To illustrate more fully the plans I suggest for improving the condition of the canal, gipsy, and other travelling children, and to bring to the surface all the weak as well as the strong points which the working out might reveal, I cannot do better, I think, than introduce my readers to an imaginary large gathering of my friends, with a real object in hand, in one of the Committee rooms at the House of Commons, which list of friends, including Lord Aberdare, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Stanhope, Sir William V. Harcourt, M.P., Sir Richard A. Cross, M.P., Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P., Mr. J. T. Hibbert, M.P., Mr. Mundella, M.P., Mr. Alexander McArthur, M.P., Mr. W. H. Wills, M.P., Mr. A. Pell, M.P., Mr. Salt, M.P., Mr. Thomas Burt, M.P., Mr. Frank A. Bevan, Mr. Edwin Lawrence, will be found in my previous works, and earlier in this, together with many other valuable friends and well-wishers to the cause of the poor neglected brickyard, canal, and gipsy children. Their names will ever be remembered and spoken of by me with the profoundest respect. They are names that stand high in the legislative, literary, press, philanthropic, social, and religious annals of our country, irrespective of creed, sect, or party; and nothing, had space been at my disposal, would have given me greater pleasure than that of showing my gratitude to them by placing all their names upon these pages. [339]

Question 1. “Would you explain to us more fully than you have done in your Congress papers and ‘Gipsy Life,’ the plans you refer to for bringing about an improvement in the condition of the gipsy and other travelling children?”

In the first place, as I have previously stated, all the vans and other temporary movable dwellings should be registered in a manner analogous to that provided under the Canal Boats Act of 1877. The certificate to be renewable annually at any of the Urban or Rural Sanitary Authorities in the country, the owner of the tent or van paying a sum of ten shillings per annum; to be equally divided between the local authorities and the Local Government Board.

Question 2. “Will you explain to us how the ten shillings is to be collected and divided between the government and the local authorities?”

I would propose that the five shillings paid to the Government should be paid in the form of a charge upon each certificate; or, in other words, each certificate of registration should be stamped with a five shilling stamp, and collected by the Government as the other stamps are collected. The other five shillings should be kept by the local authorities for their trouble and expense in the matter.

Question 3. “How do you propose dealing with the fines?”

The fines should be handed over to the local sanitary authorities, who, I suggest, with the sanction of the Local Government Board, should enforce the Act.

Question 4. “How would you meet the case of a man who, with his family, is at the end of the year, when his annual certificate expires, a hundred miles away from the place where he obtained his certificate of registration?”

I will try to illustrate my meaning in this way. Suppose that a man registered his van at Tunstall, Staffordshire, in the first instance, say, on January, 1883, but during the year he had wandered all over the country almost, and on January, 1884, he was at Northampton with his van and family. I propose that he should take his last certificate of registration to the sanitary authority at Northampton and get it renewed. This plan works out right in the case of hawkers. Of course, the van would have to be brought to the officers, or at any rate, it would have to be where it could be inspected.

Question 5. “You say in your Congress papers that the certificate should be taken on the first of January in each year. Now suppose a man wanted to register his van in October, would the owner be required to pay the sum of ten shillings for the remaining two months of the year, and then be required to take out another certificate on the following January?”

According to the plan sketched out in my Congress paper it would be so; but on further consideration it would, I think, be much more simple, fair, and easy if the certificates were taken out for a year at any time or place the owner thought fit to apply for them.

Question 6. “Will you explain why it is that you think the certificates of registration should be renewed annually? Would it not be sufficient if the vans and temporary miserable dwellings were registered only once?”

No, I do not think it would. Vans, as in the case of canal boats, often change hands, and to keep an oversight of and be able to trace the vans through all their changes would require a lot of official and intricate machinery to be set in motion which would not be needful if the certificates of registration were taken out every year. Every application for a certificate or a renewal of a certificate would bring the owner to the front. The changes taking place during the year could be endorsed upon the back of the certificate, and with the transfer of the van I would hand over the certificate of registration in force to the new owner.

Question 7. “What is the advantage to be gained by registration?”

