester,' in quest of honest employment. The tramp, indeed, is the sturdy idler of the roads—a cousin-german of the 'beach-comber,' who is the plague of consuls and aversion of merchant skippers. In almost every port of any size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles for a voyage, but who are, in reality, living from hand to mouth. Captains know only too well that the true 'beach-comber' is always incompetent, often physically unfit for work, and constitutionally mutinous. When his other resources fail, he throws himself upon the nearest consul of the nation to which he may claim to belong, and a very considerable sum is yearly wasted in providing such ramblers with free passages to what they please to assert is the land of their birth. Harbour-masters and port authorities generally are apt to treat notorious offenders of this kind somewhat summarily, and our local police and poor-law officers are ill-advised if they do not follow the good example thus set, and show the tramp as little mercy as possible. Leniency, indeed, of any kind he simply regards as weakness. He would be a highwayman if the existing conditions of society allowed it, and if he had the necessary personal courage. As it is, he is a blot upon our country life, and an eyesore on our roads. Vagabondage is not a heritage with him, as it is with the genuine Gipsies. He has taken to it from choice, and the true-bred Romany will always regard him with contempt, as a mere migratory gaol bird, who knows no tongue of the roads beyond the cant or 'kennick' of thieves—a Whitechapel argot, familiarity with which at once tells its own tale. Fortunately, our existing law is sufficient to keep the nuisance in check, if only it be resolutely administered. The tramp, however, trades upon spurious sympathy. There will always be weak-minded folk to pity the poor man whom the hard-hearted magistrates have sent to gaol for sleeping under a haystack—forgetting that this interesting offender is, as a rule, no better than a common thief at large, who will steal whatever he can lay his hands on, and who makes our lanes and pleasant country byways unpleasant, if not actually dangerous."

The foregoing article upon Gipsies and tramps brought from a correspondent in the Standard, under date September 12th, the following letter:—"I have just been reading the article in your paper on the subject of tramps. If you could stand at my gate for one day, you would be astonished to see the number of tramps passing through our village, which is on the high road between two of the principal towns in South Yorkshire; and the same may be said of any place in England situated on the main road, or what was formerly the coach road. We seldom meet tramps in town, except towards evening, when they come in for the casual ward. They spend their day in the country, passing from one town to another, and to those who reside near the high road, as I do, they are an intolerable nuisance. A tramp in a ten mile journey, which occupies him all day, will frequently make 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day, besides being supplied with food, and the more miserable and wretched he can make himself appear, the more sympathy he will get, and if he is lucky enough to meet a benevolent old lady out for her afternoon drive he will get 6d. or 1s. from her. She will say 'Poor man,' and then go home thinking how she has helped 'that poor, wretched man' on his way. Tramps are a class of people who never have worked, and who never will, except it be in prison, and, as long as they can get a living for nothing, they will continue to be, as you say in your article, 'A blot upon the country and an eyesore on our roads.'

"I always find the quickest way of getting rid of a tramp is to threaten him with the police, and I am quite sure if every householder would make a rule never to relieve tramps with money, and only those who are crippled, with food, the number would soon be decreased. If people have any old clothes or spare coppers to give away, I am sure they will soon find in their own town or village many cases more worthy of their charity than the highway tramp. I do not recommend anybody to find a tramp even temporary employment, unless they can stand over him and then see the man safe off the premises, and even then he may come again at night as a burglar; but I am sure work could be found at 1s. 6d. or 2s. a day by our corporations or on the highways, where, under proper supervision, these idle vagabonds would be made to earn an honest living. You will find that nine out of ten tramps have been in prison and have no character, and although they may say they 'want work,' they really do not mean it. Not long ago I caught a great rough fellow trying to get the dinner from a little girl who was taking it to her father at his work. 'Poor man! he must have been very hungry,' I fancy I hear the benevolent old lady saying. Of course, during the last year we have had many men 'on the road' who are really in search of work, but I always tell them that there is as much work in one place as another, and unless they really have a situation in view they should not go tramping from town to town. Many of them have no characters to produce, and I expect when they find 'tramping' is such a pleasant and easy mode of living they will join the ranks and become roadsters also."

In May's Aldershot Advertiser, September 13th, 1879, the following is a leading article upon the condition of Gipsies:—"The incoming of September reminds us that in the hop districts this is the season of advent of those British nomads—the Gipsies, the only class for whom there is so little legislation, or with whose actions and habits, lawless as they are, the agents of the law so seldom interfere. The miners of the Black Country owe the suppression of juvenile labour and the short time law to the long exertions of the generous-hearted Richard Oastler. The brickmaker may no longer debase and ruin, both morally and physically, his child of the tender age of nine or ten years, by turning it—boy or girl—into the brick-yard to toil, shoeless and ragged, at carrying heavy lumps on its head. The canal population—they who are born and die in the circumscribed hole at the end of a barge, dignified by the name of 'cabin,' are just now receiving the special attention of Mr. Smith, of Coalville, and certainly, excepting the section of whom I am writing, there is not to be found in privileged England a people so utterly debased and regardless of the characteristics of civilised life. The Factory Act prevents the employing of boys or girls under a certain age, and secures for those who are legally employed a sufficient time for recreation. But who cares for, or thinks about, the wandering Romany? True, Police-Constable Argus receives authority by which he, sans ceremonie, commands them to 'move on,' should he come across any by the roadside in his diurnal or nocturnal perambulations. But it often occurs that the object for which they 'camped' in the spot has been accomplished. The farmer's hedge has been made to supply them with fuel for warmth and for culinary purposes; his field has been trespassed upon, and fodder stolen for their overworked and cruelly-treated quadrupeds; so, the 'move on' simply means a little inconvenience resulting from their having to transfer their paraphernalia to another 'camp ground' not far off. They also enjoy certain immunities which are withheld from other classes. Excepting that some of them pay for a hawker's licence, they roam about as they list, untaxed and uncontrolled, though the earnings of most of them amount to a considerable sum every year; as they are free from the conventional rule which requires the house-dwelling population, often at great inconvenience, to 'keep up appearances,' it often happens that the wearer of the most tattered garments earns the most money. They can and do live sparingly, and spend lavishly. The labour which they choose is the most remunerative kind. Ploughing or stone-breaking is not the employment, which the Gipsy usually seeks! He takes the cream and leaves the skimmed milk for the cottier, and having done all there is to do of the kind he chooses, he is off to some other money-making industry. A Gipsy will make four harvests in one year; first he goes 'up the country,' as he calls going into Middlesex, for 'peas-hacking.' That over, he goes into Sussex (Chichester—'wheat-fagging' or tying), and on that being done, returns toward Hampshire—North Hants—to 'fag' or tie, and that being done he enters Surrey for hop-picking (previously securing a 'bin' in one of the gardens). Some idea of his gross earnings may be obtained from the following fact:—Two able-bodied men, an old woman of about 75 years of age, and two women, earned on a farm in one harvest, no less than 42 pounds. After that, they went hop-picking, and, in answer to my question, 'How much will they earn there?' the farmer, who is a hop-grower, said, 'More than they have here.' These operations were performed in less than a quarter of the year. In the places through which they pass to their work they sell what they can, and at night pitch their tent or draw their van on some common or waste land, buy no corn for their horses, nor spend any money for coal or wood. If they locate themselves on the margin of a wood, and make a prolonged sojourn, the uproar, the screams, the cries of 'murder' heard from their rendezvous

"'Make night hideous.'

All this, and more, they do with impunity. 'It is only the Gipsies quarrelling.' No inspector of nuisances pays them a visit; the tax-gatherer knows not their whereabouts; the rate-collector troubles them not with any 'demand note;' their children are not provided with proper and necessary education, yet no school attendance officer serves them with a summons. Their existence is not known officially, saving the time a census is taken, when, at the expense of the house-dwellers, a registry is made of them. Not a farthing do they contribute to the government, imperial or local, though many of them are in a position to do it, and can, without inconvenience, find from 40 to 80 pounds; or 100 pounds for a new-travelling van when they want one. Overcrowding and numerous indecencies exist in galore among them, yet no representative of the Board of Health troubles himself about the number of cubic feet of air per individual there may be in their tent or van. Is this neglect, indifference, obliviousness, or do the authorities believe that the impurities and unsanitary exhalements are sufficiently oxidised to prevent any disease? It is worthy of remark that they are not liable to the epidemics which afflict others. The loss of a pony from a common simultaneously with their exodus is a suspicious fact occasionally. They live in defiance of social, moral, civil, and natural law, a disgrace to the legislature.—J. W. B."

