Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-11-22
BRITISH GYPSIES.
An Effort to Save Their Help
less, Hopeless Children.
AT LEAST 100000 OF THEM.
Many Live in State that Would Shock
the Most Degraded Heathen-How
These Folk Live-A "Crow-
Pie Feast.
lCopyrig hted.1


CRICK, ENGLAND, Nov. 9-ln my last ar
ticle from this quaint old English village, |
gave brief outline OF the work of George
Smith of Coalville, in rescuing the children
of the briclzvards canal-boats of Eng
land from their former frightful condition
of slavery, ignorance and misery.
The half of it all could not be fittingly
told in an entire volume But when the
social history of England is written, this
unlettered and furiously persistent phil
anthropiSt must stand as the greatest and
most practical child-saver of his time. At
ter between twenty and thirty years of la
Dor through perjury, soothing and cruel dis
courae enent, with a few later years of
generally recognized eminence and national
respect, this is the record as it now stands.
Alone and unaided he has emancipated 3d.
600 brick-yard boys and girls from a condi-
ton revolving beyond contemplation or de-
scrlptlon: and he has also, alone and I'M
aided, rescued more than 10000 canal-boat
children from life of still more brutal
slavery, indispensable degradation, un-
namable immortality, and actual crime.
This has been accomplished, he believes,
through divine aid, guidance and strength.
But find there has been in and through it
all, the most practical and sensible
methods ever persistently utilized in
any great philanthroIac work. There
have been no committees, bureaus,
can ing officials or titles. There have been
simply the everlasting presentation and
iteration of enormous human wrong with
the most direct and effective way of right
ing that wrong going along with it. Posi-
bly, no man ever lived in England who has
been so helped by the English press. The
reason for this is that this George Smith of
Coalville first finds a genuine evil to be
abolished. but never clamorS for its remedy
until he has also found a practical, and in
the end acceptable method of applying that
remedy.
His career is the best illustration / have
ever come upon of the splendid willingness
of the press of any country to hammer the
proposed remedies of genuine philanthropy
lists into the public's head and heart and
compel adequate legislation to render them
permanently effective. Besides, if this man
cannot get all he wants for his cause, he
takes all he can get, thanking God, the
press, parliament and the people; mean
while pushing right on for what he has
failed to secure; and he never ceases
labor and clamor until he gets it. All of
which as policy is worth considering by
social philanthropists everywhere. 1t is
well-meaning but implacably impracticable
people, the prohibitionists of our own
VERY MUCH IRITATED COUNTRY.
The consistent and sequential character
of this work has been remarkable. Scarcely
had he succeeded in placing, on January l,
1872. 10000 of the 10000 of the brickyard
little ones in the public schools. than he be-
gan his crusade against the iniauities of
cnild-life in the $4,000 canal boats of Eng
land. AS boy-slave in the English brick
yards he had worked where the yards
saw the horrors of their experiences
and surroundings. In August, 1887,
he had so thrilled England
with his picturing of these outrages, that
parliament finally gave him all he had
asked. The bill provided for the registra-
ton of all canal-boats by the sanitary au-
thorities; abolished the disease-breeding
and carrying character of these craft; linn
tied their number of occupants, brought
every boat under surveillance and inspec-
ton, placed three-fourths of the canal pop
ulation in homes and brought every one of
the little child-beasts into the public
schools.
Hardly had the practical workings of the
e lactments regarding the canal children
become operative, when George Smith
of Coalville began storming parliament
in behalf of another class of semi
savage British children. In the long
nights of his boyhood, when watching the
burning brick kilns, he had not only seen
the slavery of brickyard and canal chill
dren around him. but he had stored away
grewsome memories of another host of
miserable beings that skulked in the shad
ows about him. More lost than, all were
these, the half-wild children of the gypsies
and other tent and van jewellers of the
English highways.
The first book he ever possessed-Oliver
Goldsmith's Natural History''-was stolen
from him by these little foxes as he nodded
by the kilns at night. They stole his cloth
ing, they stole his sc2nt food, they even
stole the drinking water from his delft jug.
For years these dreary nights were cease
less efforts to outwit the swarthy out
casts in their pilferings and Won
derful devices to supply their own
dire needs. But in later life he remem-
bered only their houselessness, hopeless
ness and utter wretchedness. The brick
yard and canal boat chiloren once safe
within humanizing influences, he began his
last and most difficult struggle, that of
molding public opinion to the point Of Sc
curing laws which at one stroke should res
cue the children of British gypsies and all
British vagabond folk from their present
squalor and wretchedness. Perhaps this is
an impossible task. It is the present heroic
work of this
ENGLISH PHILANTHRoPISr.
While our own country has for more than
100 years been depicting the ranks of
English and Scottish gypsies, Mr.. Saith es-
Inmates their present number to be about
100, 600 souls. These are comprised in
nearly 20. 600 families. About 40 per cent
are of Scottish and the remainder of
English descent In my own judgment,