Registration is the first step towards the advantages that are to follow. By registration the owners and occupiers of the vans are known, and the School Board officers and sanitary inspectors have the initial powers to bring their influences to bear upon the children growing up without education. The gipsies and other travellers as a rule pass through the country under so many different names that unless the vans are registered and their owners known it would be impossible to carry out the reforms that are needed. I have not found one traveller who would object to their vans being registered, provided it could be brought about in an easy and inexpensive manner.

Question 8. “Do you not think that ten shillings per annum would be a heavy tax upon the gipsies and other travellers?”

Not if we take into account that poor people living in houses have to pay rates and taxes to a much greater amount than I propose that travellers should be called upon to pay for their certificates. In fact, they will be much the gainers if my system of a free education for the gipsy, canal, and other travelling children be carried out. For the ten shillings they would, as a rule, receive more than thirty shillings in educational advantages and remission of school fees.

Question 9. “How will the sanitary and other authorities know, as the vans pass through the country, whether they have been registered or not without the inspectors putting the owners to unnecessary inconvenience and annoyance?”

I propose that the name of the owner, the place where the van was registered, and the number of the certificate should be painted on the vans and other temporary and movable dwellings.Question 10. “Do you not think that the travellers and gipsies would be much inconvenienced by having to register their vans every year?”

No, not if they were habitable, and in a fair condition in other ways. It would not require more than an hour once a year. The forms and certificates would only take a few minutes to fill up.

Question 11. “How do you propose bringing about the education of the gipsy and other travelling children?”

I would do as I have proposed in my “Gipsy Life” and Congress papers, viz., establish a free educational pass book, which book should not cost the parents more than one shilling, and on the plan set forth in my “Canal Adventures by Moonlight,” p. 162. The pass book would do for all the children living in the van or canal boat, and the child or children presenting it to any schoolmaster connected with any properly organized public school would claim at his hands a free education for so long a time as they presented themselves for admission. With the system of pass books there will not be the difficulties that would have been created by the pass-book system in the village dame school days of yore. Day schools, as you know, are now conducted upon the standard and code system. I will try to illustrate how the plan would work out in practice. Opposite my room windows across the green, all last week was an old tumble-down van in which there was a man, his wife, and seven children. Five of the children were of school age—none of them could tell a letter; but, supposing that Tom was in the First Standard, Betty in the Second, Bill in the Third, Polly in the Infants’, and Jack in the Fourth Standards, these classifications and particulars would be entered in the pass book, and supposing that the gipsy had sent the children with their pass book to the National School on his arrival in the village, the schoolmaster would immediately he had opened the book have seen to which standard each child belonged, and would have sent him or her into it.

Question 12. “Do you not think that it will cause the schoolmaster extra trouble; and how do you propose to meet this difficulty?”

I have talked to several schoolmasters upon the subject, and they think that all attendances of travelling children should be entered and paid for at the rate of those children who pass their examinations. Each child who passes the usual examinations costs the country about tenpence per week, and I have been told by schoolmasters that if this sum was forthcoming from the Government for the gipsy and travelling children—which is the system I propose to meet the case of the canal children—they would gladly receive them into their schools; or, in other words, the Government must pay the schoolmaster one penny for each attendance, which should be entered in his school returns to the Education Department; the same course in some respects which is taken with pauper children.

Question 13. “What plans do you propose for granting the gipsy and canal children their certificates of qualification?”

I would propose that the children should be allowed to present themselves at any school for an examination at the usual time; i.e., provided they had made two hundred attendances during the year, and that such attendances had been duly entered in pass books and signed by the schoolmasters at whose schools the children had attended; or that they satisfied the school attendance officers or School Board authorities, wherever their vans were registered, that the gipsy children were being educated privately, or in other ways to their satisfaction.

Question 14. “Do you not think that there will be much difficulty in getting the children to make two hundred attendances during the year?”

No. As a rule, all travelling vans, canal boats, and other miserable dwellings are not on the move more than half the time. Frequently they will stay for weeks together in one place. And I would also, to enable the children to make their number of attendances, reckon two attendances in a Sunday-school equal to one day-school attendance.

Question 15. “Do you not think that parents of town children will object to their sitting by the side of gipsy and canal children?”