In the Hand and Heart, September 19th of last year, the editor says, with reference to our roadside arabs:—"Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, whose efforts to better the condition of the wretched canal population have met deserved success, draws attention to the state of another neglected class. Parliament, he says, which has lately been reforming so many things, would have done well to consider the case of the Gipsies, 'our roadside arabs.' Of the idleness, ignorance, heathenism, and general misery prevailing among these strange people he gives some curious instances. One old man, whose acquaintance Mr. Smith made, calculates that 'there are about 250 families of Gipsies in ten of the Midland counties, and thinks that a similar proportion will be found in the rest of the United Kingdom. He has seen as many as ten tents of Gipsies within a distance of five miles. He thinks there will be an average of five children in each tent. He has seen as many as ten or twelve children in some tents, and not many of them able to read or write. His child of six months old—with his wife ill at the same time in the tent—sickened, died, and was "laid out" by him, and it was also buried out of one of those wretched abodes on the roadside at Barrow-upon-Soar, last January. When the poor thing died he had not sixpence in his pocket.' An old woman bore similar testimony. 'She said that she had had sixteen children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of them being born in a roadside tent. She says that she was married out of one of these tents; and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at Packington, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch. This poor woman knows about three hundred families of Gipsies in eleven of the Midland and Eastern counties, and has herself, so she says, four lots of Gipsies travelling in Lincolnshire at the present time. She said she could not read herself, and thinks that not one Gipsy in twenty can. She has travelled all her life. Her mother, named Smith, of whom there are not a few, is the mother of fifteen children, all of whom were born in a tent.' Mr. Smith's conclusion (which will not be disputed) is that 'to have between three and four thousand men and women, and eight or ten thousand children classed in the Census as vagrants and vagabonds, roaming all over the country, in ignorance and evil training that carries peril with it, is not a pleasant look-out for the future.' He contends that 'if these poor children, living in vans and tents and under old carts, are to be allowed to live in these places, they should be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act of 1877, so that the children may be brought under the compulsory clauses of the Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised as other children.'"

The Illustrated London News, October 4th, says:—"Among the papers to be read at Manchester is one on the condition of the Gipsy children and roadside 'arabs' in our midst, by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester. Here, indeed, is a gentleman who is certainly neither a dealer in crotchets nor a rider of hobbies. Mr. Smith has done admirable service on behalf of the poor children on board our barges and canal-boats, and the even more pitiable boys and girls in our brick-fields; and to his philanthropic exertions are mainly due the recent amendments in the Factory Acts regulating the labour of young children. He has now taken the case of the juvenile 'Romanies' in hand; and I wish him well in his benevolent crusade. Mr. Smith has obligingly sent me a proof of his address, from which I gather that, owing to a superstitious dislike which the Gipsies entertain towards the Census, and the successfully cunning attempts on their part to baffle the enumerators, it is only by conjecture and guesswork that we can form any idea of the number of Bohemians in this country. The result of Mr. Smith's diligent inquiries has led him to the assumption that there are not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and 'arab'—that is to say, tramp—children roaming about the country 'outside the educational laws and the pale of civilisation.'"

The following leading article, relating to my paper upon "The Condition of the Gipsy Children," appears in the Daily News, October 6th:—"At the Social Science Congress Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, will to-morrow open a fresh campaign of philanthropy. The philanthropic Alexander is seldom in the unhappy condition of his Macedonian original, and generally has plenty of worlds remaining ready to be conquered. Brick-yards and canal-boats have not exhausted Mr. Smith's energies, and the field he has now entered upon is wider and perhaps harder to work than either of these. Mr. Smith desires to bring the Gipsy children under the operation of the Education Act. Education and Gipsies seem at first sight to be words mutually contradictory. Amid the mass of imaginative fiction, idle speculation, and deliberate forgery that has been set afloat on the subject of the Gipsies, one thing has been made tolerably clear, and that is the intense aversion which the pure bred Gipsy has to any of the restraints of civilised life. Whether those restraints take the form of orderly and cleanly living in houses of brick and of stone, or of military service, or of school attendance, is pretty much a matter of indifference to him. Schools, indeed, may be regarded from the Gipsy point of view as not merely irksome, but useless institutions. Our most advanced places of technical education do not teach fortune-telling, or that interesting branch of the tinker's art which enables the practitioner in mending one hole in a kettle to make two. Except for music the Gipsies do not seem to have much aptitude for the arts; they are more or less indifferent to literature; and business, except of certain dubious kinds, is a detestable thing to them. Their vagrant habits, on the other hand, enable them, without much difficulty, to evade the great commandment which has gone forth, that all the English world shall be examined.

"The condition of the Gipsies is a sufficiently gloomy one. We may pass over those degenerate members of the race who have elected to pitch permanent tents in the slums and rookeries of great towns, because, in the first place, they are degenerate, and in the second, their children ought to be within reach of School Board visitors who do their duty diligently. It is only the Gipsy proper who has the opportunity of evading this vigilance. His opportunity is an excellent one, and he fully avails himself of it. Gipsy households, if they can be so called, are of the most fluid, not to say intangible character. The partnerships between men and women are rarely of a legal kind, and the constant habit of aliases and double names make identification still more difficult. As a rule, the race is remarkably prolific, and though the hardships to which young children are exposed thin it considerably, the proportion of children to adults is still very large. Hawking, their chief ostensible occupation, cannot legally be practised until the age of seventeen, and until that time the Gipsy child has nothing to do except to sprawl and loaf about the camp, and to indulge in his own devices. Idleness and ignorance, unless the whole race of moralists have combined to represent things falsely, are the parents of every sort of vice, and the average Gipsy child would appear to be brought up in a condition which is the ne plus ultra of both. It is true that Gipsies do not very often make their appearance in courts of justice, but this is partly owing to the cunning with which their peccadilloes are practised, partly to their well-known habit of sticking by one another, and still more to the mild but very definite terrorism which they exercise. Country residents, when a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know that a certain amount of blackmail in this way or that has to be paid, and that in their own time the strangers, if not interfered with, will go. Interference with them is apt to bring down a visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the 'red cock,' whose crowings usually cost a good deal more than a stray chicken here and a vanished blanket there. So the Ishmaelites are left pretty much alone to wander about from roadside patch to roadside patch to pick up a living somehow or other, and to exist in the condition of undisturbed freedom and filth which appears to be all that they desire.

"The gloss has long been taken off the picture which imaginative persons used to varnish for themselves as to the Romany. Nor, perhaps is any country in Europe so little fitted for these gentry as ours. England is every year becoming more and more enclosed, and the spaces which are not enclosed are more and more carefully looked after. Whether in our climate open-air living was ever thoroughly satisfactory is a question not easy to answer. But even if we admit that it might have been merry in good greenwood under the conditions picturesquely described in ballads, the admission does not extend to the present day. There is no good greenwood now, except a few insignificant patches, which are pretty sharply preserved; and the killing of game, except on a small scale and at considerable risk, is difficult. The cheapness of modern manufactures has interfered a good deal with the various trades of mending, mankind having made up their minds that it is better to buy new things and throw them away when they fail than to have them patched and cobbled. Fortune-telling is a resource to some extent, but even this is meddled with by the Gorgio and his laws. The raison d'etre of the vagabond Gipsy is getting smaller and smaller in England, and as this goes on the likelihood of his practices becoming more and more undisguisedly criminal is obvious. The best way to prevent this is, of course, to catch him young and educate him. A century or two ago the innate Bohemianism of the race might have made this difficult, if not impossible. But it is clear that even if the Gipsy blood has not been largely crossed during their four centuries of residence in England, other influences have been sufficient to work upon them. If they can live in towns at all, they can live in them after the manner of civilised townsmen. A Gipsy at school suggests odd ideas, and one might expect that the pupils would imitate some day or other, though less tragically, the conduct of that promising South African prince who, the other day, solemnly took off his trousers (as a more decisive way of shaking our dust from his feet), and began vigorously to kill colonists. But it is by no means certain that this would be the case. The old order of Gipsy life has, in England, at any rate, become something of an impossibility and everything of a nuisance. It has ceased to be even picturesque."

The following is a copy of my paper upon the "Condition of Gipsy Children," as read by me before the Social Science Congress, held at Manchester on October 7th, 1879. Although it was at the "fag end" of the session, and the last paper but two, it was evident the announcement in the papers that my paper was to be read on Tuesday morning had created a little interest in the Gipsy children question, for immediately I began to read it in the large room, under the presidency of Dr. Haviland, it was manifest I was to be honoured with a large audience, so much so, that, before I had proceeded very far with it, the hall was nearly full of merchant princes—who could afford to leave their bags of gold and cotton—and ladies and gentlemen desirous of listening to my humble tale of neglected humanity, and the outcasts of society, commonly called "Gipsies' children." Dr. Gladstone, of the London School Board, opened the discussion and said that he could, from his own observation and knowledge of the persons I had quoted, testify to the truthfulness of my remarks. Dr. Fox, of London, Mr. H. H. Collins, Mr. Crofton, and other gentlemen took part in the discussion, and it was the unanimous feeling of those present that something should be done to remedy this sad state of things; and the chairman said that the result of my labours with regard to the Gipsies would be that something would be done in the way of legislation. The paper caused some excitement in the country, and was copied lengthily into many of the daily papers, including the Leicester Daily Post, Leicester Daily Mercury, Nottingham Guardian, Nottingham Journal, Sunday School Chronicle, Record, and others nearly in full, and was read as follows:—

"As it is not in my power to open out a painful subject in the flowery language of fiction, romance, and imagery, in musical sounds of the highest pitch of refinement, culture, and sentiment, I purpose following out very briefly the same course on the present occasion as I adopted on the three times I have had the honour to address the Social Science Congress with reference to the brick-yard and canal-boat children—viz., that of attempting to place a few serious, hard, broad dark facts in a plain, practical, common-sense view, so as to permeate your nature till they have reached your hearts and consciences, and compelled you to extend the hand of sympathy and help to rescue my young clients from the dreadful and perilous condition into which they have fallen through long years of neglect.

