Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-11-22

I-INcIuOOl, NIIOSnONh VI NdSSASNONii NONhS
behind him.
Mr. Smith has no patience with senti-
mentaliSm over English gypSieS. He is
willing to admit that my tawny friends OF
the American roads and waysideS, through
their infinitely more favorable conditions.
enjoy true gypsy prosperity ana lead the
Romany's genuine idyllic life. He simply
sees the appalling degradation of the gypsy
and van jewellers about him. 1t is the
helpless, hopeless children of these he
would save. He believes that it is a social
crime that such menace to society should
exist. and that society, represented by law,
should itself right that wrong. And 1t may
be depended on that, as in the case of the
brick-yard and caaal-boat children, his
clarion clamor will continue until Britain
has
RID HERSELF OF THE PLAGUE SPOT.
All his life he has studied their wander
ings and ways and since 1887 he has been
almost constantly among them. | like his
rugged, vigorous description of his rough
experiences with these ouecasts, and feel
sure that q few of them, in his own Ian
guage. will be interesting to American
readers:
II have visited many fairs, feasts races.
forests, lanes and wigwams in different
parts of England and Scotland, and have
eaten and chatted with the tent and van
jewellers, with the same sorrowful results
confronting me. In many cases where
parents attend fairs, feasts and races with
cocoanut stalls and other initiatory gam
bling amusements. the children are sent
early in the morning to pick up living in
all sorts of questionable ways, and up to II
or l2 o'clock at night some of the children
of both sexes. together with their mothers,
are often kept hard at work brawling, bang
ing and shouting with cocoanuts and balls
in hand, while in many cases their fathers
Ii, ,.NI,
reward for their hard days tolllng and
trudging, Sunday and weekday, the poor
children are sent supperless and unwashed
to their bed. This is usually on some old
rags, under q street stall, in hail, rain,
snow, frost and fogs, and in fine weather
with the cleaning moon and twinkling stars
peeping through the torn apertures of their
street curtains and gutter beds.
Il have seen these men, women and chill
dren drunk, all of heap like so many
dogs, while there We're others, engaged in
the vagabond'S calling, ashamed of their
position, who hung down their heads and
hands and went with the tide and pellmell
crowd down to ruin. In many instances l
came upon parents with large families who
have taken the wrong turning through their
dislike of work, or the hardness of town
life, and are row tramping the country
lanes, towns and villages with carts, vans
and donkey-barrows, hawking, begging,
lying, and | am afraid
OFTEN STEALING.
sSometime ago | visited with friend
Canning Town, and found scores of families
of gypsies and other vagabond travellers
living in 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 let
ter. In two small. four-roomed cottages,
into which the gypsies and travellers had
crept for q few months in the winter, there
dwelt, or pigged, seventeen families of men,
women and children. Others were squat
ting about in filthy wigwams among the
slush, filth, rags and straw.
Among these folk, on the outskirts of
London, in one wigwam I 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 brick in the mud, a
poor lost, present-day gypsy girl of seven
years of age, but no heavier than a child of
one year. Its legs were no thicker than
drumsticks. 1t could neither stand, sing,
speak, cry nor hear.
AT 'crow-pie' feast near Rugby 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 l
HeJ WIFI Ill Tue Olu waiting Slretl, DuI u
mile or two from our home here, nine men,
women and children crouched together,
whose only sleeping apartment was under
an old donkey cart. The man had worked
honorably and well in my neighborhood for
two years. The work gave out, and he for
sock his trade
TO FOLLOW HEDGE-BoTTOM CREEPING.
cat Daventry found a travelling show
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 a
fair l found ten vans
and carts and between thirty and forty
only one or two of whom had
ever been inside of either Sunday or day
schools. In three old tumbledown carts,
tied together by canvas, string, straps and
pieces of rusty hoop iron, there were nine
teen children and seven men and women.
''Moses Holland, one of my oldest gypsy
friends, knows about two hundred and
fifty families in the midland counties,
and thinks there will be an average of five
children to each tent or van. In some
tents he has seen as many as ten, and in
other tents twelve, children. In his own
teut his wife was i'll. and dead child lay
by her side, which Holland laid out him
self on few rags and some litter.
cat Broomsgrove fair 1 counted over
fifty vans and covered cart homes, con-
nected with which there were nearly $50
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
wet clothes. Some time ago l
visited a flower show at West Haddon and
found in two vans and tumbledown wagon
eighteen children and seven men and women.
Only two could read and write.
Son a recent Sunday in a Northampton
shire lane, near Buckley wharf, during a
pouring rain | came upon eleven present
day gipsies, six men and women and five
whose home was small rici1ety
donkey cart, tied together with pieces of
cord, and small sheet full of holes,
UNDER WHICH THEY CREPT AT NIGHT.
son the preceding Saturday night these
gypsies were under this one rotten sheet
for the night by the roadside near Weldon.
A policeman told them to move on as on
the following Sunday people would be 60
ing to church, and they would be an eye
sore to all these good people. Driving the
gypSies about the country with a police
mans truncheon and a move on will not
improve their condition. 1t can only be
done by means Of the sanitary officers in
fuence directly upon their homes, and by
the schoolmaster's influence upon their
heads and hearts. And if l live long enough
this snall become universal remedy for
all manner of gypsy and other travelling vag-
Alcoholism in England and Scotland
These are the beings whom Mr.. Smith
has given the name Of gypsy and van
dwellers,' and it is the 10000 to $4,000
gypsy and van children" of these
wandering vagabonds, whom he
is endeavoring to rescue from their present
condition of utter bestiality through the