In some instances the parents might object to it, as you say, but generally they would not. I think that two-thirds of the children now travelling the country are the children of parents who once followed town and settled employments. If the children I want to introduce to the day schools throughout the country had been gipsy children of past years, with all their evil habits manifested at every step of their lives, I can imagine that strong objection would be raised against their introduction to English school life. Our present gipsy children are, as a rule, our travelling gutter children. I think that the mixing of the travelling children with the town children at school will be one of the first steps towards bringing them back to civilized usages and habits. At the present time gipsy and canal children are the outcasts of society, unknown and unrecognized by others, except by those of their own kith and kin. The mother has at the present time no object to “dress up her children for.” With its introduction to school, natural instincts, parental feelings, love, and hope are brought once more into action, and generally the natural consequence will be that the mother will send her children to school as clean and well dressed as other children are. To have separate schools for canal and gipsy children will not be a workable plan. Sometimes for weeks the teacher would scarcely have anything to do; gipsies especially fluctuate very much.Question 16. “We should be glad if you could give us additional reasons and facts, and explain a little more to us why you think that vans should be registered annually, or at any rate have their certificates renewed.”

In the first place, I would say that the non-annual registration was, and is so still, one of the principal causes why the Canal Boats Act of 1877 is not so satisfactory as desired. The children living in canal beats under the Act of 1877 really belong to the place at which the boats are registered. This is as it should be, and I want the principle of localizing or identifying the canal children with some place extended to all travelling children living in vans; but that identification must give the parents a choice of selecting other districts or localities from time to time as changes of circumstances and other things might require. Under the present system, when once the boat is registered at a place, the children, under the Act of 1877, belong to that place till they are past school age, and no provision is made under the Act for changes which often occur in a boatman’s life, or would occur in a gipsy’s life. I will try to illustrate my meaning more clearly by taking a case in point as regards the carrying out of the Canal Boats Act, which would apply with equal force to children living in vans. When the Canal Boats Act of 1877 came into operation, either through the strictness or laxity of other registration authorities, more than eight hundred canal boatmen and boat-owners from all parts of the country applied to the Runcorn registration authorities to have their boats registered. Of course they registered the boats, and obtained the five-shilling fees. After a time it was found out that the School Board authorities at Runcorn were called upon to provide school accommodation for nearly two thousand boat children, which they could not do. At any rate, they did not wish to saddle the town with the expenses of educating boat children from all parts of the country, and from whom they received nothing in return; and the consequence is the two thousand boat children whose floating houses are registered at Runcorn are going without education to-day, and their patents cannot, so long as this registration exists, place them in any other School Board district in this country. The annual registration which I propose will give the boating and gipsy parents the opportunity of changing their homes or headquarters without detriment to the children, and the establishment of more registration districts would, I am thoroughly convinced, place the matter on a satisfactory and workable basis. If John Jones during the year ceased working his boat in and out of Runcorn, and took to Paddington’s scented waters, he could, by registering his boat at Paddington at the time of the renewal of his certificate, put his children under the London School Board, which he cannot do under the present system. To meet the case of the gipsy and van children, any sanitary authority should be a registration authority, or at any rate at those towns where hawker’s licences can be obtained.

Question 17. “How would your plan work out in the case of those families who live part of the year in vans, and the other part of the year in houses?”

I would propose that their vans should be registered at those registration districts in which the owner of the van has his settled home. I will illustrate this in the following manner. Suppose an owner of a van, after travelling the country during the summer months, draws his van into a yard and takes to house dwelling during the winter. Of course, the children during the winter months will be under the School Board authorities, at the place where his house is rated for the relief of the poor and other rates; but supposing—as is often the case—with the dawn of spring the gipsy traveller desires to leave his house during the summer mouths, and takes his wife and children round the country, I would suggest that he should provide himself with a free educational pass book, and that he should be compelled to send his children to some day school the required number of times, and it would be the duty of the School Board officers where his van is registered, together with the School Board officers where the vans may be temporarily located, to examine the pass book, and to see that the educational clauses were carried out. In case of village feasts the children should be sent to the next village school. Children can easily make the number of attendances.

Question 18. “What is your opinion about the education gained in this way?”

It will not be the best education in the world, but it will be a thousand times better than none at all. It would cause them to see some of the advantages of education, and it would start their young ideas up civilizing channels.

Question 19. “Would it not be a hardship upon the parents if the children were not allowed to work in connection with their vans and shows until they had passed the Third Standard?”