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

"Owing to a superstitious regard and dislike the Gipsies had towards the Census, and their endeavours to evade being taken, no correct number has been arrived at; and it is only by guess work and conjecture we can form any idea of the number of Gipsies there are in this country. The Census puts the number at between 4,000 and 5,000. A gentleman who has lived and moved among them many years writes me to say that there cannot be less than 2,000 in the neighbourhood of London, whose Paradises are in the neighbourhood of Wormwood Scrubs, Notting Hill Pottery, New Found Out, Kensal Green, Battersea, Dulwich Common, Lordship Lane, Mitcham Common, Barnes Common, Epping Forest, Cherry Island, and like places. A gentleman told me some time since that he gave a tea to over 150 Gipsies residing in the neighbourhood of Kensal Green. A Gipsy woman who has moved about all her life says she knows about 300 families in ten of the Midland counties. Another Gipsy, in a different part of England, tells me a similar story, and says the same proportion will be borne out all over the country. Of hawkers, auctioneers, showmen, and others who live in caravans with their families, there would be, at a rough calculation, not less than 3,000 children; taking these things along with others, and the number given in the Census, it may be fairly assumed that I am under the mark when I state that there are not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and other children moving about the country outside the educational laws and the pale of civilisation.

"Some few Gipsies who have arrived at what they consider the highest state of a respectable and civilised life, reside in houses which, in 99 cases out of 100, are in the lowest and most degraded part of the towns, among the scum and offscouring of all nations, and like locusts they leave a blight behind them wherever they have been. Others have their tents and vans, and there are many others who I have tents only. A tent as a rule is about 7ft. 6in. wide, 16ft. long, and 4ft. 6in. high at the top. They are covered with pieces of old cloth, sacking, &c., to keep the rain and snow out; the opening to allow the Gipsies to go in and out of their tent is covered with a kind of coverlet. The fire by which they cook their meals is placed in a kind of tin bucket pierced with holes, and stands on the damp ground. Some of the smoke or sulphur arising from the sticks or coke finds its way through an opening at the top of the tent about 2ft. in diameter. The other part of the smoke helps to keep their faces and hands the proper Gipsy colour. Their beds consist of a layer of straw upon the damp ground, covered with a sack or sheet, as the case may be. An old soapbox or tea-chest serves as a chest of drawers, drawing-room table, and clothes-box. In these places children are born, live, and die; men, women, grown-up sons and daughters, lie huddled together in such a state as would shock the modesty of South African savages, to whom we send missionaries to show them the blessings of Christianity. As in other cases where idleness and filth abounds, what little washing they do is generally done on the Saturday afternoons; but this is a business they do not indulge in too often. They are not overdone with cooking utensils, and the knives and forks they principally use are of the kind Adam used, and sensitive when applied to hot water. They take their meals and do their washing squatting upon the ground like tailors and Zulus. Lying, begging, thieving, cheating, and every other abominable, low, cunning craft that ignorance and idleness can devise, they practise. In some instances these things are carried out to such a pitch as to render them more like imbeciles than human beings endowed with reason. Chair-mending, tinkering, and hawking are in many instances used only as a 'blind;' while the women and children go about the country begging and fortune-telling, bringing to their heathenish tents sufficient to keep the family. The poor women are the slaves and tools for the whole family, and can be seen very often with a child upon their backs, another in their arms, and a heavily-laden basket by their side. Upon the shoulders of the women rests the responsibility of providing for the herds of ditch-dwelling heathens. Many of the women enjoy their short pipes quite as much as the men.

"Judging from the conversations I have had with the Gipsies in various parts of the country, not more than half living as men and wives are married. No form or ceremony has been gone through, not even 'jumping the broomstick,' as has been reported of them; and taking the words of a respectable Gipsy woman, 'they go together, take each other's words, and there is an end of it.' I am also assured by Levi Boswell, a real respectable Gipsy, and a Mrs. Eastwood, a Christian woman and a Gipsy, who preaches occasionally, that not half the Gipsies who are living as men and wives are married. When once a Gipsy woman has been ill-used, she becomes fearful, and as one said to me a few days since, 'we are either like devils or like lambs.' In the case of some of the adult Gipsies living on the outskirts of London an improvement has taken place. There is some good among them as with others. A Gipsy in Wiltshire has built himself a house at the cost of 600 pounds. Considerable difficulty is experienced sometimes in finding them out, as many of the women go by two names; but in vain do I look for any improvement among the children. Owing to the act relating to pedlars and hawkers prohibiting the granting of licences for hawking to the youths of both sexes under seventeen, and the Education Acts not being sufficiently strong to lay hold of their dirty, idle, travelling tribes to educate them—except in rare cases—they are allowed to skulk about in ignorance and evil training, without being taught how to get an honest living. No ray of hope enters their breast, their highest ambition is to live and loll about so long as the food comes, no matter by whom or how it comes so that they get it. In many instances they live like pigs, and die like dogs. The real old-fashioned Gipsy has become more lewd and demoralised—if such a thing could be—by allowing his sons and daughters to mix up with the scamps, vagabonds, 'rodneys,' and gaol birds, who now and then take their flight from the 'stone cup' and settle among them as they are camping on the ditch banks; the consequence is our lanes are being infested with a lot of dirty ignorant Gipsies, who, with their tribes of squalid children, have been encouraged by servant girls and farmers—by supplying their wants with eggs, bacon, milk, potatoes, the men helping themselves to game—to locate in the neighbourhood until they have received the tip from the farmer to pass on to his neighbours. Children born under such circumstances, unless taken hold of by the State, will turn out to be a class of most dangerous characters. Very much, up to the present, the wants of the women and children have been supplied through gulling the large-hearted and liberal-minded they have been brought in contact with, and the result has been that but few of the real Gipsies have found their way into gaols. This is a redeeming feature in their character; probably their offences may have been winked at by the farmers and others who do not like the idea of having their stacks fired and property destroyed, and have given the Gipsies a wide berth. Gipsies, as a rule, have very large families, generally between eight and sixteen children are born in their tents. Owing to their exposure to the damp and cold ground they suffer much from chest and throat complaints. Large numbers of the children die young before they are 'broken' in.' And it is a 'breaking in' in a tremendous sense, fraught with fearful consequences. With regard to their education, the following cases, selected from different parts of the country, may be fairly taken as representative of the entire Gipsy community. Boswell, a respectable Gipsy, says he has had nine sons and daughters (six of whom are alive), and nineteen grandchildren, and none of them can read or write; and he also thinks that about half the Gipsy men and women living as husbands and wives are unmarried. Mrs. Simpson, a Gipsy woman and a Christian, says she has six sons and daughters and sixteen grandchildren, and only two can read and write a little. Mrs. Eastwood says she has nine brothers and sisters. Mr. Eastwood, a Christian and a Gipsy, has eight brothers and sisters, many among them have large families, making a total of adults and children of about fifty of all ages, and there is scarcely one among them who can tell a letter or read a sentence; in addition to this number they have between them from 130 to 150 first and second cousins, among whom there are not more than two who can read or write, and that but very little indeed, and Mr. Eastwood thinks this proportion will apply to other Gipsies. Mrs. Trayleer has six brothers and sisters, all Gipsies, and not one can read or write. A Gipsy woman, whose head-quarters are near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, has fifteen brothers and sisters, some of whom have large families. She herself has fifteen sons and daughters alive, some of whom are married. But of the whole of these brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, &c., numbering not less than 100 of all ages, not more than three or four can read or write, and they who can but very imperfectly. Mrs. Matthews has a family of seven children, nearly all grown-up, and not one out of the whole of these can read or write; thus it will be seen that I shall be under the mark when I state that not five per cent. of the Gipsies, &c., travelling about the country in tents and vans can either read or write; and I have not found one Gipsy but what thinks it would be a good thing if their tents and vans were registered, and the children compelled to go to school—in fact, many of them are anxious for such a thing to be brought about. In the case of the brick-yard and canal-boat children, they were over-worked as well as ignorant. In the case of the Gipsy children, these children and roadside arabs, for the want of education, ambition, animation, and push, are indulging in practices that are fast working their own destruction and those they are brought into contact with, and a great deal of this may lay at the door of flattery, twaddle, petting, and fear.

