On October 25, 1882, I sent Mr. Mundella copies of my Social Science Congress papers, with the hope of eliciting something from him as to what steps the Government proposed taking in the matter, and the following is his reply:
“PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE, WHITEHALL, _October_ 26, 1882.
“I am much obliged to you for the copies of the papers read by you in the Health Department of the Social Science Congress on the Canal Boats Act and on the gipsy children, and I will give the same my careful attention. I shall be very thankful if anything can be done to remedy the evils affecting the neglected children referred to in your papers, and to whose interest you have given such long and faithful service.
“I am, dear sir, Yours faithfully, A. J. MUNDELLA.
I have thought since I took up the canal crusade in 1872, as my letters will show, and I cannot for the life of me do otherwise than think so now, that the Canal Boats Act Amending Bill I am humbly promoting could be made to include all movable habitations and temporary dwellings. The counsel to the Education Department, Mr. Ilbert, thought otherwise, and of course I have had to submit to the “ruling of the chair.” He thought that a separate Act would better meet the case of the gipsy and other travelling children. I am not now alone in my idea of including all movable dwellings in my Canal Amending Bill; for since I mooted the subject in my letters to the press and in other ways, friends have come round to see that there is something in the suggestion worthy of notice. Canal-boat cabins and vans are boxes in which are stived up human beings of all ages and sizes, without either regard for health, morals, sense or decency, packed closer than the poor unfortunate creatures in the black hole of Calcutta were. These moving homes are drawn, in many instances, by animals with only one step between them and the blood- or foxhound’s teeth. The only difference is, one home is moving through the country upon our magnificent, black, streaky canals, of the enormous width of about twenty feet, and an average of three feet deep. For the size of boats and boat cabins and other particulars I must refer my readers to my works, “Our Canal Population,” and “Canal Adventures by Moonlight,” and for the full particulars of gipsy tents, vans, &c., to my “Gipsy Life.”