They would not be in a worse position than other working classes are. As a rule, they spend much more money in drink than labourers in our towns and villages do. All the working classes, except the two I refer to, are prohibited from sending their children to work before they have passed the Fourth Standard, and I am sure that the little gipsy, acrobat and other children attending stalls, shows, and cocoa-nut establishments endure more trying occupations, long hours, and severe toil than our factory children.

Question 20. “How would you deal with those gipsies, and others who are living and huddling together in old vans and other places, whose travelling homes the Sanitary Inspectors would not pass as habitable?”

There would be three ways open to them: First, they must be compelled to hire a habitable van, which vans can be had on hire at Bristol and other places; or, secondly, they must go into settled homes; or, thirdly, we must apply the plan I propose for granting them long leases of common or waste land at a nominal rent.

Question 21. “Will you explain why it is that you would charge ten shillings per annum for vans, and only five shillings per annum for canal boats?”

Canal boats are engaged in furthering commerce, and thus add to the wealth of the country. In the case of gipsy vans, the owners use the roads of the country and pay neither rates nor taxes, and they do not, except those who use their vans to hawk goods round the country, add to the welfare of the nation, and for that reason I would suggest a little heavier registration fee. Gipsies and canal boatmen can move about the country for centuries and not be called upon to pay one farthing for any kind of rates, which is a pleasure they ought to enjoy without one moment’s delay.

Question 22. “You say in your Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill, and you want the principle extended to vans, that no child or young person should be allowed to work for either hire or profit on Sundays. Would not this be rather hard upon poverty?”

The law prohibits children and young persons being employed in other occupations, and there is no earthly reason why the poor travelling children should toil seven days a week. I claim that if children employed all-week in light healthy work are exempted from Sunday labour, then most surely children tramping the country in vans should have the same right. In Section 21 Clause 3 of the Factory and Workshop Act, 1878, 41 Vict. ch. 16, it is laid down that “a child, young person, or woman shall not be employed in a factory or workshop” with some exceptions; so you will see that I do not go so far as the Section I have quoted does, although the travelling children need the protection more.

Question 23. “How would you do in the case of boats conveying perishable goods?”

The boats should be worked by adults as fly boats are.

Question. 24. “Do you not think that your plan would interfere too much with the liberty of Englishmen? Ought not a traveller to be allowed to live where he likes and how he likes?”

Yes: providing it were good for the nation and everybody did the same. My plan would not interfere with the liberty of the gipsies and other travellers nearly so much as the law already interferes with the liberties of others of her Majesty’s subjects. People living in ships, houses, palaces, cellars, barracks, cabs, coaches, and carriages have to conform to healthy rules and sanitary requirements. I knew a case of a travelling house conveying small-pox to a large town and causing more than 2,000 deaths. I have known over and over again of cases where infectious diseases have been carried through the country by means of canal boats and vans. Only the other day a man, wife, and five children came to our door with an old tumbledown pony and rickety waggon. The little box upon the top of the waggon, used as “sleeping apartments” for the whole of the family, would not be seventy cubic feet of space. Even in this little crib the five children were all ill of a highly infectious disease, which they were carrying through the country. The two main influences I want to bring to bear upon the little travellers and their homes are the universally acknowledged social laws for elevating those living in the gutter, viz., education and sanitation. With the thorough application of these to little gipsies I shall be satisfied, and then the children will have made the first step in a gradual improvement, leading them to Christianity and civilization, so that they shall be strong enough in brain and muscle to turn the world upside down and downside up. I want the road to school made easier than the road to jail, and I would prefer seeing the sanitary inspector and School Board officer walk into the gipsy vans than either the policeman or the doctor.

Question 25. “How do you propose carrying out the Act? Would you leave the matter entirely in the hands of the local authorities?”

I propose that the registration and local inspection should be done by the local authorities in the town or places through which the vans passed or stayed, as the case might be. I do not think that it would be wise to place the actual working out of the plans I propose in the hands of the Local Government Board. The Local Government Board should only be called upon to appoint one or two Inspectors to visit the fairs and other places occasionally to see that the local authorities properly carried out the Act. I recommend the same course in the “Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill.”

Question 26. “How would you propose paying the Government Inspectors? Would their salaries be an increased charge upon the Treasury?”