"The plan I would adopt to remedy this sad state of things is to apply the principles of the Canal Boats Act of 1877 to all movable habitations—i.e., I would have all tents, shows, caravans, auctioneers' vans, and like places used as dwellings registered and numbered, and under proper sanitary arrangements and supervision of the sanitary inspectors and School Board officers in every town and village. With regard to the education of the children when once the tent or van is registered and numbered, the children, whether travelling as Gipsies, auctioneers, &c., are mostly idle during the day; consequently, a book similar to the half-time book, in which their names and attendance at school could be entered, they could take from place to place as they travel about, and it could be endorsed by the schoolmaster showing that the child was attending school. The education obtained in this way would not be of the highest order; but through the kindness of the schoolmaster—for which extra trouble he should be compensated, as he ought to be under the Canal Boats Act—and the vigilance of the School Board visitor, a plain, practical, and sound education could be imparted to, and obtained by, these poor little Gipsy children and roadside arabs, who, if we do our duty, will be qualified to fill the places of those of our best artisans who are leaving the country to seek their fortunes abroad."

The following is a leading article in the Birmingham Daily Mail, October 8th:—"Mr. George Smith, whose exertions on behalf of the canal population and the children employed in brick-yards have been accompanied with so much success, is now turning his attention to the education of the Gipsies. He read a paper on this subject at the Social Science Congress, yesterday, suggesting that the same plan of registration which had proved advantageous in the case of the canal-boatmen and their families should be adopted for the more nomadic class who roam from place to place, with no settled home and no local habitation. The Gipsies are a strange race, with a romantic history, and their vagabond life is surrounded with enough of the mysterious to give them at all times a special and curious interest. In the days of our infancy we are frightened with tales of their child-thieving propensities, and even when years and reason have asserted their influence we are apt to regard with a survival of our childish awe the wandering 'diviners and wicked heathens' who roam about the country, living in a mysterious aloofness from their fellow-men. Scores of theories have been propounded as to the origin of the Gipsy race, whence they sprang, and how they came to be so largely scattered over three of the four quarters of the globe. Opinion, following in the wake of the learned Rudiger, has finally settled down to the view that they came from India, but whether they are the Tshandalas referred to in the laws of Menou, or kinsmen of the Bazeegars of Calcutta, or are descended from the robbers of the Indus, or are identical with the Nuts and Djatts of Northern India, has not been ascertained with any degree of certainty. The Gyptologists are not yet agreed upon the ancestry of this ancient but obscure race, and possibly they never will be. We know, however, that the Gipsies have wandered up and down Europe since the eleventh century, if not from a still earlier period, and that they have preserved their Bohemian characteristics, their language—which is a sort of daughter of the old Sanscrit—their traditions, and the mysteries of their religion during a long career of restless movement and frequent persecution. And they have kept, too, their indolent, and not too creditable habits. Early in the twelfth century an Austrian monk described them as 'Ishmaelites and braziers, who go peddling through the wide world, having neither house, nor home, cheating the people with their tricks, and deceiving mankind, but not openly.' That description would hold good at the present day. The Gipsies are still a lazy, thieving set of rogues, who get their living by robbing hen-roosts, telling fortunes, and 'snapping up unconsidered trifles' like Autolycus of old. Pilfering, varied with a rude sort of magic, and the swindling arts of divination and chiromancy for the special behoof of credulous servant-girls, are the stock-in-trade of the modern Zingaris. Without education, and without industry, they transmit their vagrant habits to generation after generation, and perpetuate all the vices of a lawless and nomadic life.

"It is very easy to give a romantic and even a sentimental colouring to the wandering Romany. The 'greenwood home,' with its freedom from all the restraints of a conventional state of society, is not without its attractive side—in books and in ballads. Minor poets have told us that 'the Gipsy's life is a joyous life,' and plays and operas have been written to illustrate the superiority of vagabondage over civilisation. But the pretty Gitana of the stage is altogether a different sort of being from the brown-faced, elf-locked, and tawdrily dressed female who haunts back entries with the ostensible object of selling clothes-pegs, but with the real motive of picking up whatever may be lying in her way. There is but small chance of Bohemian Girls finding themselves in drawing-rooms nowadays. The last experiment of the kind was made by the writer of a charming book on the Gipsies, who was so fascinated by one of their number that he married her; but the wild, restless spirit was untameable, and the divorce court proved that the supposed precept of fidelity, which is said to guide the conduct of Gipsy wives, is not without its exceptions. The Gipsies have nothing in common with our conventional ways and habits, and whether it is possible ever to remove the barrier that separates them from civilisation is a question which only experiment can satisfactorily answer. Mr. Smith's scheme is not the first, by many, that has been made to improve the conditions of Gipsy life. Nearly half a century ago the Rev. Mr. Crabb, of Southampton, formed a society with the object of amalgamating the Gipsies with the general population, but the scheme was comparatively futile. Still, past failure is no reason why a new attempt should not be made. Mr. Smith says there cannot be less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy children moving about the country, outside the educational laws and the pale of civilisation, and not five per cent. of them can either read or write. Their mode of life is such as 'would shock the modesty of South African savages,' for men, women, and grown-up sons and daughters lie huddled together, and in many cases they 'live like pigs and die like dogs.' There is certainly room enough here for education, and education is the only thing that is likely to have any practical results.

"It is proposed that the principles of the Canal Boats Act shall be applied to all movable habitations; that is, that all tents, shows, caravans, auctioneers' vans, and like places used as dwellings, shall be registered and numbered, and put under proper sanitary supervision. Mr. Smith points out that when once a tent or van had been registered and numbered, it could be furnished with a book similar to a half-time book, in which the names of the children having first been entered, the attendances at school could be endorsed by the schoolmaster—for which extra trouble he should be compensated—as the children travelled about from place to place. By this means something tangible would be done to prevent the roadside waifs from growing up in the ignorance which is the parent of idleness. Why should these ten or fifteen thousand little nomads be allowed to remain in the neglected condition which has characterised their strange race for centuries? It is time that the spell was broken. There are no traditions of Gipsy life worth perpetuating; there is no sentimental halo around its history which it would be cruel to dispel. In past ages the Gipsies have been subjected to harsh laws and barbarous edicts; it remains for our more enlightened times to deal with them on a humaner plan. It is only by the expanding influence of education that the little minds of their children can gain a necessary experience of the utility and dignity of honest labour. When they have received some measure of instruction they will be fitter to emerge from the aimless and vagabond life of their forefathers, and break away from the squalor and precarious existence which has held so many generations of them in thrall. Mr. Smith's idea is worthy the attention of legislators. It does not look so grand on paper, we admit, but it is a nobler thing to educate the young barbarian at home than to make war upon the unoffending barbarian abroad. The instincts and habits which have been transmitted from father to son for hundreds of years are not, of course, to be eradicated in a day, or even in a generation; but the time will, perhaps, eventually come when the Gipsies will cease to exist as a separate and distinct people, and become absorbed into the general population of the country. Whether that absorption takes place sooner or later, nothing can be lost by conferring on the young 'Arabs' of the tents the rudiments of an education which will hereafter be helpful to them if they are desirous of abandoning their squalor and indolence, and of earning an industrious livelihood. Their dread of fixed and continuous occupation may die out in time, and closer intimacy with the conditions of industrial life may teach them that civilisation has some compensations to offer for the sacrifice of their roaming propensities, and for taking away from them their 'free mountains, their plains and woods, the sun, the stars, and the winds' which are the companions of their free and unfettered, but wasted and purposeless lives."

The Weekly Dispatch, in a leading article, October 13th, says:—"Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, has an eye for the nomads of the country. His name must already be unfavourably known throughout most of the canal barges of the United Kingdom. If he is not the Croquemitaine of every floating nursery journeying inland from the metropolis he ought to be, for it was mainly he who thrust a half-time book into the hands of the bargee and compelled him, by the Canal Boats Act of 1877, to soap his infants' faces and put primers in their way. With Smith of Coalville, therefore, it may be expected that each juvenile of the wharves and locks now associates his most unhappy moments. The half-time book of the act comes between him and the blessed state of his previous ignorance. Registered and numbered, supervised and inspected, he has been put on the road to know things that must necessarily disillusionise him of the black enchantments of life on the water highway. It is allowable to hope, however, that having recovered from the first discomforts of civilising soap and primers, he will yet live to appreciate Mr. Smith's name as one associated with kindly intent and generous aspirations in his behalf. A generation of bargemen who had a less uncompromising vocabulary of oaths, who could beguile some of the tedium of their voyaging with reading, and who in other important respects showed the influences of half-time, would be a smiling reward of philanthropy and an important addition to our civilisation. That Mr. Smith anticipates some such reward is evident from the eagerness with which he has been pushing the principle in another quarter. At the Social Science Congress he has just propounded a scheme of educational annexation for Gipsy children similar in every respect to that applied to the occupants of the canal-boats. That is, he would have every tent and van numbered and furnished with a half-time book, and he would ordain it as the duty of School Board visitors to see that the Gipsies render their children amenable to the terms of the act to the extent of their wandering ability, under threat of the usual penalties. The prospect which he foresees from such treatment is that a body of wanderers numbering not much below 20,000 will be rescued from a position which, he says, would at present shock South African savages, and will thus be brought in to honest industry and 'qualified to fill the places of our best artisans, who are leaving the country to seek their fortunes abroad.' It is impossible not to wish Mr. Smith's scheme well, especially as he contends that the Gipsies themselves are not averse to having their children educated; but it is equally impossible to be sanguine as to results. The true Gipsy, who is not to be confounded with the desultory hawker of English origin, has many arteries of untameable blood within him. He has never as yet shown the slightest concern about the English phases of civilisation which Mr. Smith would like to press upon his notice. Such ideas as those of God, immortality, and marriage are as unknown to him as the commonest distinction between mine and thine. He is a well-looking artistic vagabond, to whom a half-time book and a penalty will in all probability be no better than a standing joke to be cracked with impunity at the expense of the rural School Boards."

