“Our Gipsy Children.—(To the Editor of the Daily News.)—Sir, I counted to-day at the great Oxford Fair over two hundred and twenty vans and covered carts, in each of which there would be an average of four children and two men and women living and huddling together regardless of every principle of decency. In many cases filth, dirt, and ignorance prevailed to an alarming extent. Not a few of the poor women and children exhibited signs of their having been in close warfare with rough treatment. Not five per cent. of the thousand human beings could read and write a sentence. What a farce upon our Christianity and civilization it is to have this mass of human beings living actually in the centre of learning, religious influences, and civilization. We have Bibles, ministers, colleges, sanitary officers, and education inspectors on every hand, and no power but the police-man exerting any influence over our poor lost wanderers. What I want is that their thirty thousand children should receive a free education—as I propose in an amending Bill to meet the case of the canal children—and their vans registered and brought under the influence of the sanitary officers on a simple plan. The gipsies themselves will hail a measure of this kind with considerable delight.”
This letter brought forth a reply, to which I rejoined as follows:
“Your correspondent’s repudiation of my statements in your issue of the 5th inst. does not alter the facts—not ‘ideas’—which were given to me by the travellers themselves in broad daylight in the midst of a pouring rain, with the object of getting their condition improved, not by winking and blinking at the evil and allowing it to grow into a more dangerous sore, to be dealt with by the policeman, but to be faced by extending the blessings of a free education to all travelling children, and bringing sanitation to their homes. His statements about immorality have been manufactured by himself; but as he has been good enough to take my references and weave them into a cap which fits, I must allow him the pleasure of wearing it. The sad facts, seen by myself, in my possession, in addition to those published in my ‘Gipsy Life,’ will most assuredly come to light some day. With reference to his remarks about no gipsy vans being at Oxford fair, this is absolutely untrue. I look upon all as gipsies who, with gipsy blood in their veins, are tramping the country, hawking and adopting gipsy usages, customs, slang, and ‘rokering,’ if only slightly. The fact is the old-fashioned gipsies are dead, and their places are being taken by increasing numbers of travellers who are not so romantic, living in covered carts and waggons, whose wives sometimes scrape together a little money in the summer to keep many of the men in idleness in the winter. Your correspondent takes credit for the education of the children in the winter. This he knows perfectly well is what the law requires of those who have settled homes, but he is silent about the worse than undoing the teachers’ work in the summer; thereby placing the poor gipsy children upon the vagabond’s path to ruin. Of course all are not alike. There are the usual good, bad, and indifferent among them. The sad condition, morally, socially, and religiously, of many of the poor gipsy and other travelling women and children is truly horrible, and no amount of wincing at the shadow of redeeming features which are to follow will stop me till the 70,000 canal and gipsy children are educated by means of a free pass book, the hard lot of the women lightened, and their travelling homes made more happy and conformable with civilized notions and ideas; and if he is wise he will help forward the work, with a willing hand.” It is said that Lord Beaconsfield in his youthful days attended the place of worship to which the poor girl referred; and it is also stated that the bones of one of Cromwell’s generals lie smouldering in the dust within or near the sacred precincts. Extremes meet sometimes. On March the 5th, within three months of my visit to Yetholm, Mr. Laidlaw writes me to say that the Yetholm gipsies are taking to settled and constant employment at the farmers’ in the neighbourhood. This is cheering news, and shows most clearly that my plans will work out rightly, as I have told the gipsies at Yetholm and other places, without any inconvenience to them worth naming. I am much indebted to Mr. Joyce, Mr. F. W. Chesson, Mr. George Bettany, Rev. A. E. Gregory, Mr. H. E. Duke, Mr. T. S. Townend, Mr. Mallet, Mr. Guy, Mr. Fisher, Mr. W. H. Lucy, Messrs. Joshua and Joseph Hatton, Mr. M. E. Stark, Mr. D. Gorrie, Mr. R. W. Boyle, Mr. W. Saunders, Mr. E. Robbins, Emma Leslie, Mr. S. R. Bennett, Mr. B. G. Burleigh, Rev. W. L. Lang, Mr. J. Moore, Mr. J. B. Marsh, Mr. J. D. Shaw, Mr. J. H. Thomas, Mr. Kinnear, Rev. B. Burrows, Mr. G. J. Stevenson, M.A., Mr. J. Tod, Rev. Mark Guy Pearse, L. T. Meade, Rev. Chas. Bullock, B.A., Mr. F. Sherlock, Rev. Earnest Boys, M.A., Dr. Grosart, Mr. A. Locker, Rev. R. Spears, Mr. B. Clarke, Mr. James Clarke, Mr. Clayden, Mr. W. Binns, Mr. E. Walford, M.A., Mr. Lobb, Rev. J. Duncan, M.A. Messrs. Morgan and Scott, Mr. Jean, Mr. R. Albery, Rev. B. Waugh, Dr. Parker, Mr. G. A. Sala, Mr. W. Bradshaw, Mr. J. Lloyd, Dr. Westby Gibeon, Mr. Alex. H. Grant, M.A., Dr. J. H. James, Mr. Ewing Ritchie, Mr. J. Hind, Mr. G. Howell, Mr. J. Hutton, Mr. J. Latey, Mr. Maurice Adams, Mr. J. L. Nye, Revs. E. Weldon, M.A., and Colin McKecknie, W. Y. Fullerton, C. H. Kelly, G. Holden Pike, C. H. Spurgeon, Dr. Gregory, Rev. G. W. Weldon, M.A., Rev. D. Darnell, M.A., Rev. Dr. Stephenson, Rev. Vernon J. Charlesworth, Dr. Barnardo, Mr. Edward Lloyd, Mr. W. T. Stead, Miss Fredricks, Mr. G. Barnet Smith, Mr. G. F. Millin, Mr. J. F. Rolph, Mr. W. T. E. Boscawen, Mr. A. Watson, Mr. J. Russell, Mr. E. Step, Mr. Austin, Mr. Harry Hicks, Dr. Griffith, Mr. Morrison Davidson, Mr. Massingham, Mr. S. Reeve, Rev. W. M. Burnet, M.A., Rev. Ponsonby A. Lyons, Miss Nellie Hellis, Miss J. Gordon Sutherland, “Una.”