No: the Inspectors would not cost the country one farthing, as the profits arising from the 5s. stamped registration certificates would more than pay the Government for their expenses of supervision; and the other 5s., together with the fines, would satisfy the local authorities.

Question 27. “What number of travelling families are there in the country who would be called upon to take out annual registration certificates?”

I should think at a rough calculation there will be between six and eight thousand, which would yield a sum of £1,500 to £2,000 annually.

Question 28. “You refer in your Congress papers to the granting of a portion of land to certain classes of the gipsies who are desirous of settling down, on long leases at a nominal rent. Do you think the gipsies would agree to this plan?”

I do most assuredly—i.e., if any reliance is to be placed upon their own statements, and I think they are worthy of credence. In the first place, the land should be granted to those gipsies who have been on the road during the last twelve months only. Secondly, I would grant to each family of man, wife, and two children, four acres; this would, after the first year, enable a man to keep a cow and grow vegetables enough for the family. Supposing there were three thousand families, they would require 12,000 acres of waste land. To meet the expenses, and to provide ways and means, a society should be founded principally upon philanthropic and business principles combined, and this—or, better still, the Government—should grant small sums of money to the tenants by way of loan at a small interest, to enable them to erect a hut, and to provide food for the first year. Of course the money should be advanced gradually as the work and other things progressed. I should think that £100 for each family would be amply sufficient to tide them over the first year, to be spent as follows: £30 for the hut; £40 for one year’s keep; £17 for a little Welsh cow; £3 for pig and fowls; and £10 for tools and implements. The Society advancing the money should have a lien upon the land until all the money advanced had been paid back. Proper safeguards would have to be taken on all sides.

Question 29. “What would be the ultimate effect of this plan of allotting land to the gipsies and other travellers?”

The gain would be infinite. The men, women, and children would be drawn from a life of vagabondage, theft, and idleness to one of work and profit to themselves and the country’s good. Of course all would require time to work out. If the three thousand families were eating bread of their own earning, and cultivating twelve thousand acres of land which is at present bringing forth nothing but moor game and partridges, the results would be heavenly and eternal pleasure to themselves and the country. Any of my plans would be a thousand times better than destroying parental responsibility by taking their children from them by force and sending them to industrial schools, “and turning their parents loose” upon society to inculcate their idle, lying, cheating habits and customs into others they may be brought in contact with, who stand ready with open mouths to receive gipsy lies, damning tricks, cheating, and lore as gospel.

Question 30. “On behalf of the various Christian churches throughout the country, would you kindly tell us what steps you would take for improving the spiritual condition of the gipsies, canal boatmen, and other travellers? Would you organize a missionary society with a staff of officials, secretaries, travellers, agents, &c., with headquarters in London?”

