I have visited more than once the gipsies upon Plaistow marshes in company with Mr. —, and also with my son, and found about thirty families squatting about in their vans and tents, up to their knees in mud, and in a most heartrending condition. Farmers house their pigs in a much better condition than we found the poor lost gipsies tented and housed. Gipsy children came round us by the score. There would be not fewer than between a hundred and a hundred and fifty poor little creatures, growing up without ever visiting either the school or the church, although there were a magnificent school and church within a stone’s throw. The sanitary inspector, school board officer, and Christian ministers were unknown to those wretched, lost gipsy children. They are fully acquainted with the policeman and his doings. In one or two of the vans smallpox and fever appeared to me to be at work. Round the outskirts of London there will be nearly 3,000 gipsies tenting and squatting about. They generally find the lowest and swampy spots.
My scores of visits to various parts of the country during many years are not recorded here, but the same sorrowful tale is everywhere manifest.
It does seem that letters of blood and words of fire will be needed to arouse the hearts and consciences of my countrymen, and compel them to observe the dark side of human life which lies close to our eyes and noses; and to draw the veil of ignorance away which is preventing the sun of civilization carrying out its mission among our own outcasts.
“The darkness falls, the wind is high, Dense black clouds till the western sky, The storm will soon begin. The thunders roar, the lightnings flash, I hear the great round rain drops dash; Are all the children in?”
_The Christian Freeman_, 1877 _and_ 1878.
I answer, “No! no!” and with a tear-fetching pang I again say, “No!” The canal and gipsy children are still outside the door, and our legislators do not care to open it, owing to the “difficulties” which prevent the latch from being lifted up. The nail is in the way, and the door is locked—
“Nobody kind words pouring In that gipsy heart’s sad ear, But all of us ignoring What lies at our door so near.”
Rambles among the Scotch Gipsies at Yetholm.