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

The Sportsman of October 16th, 1879, has the following notice:—"Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, whose philanthropic efforts on behalf of 'our canal-boat population' are well known, has lately turned his attention to the wandering Gipsy tribes who infest the roadside, with the view to procuring at least a modicum of education for their children. He says that the Gipsies are lamentably ignorant, few of them being able even to write their names. By certain proceedings which took place at Christchurch Police-court on Tuesday, it would almost seem that some of the dark-faced wanderers already are educated a little too much. At all events, they occasionally manifest an ability to 'take a stave' out of the rest of the community. At the court in question a Gipsy woman named Emma Barney was brought to task for 'imposing by subtle craft to extort money' from a Bournemouth shopkeeper named Richard Oliver. It seems that Oliver is troubled with pimples on his face, and that Emma Barney—not an inappropriate name, by the way—said she could cure these by means of a certain herb, the name of which she would divulge 'for a consideration.' Before doing so, however, she required Richard's coat and waistcoat, and some silver to 'steam in hot water,' after which the name of the herb would be given—on the following day. It is needless to say that the coat, waistcoat, and silver did not return to the Oliver home, and that the pimples did not depart from the Oliver face. The 'Gipsy's home' for the next two months will be in the county gaol. It is a curious reflection, however, that such strange credulity as that displayed by the Bournemouth shopkeeper in this case can be found in the present year of grace, with its gigantic machinery for educating the masses."

The following leading article, taken from the Daily Telegraph, under date October 17th of last year, will show that crime is far from abating among the classes of the Gipsy fraternity:—"The melancholy truth that there exists a 'breed' of criminals in all societies was well illustrated at Exeter this week. Sir John Duckworth, as Chairman of the Devon Quarter Sessions, in charging the grand jury, had to tell them that the calendar was very heavy, the heaviest, in fact, known for many years. There were forty-five prisoners for trial, whereas the average number is twenty-five, taking the last five years. Sir John could assign no particular reason for such a lamentable increase, though he supposed the prevailing depression of trade might have had something to do with it. But he pointed out a very notable fact indeed, which sprang from an examination of the gaol delivery, and this was that out of the forty-five prisoners twenty had been previously convicted. Such a percentage goes far to prove that the criminal propensity is innate, and to a certain degree ineradicable by punishments; and this only enhances the immense importance of national education, by which alone society can hope to conquer the predatory tendency in certain baser blood, and to supply it with the means and the instincts of industry. In justice, however, to the existing generation of criminals, we ought also to remember that such serious figures further prove the difficulty encountered by released prisoners in living honestly. A rat will not steal where traps are set if it can only find food in the open, and some of these twice-captured vermin of our community might tell a piteous tale of the obstacles that lie in the way of honesty."

The Weekly Times, under date October 26th, 1879, has the following article upon the Gipsies near London. The locality described is not one hundred miles from Mary's Place and Notting Hill Potteries. The writer goes on to say that "There are at the present time upwards of two thousand people—men, women, and children, members of the Gipsy tribe—camped in the outlying districts of London. They are settled upon waste places of every kind. Bits of ground that will ere long be occupied by houses, waste corners that seem to be of no good for anything, yards belonging to public-houses, or pieces of 'common' over which no authority claims any rights; or if there are rights, the authority is too obscure to interfere with such poor settlers as Gipsies, who will move away again before an authoritative opinion can be pronounced upon any question affecting them. The Gipsies, in the winter, certainly cause very few inconveniences in such places as the metropolis. They do not cause rents to rise. They are satisfied to put up their tent where a Londoner would only accommodate his pig or his dog, and they certainly do not affect the balance of labour, few of them being ever guilty of robbing a man of an honest day's work. Yet, with all their failings, the Gipsies have always found friends ready to take their part in times of trouble, and crave a sufferance on account of their hard lot, and the scanty measure with which the good things of this life have been, and still are, meted out to them. Constrained by an irresistible force to keep ever moving, they fulfil the fate imposed upon them with a degree of cheerfulness which no other class of people would exhibit. As the approach of winter reduces outdoor pursuits to the fewest possible number, the farm labourer finds it difficult to employ the whole of his time profitably, and those who only follow an outdoor life for the pleasures it yields naturally gravitate towards the shelter of large towns in which to spend the winter months of every year. So when the cold winds begin to blow, and the leaves are falling, the Gipsies come to town, and settle upon the odd nooks and corners, and fill up the unused yards, and eat and drink, and bring up children, in the very places where their fathers and grandfathers have done the same before them. The young men get a day's work where they can; the young women hawk wool mats, laces, or other women's vanities; while the more skilful go round with rope mats, and every form of chair or stool that can be made of rushes and canes. The old folks do a little grinding of knives, or tinker pots and pans; and, if a fine day or a pleasure fair calls forth all the useful mouths and hands from their tents and caravans, the babies will take care of themselves in the straw which makes the pony's bed until some member of the camp returns home in the evening. So the winter months pass away, and in the spring, when the cuckoo begins to call, these restless-footed people, whose origin no man is acquainted with, go forth again, and in the lanes and woods, or on the commons of the country, pass their summer, earning a precarious subsistance—honestly if they can—content with hard food and poor clothes, so that they may feel the free air of heaven blowing about them night and day, while the sun paints their cheeks the colour of the ancient Egyptians. Our Gipsies have always been a favourite study with ethnological folk; poets have sung their wild, free life, and painters have taken them as types of the happy, if the careless; while philanthropists have occasionally gone amongst them, and told pitiful tales of their degradation, ignorance, and misery. It was not from any feeling of romance or pity that we were induced the other day to accept an invitation from Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, to spend a few hours amongst some of these people. Mr. George Smith's life has been devoted to the amelioration of the condition of many very poor and almost entirely neglected classes of the community, and it was pleasant to have the opportunity of going with such a simple-hearted hero amongst those in whom he takes a deep interest. Having devoted many years of his life to the poor brick-yard children, and afterwards to the children labouring in canal-boats, he has found one more class still left outside every Act of Parliament, and beyond every chance of being helped in the right way to earn an honest living and become industrious members of society. These are the Gipsies and their children, who have been let alone so severely by all so-called right-thinking men and women that there is great danger of their becoming a sore evil in our midst. Unable to read or write—their powers of thought thereby cramped—with no one to look after them, separated from the people in whose midst they live, there can be little wonder that they should grow up with certain loose notions about right and wrong, and a manner of life the reverse of that which prevails amongst Christian people; but, now that Mr. George Smith has got his eyes and his heart fixed upon them, there will surely be something done which, in the near future, will redeem these people from many of the disadvantages under which they labour, and add to the body corporate a tribe possessed of many amiable characteristics. Mr. Smith never takes up more than one thing at a time, and upon the accomplishment of it he concentrates all his energies. This attribute is the one which has enabled him to carry to successful conclusions the acts for the relief of the brick-yard and the canal-boat children; but while he is about a work he becomes thoroughly possessed by his subject, and the most important event that may happen for the country, or for the world, loses all value in his eyes unless it bears directly upon the accomplishment of the object in hand. Thus it happened that, from the time we sallied out together in search of a Gipsy camp, until the moment we parted at night, Mr. Smith thought of nothing, spoke of nothing, remembered nothing, saw nothing, but what had some relation to the Gipsies and their mode of life. The Zulus were to be pitied because theirs was a sort of Gipsy life; and the Gipsies' tents were nothing more than kraals. All his stories were of what Gipsies he had met, and what they had said; and even our fellow-travellers in the train were only noticeable because they looked like some Gipsy man or woman whom he had met elsewhere. We had a short ride by rail, and a tramp through a densely-populated district, and then we came to the camping-ground we wanted. It was a spacious yard, entered through a gate, and surrounded with houses, whose back yards formed the enclosure. There were three caravans and three kraals erected there, and as it was Sunday afternoon nearly all the inhabitants were at home. Those who were absent were a few children able to go to Sunday-school, whither they went of their own free will and with the approval of their parents. The kraals were not all constructed on the same pattern—two were circular in form and the third was square. This was on the right hand at entering, and had at one time been a tumble-down shelter for a calf, who had many years before gone the way of all beef—into a butcher's shop. There were tiles on the low roof—in places—but plenty of openings were left for the rain to come in, and for the smoke from the fire in the bucket to find a way out if it chose. The floor was common earth, and very uneven in places. Alice, the mistress of this abode, was a woman over fifty, with a face the colour of leather, and vigour enough to do any amount of work. As we entered, she told Mr. Smith a piteous tale of the loss of her spectacles, without which she solemnly declared she could not read a line. She left the spectacles one day when she was going 'hopping,' hidden under a tile above her head, and when she returned the case was there, but the spectacles were gone. She carried her licence to hawk in her spectacle-case, until the time came when she could happily beg the gift of a pair of new ones. Her husband, a white-haired old man, with a look of innocent wonder in his face, sat on a lump of wood, warming his hands over the fire. He said little—his wife scarcely allowing an opportunity for any one else to speak—but seemed to consider that he was a fortunate man in having such a remarkable wife. There was a handsome young woman sitting in the only chair in the place, daughter of the old couple; and her brother lay extended on a bed made of indescribable things in one portion of the cabin, where the tiles in the roof showed no openings to the sky. His wife, a thoroughbred Gipsy, sat nursing a baby—their first-born—on the edge of the bed. The wood walls were covered with old clothes, sacking, and a variety of odd things, fastened in their places by wooden skewers, and adorned with a few pots and pans used in cooking. Here, for six or seven winters, this family had resided, defying alike the frosts and snows and rains of the most severe winters. Nor could they be made to admit that a cottage would be more comfortable; that hut had served them well enough so many years, and would be good enough as long as they lived. Besides, said Alice, the rent was a consideration, and the whole yard only cost 2s. a week. This woman was the mother of eighteen children, of whom eleven were living. Drawn up close by was a caravan, in the occupation at the time of two young women, thorough Gipsies in face and tongue, who chaffed us as to the object of our visit, and begged hard for some kind of remembrance to be left with them. But we did not accept their invitation to walk up, but passed down the yard, by heaps of manure and refuse of all kinds, by another kraal, where a bucket containing coal was burning, and a young man lay stretched on a dirty mattress, and a little bantam kept watch beside him, to the steps of another caravan, where, from the sounds we heard, high jinks were going on with some children. At the sound of a tap on the door there was an instant hush, and then a girl of nineteen, who had a baby in her arms, asked us to come in. We looked up in amazement; the girl's face appeared like an apparition—so fair, so beautiful, so like some face we had seen elsewhere, that we were confused and puzzled. In a moment the mystery was solved; we had seen that face before in several of the choicest canvases that have hung in recent years upon the walls of the Academy; we had met with the fairest Gipsy model that ever stood before the students of the Academy, the favourite alike of the young artist and the head of his profession. It can only fall to the lot of a few to see Annie, the Gipsy model; but the curious may look upon her counterpart, only of heroic size, in Clytie, at the British Museum. Annie has a face of exquisite Grecian form, and a hand so delicate that it has been painted more than once in the 'portrait of a titled lady.' When she was a very little girl, she told us, hawking laces in a basket one day, a gentleman met her at the West-end who was a painter, and from that day to the present Annie has earned a living—and at times of great distress maintained all the family—by the fees she received as a model. Her mother had had nine children, of whom eight were living; and three of the family are constantly employed as models. Annie is one, the young fellow who was watched over by the bantam was another, and a boy of four was the third. The father is of pure Gipsy blood, but the mother is an Oxfordshire woman, and neither of them possess any striking characteristic in their faces; yet all their girls are singularly beautiful, and their sons handsome fellows. They have got a reputation for beauty now, and ladies have, but without success, tried to negotiate for the possession of the youngest. Never before had we seen such fair faces, such dainty limbs, such exquisite eyes, as were possessed by the Gipsy occupants of that caravan. Annie was as modest and gentle-voiced and mannered as she was beautiful; and there came a flush of trouble over her fair face as she told us that not being able to read or write had 'been against' her all her life. There was more refinement about Annie and her mother than we had discovered amongst others with whom we had conversed. Thus, Annie, speaking of her grandfather, laid great emphasis on the assertion that he was a fine man. He lived to be 104, she said, and walked as upright as a young man to his death. He went about crying 'chairs to mend,' in that very locality, up to within a short time of his death, and all the old ladies employed him because he was so handsome. She was playing with a baby girl as she talked with us, and the child fixed her black eyes upon her sister's face, and crooned with baby pleasure. 'What is baby's name,' we asked? 'Comfort,' replied Annie. 'We were hopping one year' said the mother, 'and there was a young woman in the party I took to very much, and her name was Comfort. Coming away from the hop grounds, the caravans had to cross a river, and while we were in the water one day the river suddenly rose, the caravans were upset, and eleven were drowned, Comfort amongst the number. So I christened baby after her in remembrance.' All the family were neatly dressed, and once, when Annie opened the cupboard door for an instant, we caught sight of a dish of small currant puddings."