No. If such an organization was started it is my decided conviction that but little good would be the result. Missionaries, like other folks, desire to see the fruits of their labours, which, owing to the fluctuating habits of the boaters, gipsies, and others, they are unable to see. The only way in which missionary organization could work successfully would be to have a few vans and temporary booths, such as some of the show people use as “boxing establishments,” and to place them in charge of a good man and his wife, who would live in the van and visit some of the principal fairs in the country. Religious services and a Sunday-school could be conducted in the booths on Sundays, and a day-school for those children whom the law would allow to travel with their parents on week days, or at any rate on the morning of fair days. The man and his wife could conduct a religious service at nights, and also distribute during the day, when not engaged in the school, religious periodicals and other literature of the kind. By far the better plan will be for the various religious denominations in each town to set to work in right good earnest to remedy the evil as it comes periodically into their midst. Local missionary societies might be formed, composed of all sections of Christ’s Church, to erect a temporary wooden booth to stand side by side of the devil’s booths during fair time. Here religious services could be conducted by various societies in their turn. The members of the Church of England to have the use of the booth, say on Saturday; the Wesleyans, Monday; the Congregationalists on Tuesday; the Baptists on Wednesday; the Primitive Methodists on Thursday, and so on through the week, the various sections following each other in their proper order. Sometimes it would happen that the Wesleyans would have the booth on the Saturday night, and the Church of England on the Sunday. I am not a believer in a work of this kind being left to a few. It should be the duty of all Christians and philanthropists to help forward the cause of the children. Those who give money would give time too, if asked and set to work. As a rule the givers are the workers, if they know when to begin and how to begin. Another plan would be to follow the usual course carried out in missioning back streets, &c., viz., to sing, distribute tracts among the travellers, gipsies, and others, speaking at the same time faithful words of counsel, reproof, warning, caution. Whatever course is followed, the persons engaged in trying to improve the condition of the gipsies and others must not go about it in a kind of stand-off manner. When they want to shake hands with either canal boatmen or gipsies, their fingers must not be put out as if they were tied upon the end of a cold poker, and they were afraid of the rough grip of a gipsy crushing it to powder. A warm heart and a pleasant word are passports that will admit any man or woman into boat cabins, gipsy tents, and travellers’ rooms. A prying inquisitiveness these people abhor and detest, and they will resent it to the utmost. Any little matters relating to their lives, habits, &c., they will tell to friends whose object is their good without “pumping.” Whoever ministers to the boatmen, gipsies, or travellers must be prepared to eat at their tables, and drink out of their cups, even if it be on the ground among mud, out of a dirty basin, and served with dirtier hands. They do not think they are dirty, and those who visit them must, if they mean to do any good among them, shut their eyes and hold their tongues to things they do not like. Little acts of kindness are not forgotten by them, and a word of faithful reproof they will appreciate—i.e., if it comes from a man or woman who means their present and eternal welfare. I have said most hard and faithful things to them, as most people know, for which I have not at their hands been subjected to insult or abuse. In a few cases where I have been misunderstood, I have come in for my share, but afterwards they have been sorry for it. The electrical sparks of sympathy in their nature will not manifest themselves at the touch of selfish hands. It is only the love and sympathy in the hearts of those who visit them that brings out the finer feelings of the boaters and gipsies to perform deeds of love. I now say again, what I have often said before, that the best missionary agency for effecting their spiritual good will be the proper carrying out of an Act on the lines I have laid down. When once the children are taught to read, the next step should be to see that books of the right kind are placed in their hands, and, with the blessing of Heaven, the first step towards a moral reformation in the habits, lives, and customs of our gipsies, canal boatmen, and other travelling tribes and classes, will have been taken for their eternal welfare.

Question 31. “Can you give us any proof of gipsies having taken to civilized customs and usages, having risen in the social scale equal to other law-abiding subjects?”

I will only give you a few names. One of the best and sweetest singers who ever sang before the Russian nobility was a gipsy damsel. One of the best actresses that ever put her foot upon an English stage was a gipsy. A celebrated Scotch clergyman of this late day is of gipsy parentage; and so is also one of the present-day Wesleyan ministers. Some sculpture and carving in the large hall of the House of Commons is from gipsy hands; at any rate there was more than two-thirds of gipsy blood in the artist’s veins—I have been told that he was a thorough gipsy. The wife of one of our celebrated London architects is, or nearly so, of gipsy parentage; and the beautiful little songsters she can paint are most charming. You could almost imagine when you see her handiwork that you could hear the pretty little creatures warbling and piping forth God’s praises. They adorn many drawing-rooms. Recently I have heard of two gipsies in Surrey who own two rows of houses as a result of their civilized habits. Others could be named who have saved money, and are a credit to themselves and the country. John Bunyan was a gipsy, as every one knows who has read his work and studied his temperament, habits, character, early life, and surroundings. If there had never been a gipsy in the world but John Bunyan who had risen out of a wigwam, he would afford sufficient proof that gipsies, if taken by the hand, can step towards heaven, and draw others up after them. I knew a number of gipsies who have lived decent lives and have died happy in God. There are to be seen to-day gipsies wending their way to God’s house on Sundays, preparing themselves for the changes which await us all.

Question 32. “Before we part we should like to ask you what effect legislation would have upon the travellers and gipsies? Would the numbers increase or decrease?”

With the proper carrying out of the education clauses and sanitary plans I propose, wisely and firmly, the number of gipsies would very soon decrease, and the sanitary inspectors and School Board officers would be the instruments for bringing this desirable result about. Persecution, policeman, and the jail will cause gipsyism to grow, while education and sanitation will divert it into healthy channels.

GEORGE SMITH, of Coalville.

Welton Daventry,
December 31, 1882.