Morning journal and courier., 1891-11-21


 eleven or twelve o'clock at night some of the children of both sexes, together with their mothers, are often kept hard at work brawling, banging and shouting with CO., coanuts and balls in hand, while in many instances their fathers are drinking in the public houses, and as @ reward for their hard days toiling and trudging, Sunday and weekday, the poor children are sent supperless and unwsshed to their bed. This is usually on some old rags, under a street stall, in hail, rain, snow, frost and fogs, and in fine weather with the gleam- ing moon and twinkhng stars peeping through the torn apertures of their street curtains and gutter beds.
 'I have seen these men, women and children drunk, 'all of heap,' like so many dogs, while there were others, en- gagged in the vagabond's calling, ashamed of their position, who hung down their heads and hands and went with the tide and pellmeu crowd down to ruin. In many instances l come upon parents with large families who have taken the wrong turning through their dislike of work, or the hardness of town life, and are now tramping the country lanes, towns and villages with carts, vans and donkey bar rows, hawking, begging, lying, and am afraid often stealing.
 "Some time ago I visited with a friend Canning Town, and found scores of fam flies of gipsies and other vagabond tray elers living in a state that would shock the most filthy and degraded heather. More than thirty children of school age clustered around us, not one of whom could tell letter. In two small four roomed cottages, into which the gipsies and travellers had crept for Q few months in the winter, there dwelt, or pigged, seventeen families of men, women and children. Others were squatting about in filthy wigwams among the slush, filth, rags and straw.
 Among these folk, on the outskirts of London, in one wigwam have seen poor woman dying; in another a man who had taken to gipsying was gasping for breath; in another tent woman was at deaths door, and at another abode of death, into which had to creep on all fours,' there sat at the entrance, upon a brick in the mud, poor lost, present day gipsy girl of seven years of age, but no heavier than @ child of one year. Its legs were no thick CT than drumsticks It could neither stand, sing, speak, cry nor hear
 ''At a 'crow pie feast near Rugby I saw in five vans fifteen children, two of whom could only read or write little. During the deep snow of the winter of 1SS7-S I met with in the old Waiting street, but mile or two from our home here, nine men, women and children crushed togeth- CT, whose only sleeping apartment was un- der an old donkey cart. The man had worked honorably and well in my neigh | borhood for two years. The work gave | out and he forsook his trade to follow hedge bottom creeping.
 ''At Dsventry found travelling show l man and his wife and their seven children. Their only home and stock and trade con- | sisted of a few sticks, old rags, knives, | whistles and a cracked drum At North amptonshire fair l found ten vans and | carts and between thirty and forty chil- | dren, only one or two of whom had ever | been inside either Sunday or day schools | In three old tumble-down carts, tied to- | gether by canvas, string, straps and pieces of rusty hoop iron, there were nineteen | children and seven men and women. "Moses Holland, one of my oldest gipsy | friends, knows about two hundred and if | ty families in the midland counties, and | thinks there will be Gn average of five | children to each tent or van. In some | tents he has seen ss many as ten, and in | other tents twelve, children. In his own | tent his wife was i'll, and dead child lsy by her side, which Holland laid out him self on few rags and some litter.
 "At Broomsgrove fair I counted over if | ty vans and covered cart homes, connected |
 and fifty children. But six could read and
 write. In one van, eight feet long, five | broad and five high, there slept eleven men, women and children, whose night dresses were saturated wet clothes. Some time ago visited a flower show at West Haddon and found in two vans and a 1 tumble-down wagon eighteen children and seven men and women. Only two could | read and write.
 I H.
 shire lane, near Buckley wharf, during 6
 pouring rain, l came upon eleven present
 day gipsies, six men and women and five
 children, whose home was small rickety | donkey cart, tied together with pieces of
 cord, and a small sheet full of holes, un-
 der which they crept at night
 ''On the preceding Saturday night these gipsies were under this one rotten sheet
 for the night by the roadside near Wee
 don. A policeman told them to move on,
 as on the following Sunday people would
 be going to church, and they would be an | eyesore to all these good people. Driving
 the gipsies about the country with po-
 liceman's truncheon and move on will
 not improve their condition. It can only
 be done by means of the sanitary officers
 influence directly upon their homes, and
 by the schoolmaster's influence upon their
 heads and hearts. And if I live long
 enough this shall become a universal rem
 edy for all manner of gipsy and other
 travelling rsgsbondism in England and
 Scotland"
 These are the beings whom MT. Smith
 has given the name of "Gipsy and Van
 Dwellers," and it is the forty to eighty
 thousand ''Gipsy and Van Children" of
 these wretched, wandering vagabonds,
 whom he is endesvoring to rescue from
 their present condition of utter bestialty
 through the hoped for passage of his
 Movable Dwellings Bill" The provisions
 of this bill, if carried out, would cause
 the registration of all gipsy and other
 travelling vans; bring each one under con
 stAnt surveillance and sanitary inspection
 the same as with the lodging houses of tn,
 great English cities; prevent the present
 horrible overcrowding of tents and vans
 and, above all, bring every one of thess
 outcast children compulsorily into the public schools, but wholly free of expense
 to their parents by a system of free pas books for use wherever the gipsy family might be temporarily tarrying.
 EDGAR L. WAKEMAS. | CHILDR KIN DIA MOND FINDERS.