A visit to a batch of Gipsy wigwams, Wardlow Street, Garrett Lane, Wandsworth, induced me to send the following letter to the London and country daily papers, and it appeared in the Daily Chronicle and Daily News, November 20th, as under:—"The following touching incident may slightly show the thorough heartfelt desire there is—but lacking the power—among the Gipsies to be partakers of some of the sanitary and educational advantages the Gorgios or Gentiles are the recipients of. A few days since I wended my way to a large number of Gipsies located in tents, huts, and vans near Wandsworth Common, to behold the pitiable spectacle of some sixty half-naked, poor Gipsy children, and thirty Gipsy men and women, living in a state of indescribable ignorance, dirt, filth, and misery, mostly squatting upon the ground, making their beds upon peg shavings and straw, and divested of the last tinge of romantical nonsense, which is little better in this case—used as a deal of it is—than paper pasted upon the windows, to hide from public view the mass of human corruption which has been festering in our midst for centuries, breeding all kinds of sin and impurities, except in the eyes of those who see beautiful colours and delights in the aroma of stagnant pools and beauty in the sparkling hues of the gutter, and revel in adding tints and pictures to the life and death of a weasel, lending enchantment to the life of a vagabond, and admire the non-intellectual development of beings many of whom are only one step from that of animals, if I may judge from the amount of good the 20,000 Gipsies have accomplished in the world during the last three or four centuries. Connected with this encampment not more than four or five of the poor creatures could read a sentence or write a letter. In creeping almost upon 'all-fours,' into one of the tents, I came across a real, antiquated, live, good kind of Gipsy woman named Britannia Lee, who boasted that she was a Lee of the fourth generation; and in sitting down upon a seat that brought my knees upon a level with my chin, I entered into conversation with the family about the objects of my inquiries—of which they said they had heard all about—viz., to get all the Gipsy tents, vans, and other movable habitations in the country registered and under proper sanitary arrangements, and the children compelled to attend school wherever they may be temporarily located, and to receive an education which will in some degree help to get these poor unfortunate people out of the heartrending and desponding condition into which they have been allowed to sink. Although Mrs. Lee was ill and poor, her face beamed with gladness to find that I was trying in my humble way to do the Gipsy children good; and in a kind of maternal feeling she said she should be pleased to show her deep interest in my work, and asked me if I would accept all the money she had in the world, viz., one penny and two farthings? With much persuasion and hesitation, and under fear of offending her, I accepted them, which I purpose keeping as a token of a woman's desire to do something towards improving her 'kith and kin.' She said that Providence would see that she was no loser for the mite she had given to me. He once sent her, in her extremity, a shilling in the middle of a potato, which she found when cooking. With many expressions of 'God bless you in your work among the children! You will be rewarded some day for all your time, trouble, and expense,' we parted."

The London correspondent of the Croydon Chronicle writes as under, on November 22nd, touching a visit we both made to a number of poor Gipsy children squatting about upon Mitcham Common. Among other things he says:—"I have had a day in your neighbourhood with George Smith, of Coalville. He is visiting all the Gipsy grounds he can find and reach, for the purpose of gaining information as to the condition of the swarms of children who live in squalor and ignorance under tents. He is of opinion that he will be able to get them into schools, and do as much for them generally as he has done for the brick-field and canal children; and I have no doubt myself that he will succeed. Well, the other day he asked me to have a run round with him, and we went to Mitcham Common to see some of the families there. He told me that one of the Gipsy women had been confined, and that she wanted him to give the child a name. He did not know what to call it, so we had to put our heads together and settle the matter. After a great deal of careful deliberation he decided that when we reached the common the child should be called 'Deliverance.' I have been told that this sounds like the name of a new ironclad, and perhaps it would have done as well for one as for the other. The tents were much of a character—some kind of stitched-together rags thrown over sticks. Our visit was made on a fine day, when it was not particularly cold, and the first tent we came to had been opened at the top. We looked over (these tents are only about five feet high), and beheld six children, the eldest being a girl of about eight or ten. The father was anywhere to suit the imagination, and the mother was away hawking. These children, sitting on the ground with a fire in the middle of them, were making clothes-pegs. The process seemed simple. The sticks are chopped into the necessary lengths and put into a pan of hot water. This I suppose swells the wood and loosens the bark. A child on the other side takes out the sticks as they are done and bites off the bark with its teeth. Then there is a boy who puts tin round them, and so the work goes on. When the day is done they look for the mother coming home from hawking with anything she may have picked up. When they have devoured such scraps and pickings as are brought, they lie down where they have worked and as they are, and go to sleep. It is a wonderful and mysterious arrangement of Providence that they can sleep. They have only a rag between them and the snow. A good wind would blow their homes over the trees. I do not wish to make any particularly violent remarks, but I should like some of the comfortable clergymen of your neighbourhood, when they have done buying their toys and presents for young friends at Christmas, to walk to Mitcham Common and see how the children are there. They would then find out what humbugs they are, and how it is they do the work of the Master. One tent is very much like another. We visited about half-a-dozen, and we then went to name the child. We stayed in this tent for about ten minutes. It was inhabited by two families, numbering in all about twenty. I talked a little time with the woman lying on the ground, and she uncovered the baby to show it to me. I do not know whether it is a boy or a girl, but 'Deliverance' will do for either one or the other. She asked me to write the name on a piece of paper, and I did so. With a few words, as jolly as we could make them, we crawled out, thanks and blessings following George Smith, as they always do."

