or how it comes so that they get it.
In many instances they live like pigs, and die like dogs. The real
old-fashioned Gipsy has become more lewd and demoralised--if such a thing
could be--by allowing his sons and daughters to mix up with the scamps,
vagabonds, 'rodneys,' and gaol birds, who now and then take their flight
from the 'stone cup' and settle among them as they are camping on the
ditch banks; the consequence is our lanes are being infested with a lot
of dirty ignorant Gipsies, who, with their tribes of squalid children,
have been encouraged by servant girls and farmers--by supplying their
wants with eggs, bacon, milk, potatoes, the men helping themselves to
game--to locate in the neighbourhood until they have received the tip
from the farmer to pass on to his neighbours. Children born under such
circumstances, unless taken hold of by the State, will turn out to be a
class of most dangerous characters. Very much, up to the present, the
wants of the women and children have been supplied through gulling the
large-hearted and liberal-minded they have been brought in contact with,
and the result has been that but few of the real Gipsies have found their
way into gaols. This is a redeeming feature in their character; probably
their offences may have been winked at by the farmers and others who do
not like the idea of having their stacks fired and property destroyed,
and have given the Gipsies a wide berth. Gipsies, as a rule, have very
large families, generally between eight and sixteen children are born in
their tents. Owing to their exposure to the damp and cold ground they
suffer much from chest and throat complaints. Large numbers of the
children die young before they are 'broken' in.' And it is a 'breaking
in' in a tremendous sense, fraught with fearful consequences. With
regard to their education, the following cases, selected from different
parts of the country, may be fairly taken as representative of the entire
Gipsy community. Boswell, a respectable Gipsy, says he has had nine sons
and daughters (six of whom are alive), and nineteen grandchildren, and
none of them can read or write; and he also thinks that about half the
Gipsy men and women living as husbands and wives are unmarried. Mrs.
Simpson, a Gipsy woman and a Christian, says she has six sons and
daughters and sixteen grandchildren, and only two can read and write a
little. Mrs. Eastwood says she has nine brothers and sisters. Mr.
Eastwo