shillings, I was getting all the information I could out of him
about the Gipsy children--this with some additional information given to
me by Mr. Clayton and several other Gipsies at Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
together with a Gipsy woman's tale to my wife, mentioned in my "Cry of
the Children from the Brick-yards of England," brought forth my first
letter upon the condition of the poor Gipsy children as it appeared in
the _Standard_, _Daily Chronicle_, and nearly every other daily paper on
August 14th of last year:--"Some years since my attention was drawn to
the condition of these poor neglected children, of whom there are many
families eking out an existence in the Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and
Staffordshire lanes. Two years since a pitiful appeal was made in one of
our local papers asking me to take up the cause of the poor Gipsy
children; but I have deferred doing so till now, hoping that some one
with time and money at his disposal would come to the rescue. Sir, a few
weeks since our legislators took proper steps to prevent the maiming of
the little show children, who are put through excruciating practices to
please a British public, and they would have done well at the same time
if they had taken steps to prevent the warping influence of a vagrant's
life having its full force upon the tribes of little Gipsy children,
dwelling in calico tents, within the sound of church bells--if living
under the body of an old cart, protected by patched coverlets, can be
called living in tents--on the roadside in the midst of grass, sticks,
stones, and mud; and they would have done well also if they had put out
their hand to rescue from idleness, ignorance, and heathenism our
roadside arabs, _i.e._, the children living in vans, and who attend
fairs, wakes, &c. Recently I came across some of these wandering tribes,
and the following facts gleaned from them will show that missionaries and
schoolmasters have not done much for them. Moses Holland, who has been a
Gipsy nearly all his life, says he knows about two hundred and fifty
families of Gipsies in ten of the Midland counties and thinks that a
similar proportion will be found in the rest of the United Kingdom. He
has seen as many as ten tents of Gipsies within a distance of five miles.
He thinks there will be an average of five children in each tent. He has
seen as many as ten or twelve children in some tents, and not many of
them able to read or write. His child of six months old