[Picture: A Gipsy Tent for Two Men, their Wives, and Eleven Children, and in which "Deliverance" was born]

Leading article in the Primitive Methodist, November 27th:—"Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, is endeavouring to do a work for the children of Gipsies similar to that he has done for the children employed in brick-yards and the children of canal-boatmen—that is, bring them under some sort of supervision, so that they may secure at least a small share in the educational advantages of the country. Recently he published an account of a visit to an encampment of the Gipsies near Wandsworth Common, and it is evident that these wanderers without any settled place of abode look on his efforts with some considerable approval. The encampment was made up of a number of tents, huts, and vans, and contained some sixty half-naked poor Gipsy children and thirty Gipsy men and women, living in an indescribable state of ignorance, dirt, filth, and misery, mostly squatting upon the ground, or otherwise making their beds upon peg shavings and straw; and it turned out upon inquiry that not more than four of these poor creatures could read a sentence or write a letter. They are, however, not indisposed to be subject to regulations that will contribute to their partial education, if to nothing more. In passing from one of these miserable habitations to another, Mr. Smith found an old Gipsy woman proud of her name and descent, for she was a Lee, and a Lee of the fourth generation. To this old woman he explained his purpose, sitting on a low seat under the cover of the tent with his knees on a level with his chin. He wanted, he said, 'to get all the Gipsy tents and vans, and other movable habitations in the country, registered and under proper sanitary arrangements, and the children compelled to attend school wherever they may be temporarily located, and to receive an education which will in some degree help to get them out of the low, heartrending condition into which they have been allowed to sink.' Mrs. Lee listened with pleasure to this narration of Mr. Smith's purpose, and, though in great poverty, desired to aid this good work. Her stock of cash amounted to three-halfpence; but this she insisted upon giving, so that she might contribute a little, at any rate, towards the improvement of her people. We hope Mr. Smith may succeed in his work, and succeed speedily, so that these Gipsy children, who are trained up to a vagabond life, may have a chance of learning something better. And evidently, from Mr. Smith's experience, there is no hostility to such a measure as he wishes to have made law among the Gipsies themselves."

Owing to my letters, papers, articles and paragraphs, and efforts in other directions during the last several months, the Gipsy subject might now be fairly considered to have made good headway, consequently the proprietor of the Illustrated London News, without any difficulty, was induced—in fact, with pleasure—to have a series of sketches of Gipsy life in his journal, the first appearing November 29th, connected with which was the following notice, and in which he says:—"Our illustrations, from a sketch taken by one of our artists in the neighbourhood of Latimer Road, Notting Hill, which is not far from Wormwood Scrubs, show the habits of living folk who are to be found as well in the outskirts of London, where there are many chances of picking up a stray bit of irregular gain, as in more rural parts of the country. The figure of a gentleman introduced into this sketch, who appears to be conversing with the Gipsies in their waggon encampment, is that of Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, the well-known benevolent promoter of social reform and legislative protection for the long-neglected class of people employed on canal-barges, whose families, often living on board these vessels, are sadly in want of domestic comfort and of education for the children." The editor also inserted my Congress paper fully. The following week another sketch of Gipsy life appeared in the same journal, connected with which were the following remarks:—"Another sketch of the wild and squalid habits of life still retained by vagrant parties or clans of this singular race of people, often met with in the neighbourhood of suburban villages and other places around London, will be found in our journal. We may again direct the reader's attention to the account of them which was contributed by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, to the late Social Science Congress at Manchester, and which was reprinted in our last week's publication. That well-known advocate of social reform and legal protection for the neglected vagrant classes of our population reckons the total number of Gipsies in this country at three or four thousand men and women and ten thousand children. He is now seeking to have all movable habitations—i.e., tents, vans, shows, &c.—in which the families live who are earning a living by travelling from place to place, registered and numbered, as in the case of canal-boats, and the parents compelled to send their children to school at the place wherever they may be temporarily located, be it National, British, or Board school. The following is Mr. Smith's note upon what was to be seen in the Gipsies' tent on Mitcham Common:—

"'Inside this tent—with no other home—there were two men, their wives, and about fourteen children of all ages: two or three of these were almost men and women. The wife of one of the men had been confined of a baby the day before I called—her bed consisting of a layer of straw upon the damp ground. Such was the wretched and miserable condition they were in that I could not do otherwise than help the poor woman, and gave her a little money. But, in her feelings of gratitude to me for this simple act of kindness, she said she would name the baby anything I would like to chose; and, knowing that Gipsies are fond of outlandish names, I was in a difficulty. After turning the thing over in my mind for a few hours, I could think of nothing but "Deliverance." This seemed to please the poor woman very much; and the poor child is named Deliverance G—-. Strange to say, the next older child is named "Moses."'"

On December 13th, an additional sketch, showing the inside of a van, was given, to which were added the following remarks:—"Another sketch of the singular habits and rather deplorable condition of these vagrant people, who hang about, as the parasites of civilisation, close on the suburban outskirts of our wealthy metropolis, is presented by our artist, following those which have appeared in the last two weeks. Mr. G. Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, having taken in hand the question of providing due supervision and police regulation for the Gipsies, with compulsory education for their children, we readily dedicate these local illustrations to the furtherance of his good work. The ugliest place we know in the neighbourhood of London, the most dismal and forlorn, is not Hackney Marshes, or those of the Lea, beyond Old Ford, at the East-end; but it is the tract of land, half torn up for brick-field clay, half consisting of fields laid waste in expectation of the house-builder, which lies just outside of Shepherd's Bush and Notting Hill. There it is that the Gipsy encampment may be found, squatting within an hour's walk of the Royal palaces and of the luxurious town mansions of our nobility and opulent classes, to the very west of the fashionable West-end, beyond the gentility of Bayswater and Whiteley's avenue of universal shopping. It is a curious spectacle in that situation, and might suggest a few serious reflections upon social contrasts at the centre and capital of the mighty British nation, which takes upon itself the correction of every savage tribe in South and West Africa and Central Asia. The encampment is usually formed of two or three vans and a rude cabin or a tent, placed on some piece of waste ground, for which the Gipsy party have to pay a few shillings a week of rent. This may be situated at the back of a row of respectable houses, and in full view of their bedroom or parlour windows, not much to the satisfaction of the quiet inhabitants. The interior of one of the vans, furnished as a dwelling-room, which is shown in our artist's sketch, does not look very miserable; but Mr. Smith informs us that these receptacles of vagabond humanity are often sadly overcrowded. Besides a man, his wife, and their own children, the little ones stowed in bunks or cupboards, there will be several adult persons taken in as lodgers. The total number of Gipsies now estimated to be living in the metropolitan district is not less than 2,000. Among these are doubtless not a small proportion of idle runaways or 'losels' from the more settled classes of our people. It would seem to be the duty of somebody at the Home Office, for the sake of public health and good order, to call upon some local authorities of the county or the parish to look after these eccentricities of Gipsy life."

On January 3rd, 1880, additional illustrations were given in the Illustrated London News. 1. Tent at Hackney; 2. Tent at Hackney; 3. Sketch near Latimer Road, Notting Hill; 4. A Bachelor's Bedroom, Mitcham Common; 5. Encampment at Mitcham Common; 6. A Knife-grinder at Hackney Wick; 7. A Tent at Hackney Marshes. "A few additional sketches, continuing those of this subject which have appeared in our journal, are engraved for the present number. It is estimated by Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, Leicester, who has recently been exploring the queer outcast world of Gipsydom in different parts of England, that some 2,000 people called by that name, but of very mixed race, living in the manner of Zulu Kaffirs rather than of European citizens, frequent the neighbourhood of London. They are not all thieves, not even all beggars and impostors, and they escape the law of vagrancy by paying a few shillings of weekly rent for pitching their tents or booths, and standing their waggons or wheeled cabins, on pieces of waste ground. The western side of Notting Hill, where the railway passenger going to Shepherd's Bush or Hammersmith sees a vast quantity of family linen hung out to dry in the gardens and courtyards of small dwelling-houses, bordered towards Wormwood Scrubs by a dismal expanse of brick-fields, might tempt the Gipsies so inclined to take a clean shirt or petticoat—certainly not for their own wearing. But we are not aware that the police inspectors and magistrates of that district have found such charges more numerous in their official record than has been experienced in other quarters of London; and it is possible that honest men and women, though of irregular and slovenly habits, may exist among this odd fragment of our motley population. It is for the sake of their children, who ought to be, at least equally with those of the English labouring classes, since they cannot get it from their parents, provided with means of decent Christian education, that Mr. George Smith has brought this subject under public notice. The Gipsies, so long as they refrain from picking and stealing, and do not obstruct the highways, should not be persecuted; for they are a less active nuisance than the Italian organ-grinders in our city streets, whose tormenting presence we are content to suffer, to the sore interruption both of our daily work and our repose. But it is expedient that there should be an Act of Parliament, if the Home Secretary has not already sufficient legal powers, to establish compulsory registration of the travelling Gipsy families, and a strict licensing system, with constant police supervision, for their temporary encampments, while their children should be looked after by the local School Board. These measures, combined with judicious offers of industrial help for the adults and industrial training for the juniors, with the special exercise of Poor-Law Guardian administration, and some parochial or missionary religious efforts, might put an end to vagabond Gipsy life in England before the commencement of the twentieth century, or within one generation. We hope to see the matter discussed in the House of Lords or the House of Commons during the ensuing session; for it actually concerns the moral and social welfare of more than thirty thousand people in our own country, which is an interest quite as considerable as that we have in Natal or the Transvaal, among Zulus and Basutos, and the rest of Kaffirdom. The sketches we now present in illustration of this subject are designed to show the squalid and savage aspect of Gipsy habitations in the suburban districts, at Hackney and Hackney Wick, north-east of London; where the marsh-meadows of the river Lea, unsuitable for building-land, seem to forbid the extension of town streets and blocks of brick or stuccoed terraces; where the pleasant wooded hills of Epping and Hainault Forest appear in the distance, inviting the jaded townsman, on summer holidays, to saunter in the Royal Chace of the old English kings and queens; where genuine ruralities still lie within an hour's walk, of which the fashionable West-ender knoweth nought. There lurks the free and fearless Gipsy scamp, if scamp he truly be, with his squaw and his piccaninnies, in a wigwam hastily constructed of hoops and poles and blankets, or perhaps, if he be the wealthy sheikh of his wild Bedouin tribe, in a caravan drawn from place to place by some lost and strayed plough-horse, the lawful owner of which is a farmer in Northamptonshire. Far be it from us to say or suspect that the Gipsy stole the horse; 'convey, the wise it call;' and if horse or donkey, dog, or pig, or cow, if cock and hen, duck or turkey, be permitted to escape from field or farmyard, these fascinated creatures will sometimes follow the merry troop of 'Romany Rye' quite of their own accord, such is the magic of Egyptian craft and the innate superiority of an Oriental race. These Gipsies, Zingari, Bohemians, whatever they be called in the kingdoms of Europe, are masters of a secret science of mysterious acquisition, as remote from proved crime of theft or fraud as from the ways of earning or winning by ordinary industry and trade. There is many a rich and splendid establishment at the West-end supported by a different application of the same mysterious craft. Solicitors and stockbrokers may have seen it in action. It is that of silently appropriating what no other person may be quite prepared to claim."

The following remarks appeared in the December number of The Quiver:—"Mr. George Smith, who has earned a much-respected and worthy name by his interest in and persevering efforts for the well-being of our canal population, is bent on doing similar service for the Gipsy children and roadside arabs, who are sadly too numerous in the suburban and rural districts of the land. By securing the registration of canal-boats as human domiciles, he has brought quite a host of poor little outcasts within the pale of society and the beneficent influence of the various educational machineries of the age. By bringing the multitudinous tents, vans, shows, and their peripatetic lodgers under some similar arrangements, he hopes to put civilisation, education, and Christianity within reach, of the thousand ragged Ishmaelites who are at present left to grow up in ignorance and degradation. These vagrant juveniles are growing up to strengthen the ranks of the unproductive and criminal classes; and policy, philanthropy, and Christianity alike demand that the nomadic waifs should be encircled by the arms of an ameliorating law which will give them a chance of escaping from the life of semi-barbarity to which untoward circumstances have consigned them, and to place them in a position to make something better of the life that now is, and to secure some fitting preparation for the life that is to come. It is evidently high time that something should be done, otherwise we must sooner or later be faced with more serious difficulties than even now exist. Our sympathies are strongly with the warm-hearted philanthropist; and we trust that in taking to this new field of effort he will win all needful aid, and that his endeavours to rescue from a life of crime and vagabondage these hitherto much-neglected little ones will be crowned with success.

"'The glories of our mortal state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate— Death lays its icy hands on kings: Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade: Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.'—Shirley."

The following is my letter, relating to the poor little Gipsy children's homes, as it appeared in the Daily News, Daily Chronicle, and other London and country daily papers, December 2nd:—"Amongst some of the sorrowful features of Gipsy life I have noticed lately, none call more loudly for Government help, assistance, and supervision than the wretched little rag and stick hovels, scarcely large enough to hold a costermonger's wheelbarrow, in which the poor Gipsy women and children are born, pig, and die—aye, and men too, if they can be called Gipsies, with three-fourths, excepting the faintest cheering tint, of the blood of English scamps and vagabonds in their reins, and the remainder consisting of the blood of the vilest rascals from India and other nations. A real Gipsy of the old type, of which there are but few, will tell you a lie and look straight at you with a chuckle and grin; the so-called Gipsy now will tell you a lie and look a thousand other ways while doing so. In their own interest, and without mincing matters, it is time the plain facts of their dark lives were brought to daylight, so that the brightening and elevating effects of public opinion, law, and the Bible may have their influence upon the character of the little ones about to become in our midst the men and women of the future. Outside their hovels or sack huts, poetically called 'tents' and 'encampments,' but in reality schools for teaching their children how to gild double-dyed lies,—sugar-coat deception, gloss idleness and filth, paint immorality with Asiatic ideas, notions, and hues, and put a pleasant and cheerful aspect upon taking things that do not belong to them, may be seen thousands of ragged, half-naked, dirty, ignorant and wretched Gipsy children, and the men loitering about mostly in idleness. Inside their sack hovels are to be found man, wife, and six or seven children of all ages, not one of them able to read or write, squatting or sleeping upon a bed of straw, which through the wet and damp is often little better than a manure-heap, in fact sometimes completely rotten, and as a Gipsy woman told me last week, 'it is not fit to be handled with the hands.' In noticing that many of the Gipsy children have a kind of eye-disease, I am told by the women that it is owing to the sulphur arising from the coke fire they have upon the ground in their midst, and which at times also causes the children to turn pale and sickly. The sulphur affects the men and women in various ways, sometimes causing a kind of stupor to come over them. I have noticed farther that many of the adults are much pitted with small-pox. It is a wonder to me that there is not more disease among them than there appears to be, considering that they are huddled together, regardless of sex or age, in the midst of a damp atmosphere rising out of the ground, and impregnated with the sulphur of their coke fires. Probably their flitting habits prevent detection. My plan to improve their condition is not by prosecuting them and breaking up their tents and vans and turning them into the roads pell-mell, but to bring their habitations under the sanitary officers and their children under the schoolmaster in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act, and it has the approval of these wandering herds. The process will be slow but effective, and without much inconvenience. Unless something be done for them in the way I have indicated, they will drift into a state similar to Darwin's forefathers and prove to the world that civilisation and Christianity are a failure."

The following article appears in the Christian World, December 19th, by Christopher Crayon (J. Ewing Ritchie), in which he says:—"The other day I was witness to a spectacle which made me feel a doubt as to whether I was living in the nineteenth century. I was, as it were, within the shadow of that mighty London where Royalty resides, where the richest Church in Christendom rejoices in its Abbey and Cathedral, and its hundreds of churches, where an enlightened and energetic Dissent has not only planted its temples in every district, but has sent forth its missionary agents into every land, where the fierce light of public opinion, aided by a Press which never slumbers, is a terror to them that do evil, and a praise to them that do well; a city which we love to boast heads the onward march of man; and yet the scene before me was as intensely that of savage life, as if I had been in a Zulu kraal, and savage life destitute of all that lends it picturesque attractions, or ideal charms. I was standing in the midst of some twenty tents and vans, inhabited by that wandering race of whose origin we know so little, and of whose future we know less. The snow was on the ground, there was frost in the very air. Within a few yards was a great Board school; close by were factories and workshops, and the other concomitants of organised industrial life. Yet in that small area the Gipsies held undisputed sway. In or about London there are, it is calculated, some two thousand of these dwellers in tents. In all England there are some twenty thousand of these sons of Ishmael, with hands against every one, or, perhaps to put it more truly, with every one's hands against them. In summer-time their lot is by no means to be envied; in winter their state is deplorable indeed.