afers, who had adopted the
wandering life of the Gipsy because of the opportunities it afforded of
combining a maximum of idle hours with a minimum of work. The men
exhibited this in their countenances, in the attitudes they took up, by
the whining drawl with which they spoke; the women, by their dirtiness
and inattention to dress; and the children, by their filthy condition.
The men and women had fled from the restraints of house life to escape
the daily routine which a home involved; the men had no higher ambition
than to obtain a small sum of money on the Saturday to pay for a few
days' food. There was not one man amongst them who could solder a broken
kettle; a few, however, could mend a chair bottom, but there all
industrial ability ended; and the others got their living by shaving
skewers from Monday morning to Friday night, which were sold to butchers
at 10d. or 1s. the stone. These men stayed at home, working over the
brazier of burning coke during the week, while their wives hawked small
wool mats or vases, but nothing of their own manufacture; and the
grown-up lads, on market-days, added to the general industry by buying
flowers in Covent-garden, and hawking them in the suburbs of the
metropolis. We were assured by Mr. Smith that this class of pseudo-Gipsy
was largely on the increase, and to check their spread Mr. Smith suggests
that the provisions of an Act of Parliament should be mainly directed.
Only one of all we saw and spoke to on Sunday was 'a scholar'--that is,
could read at all--and this was a lad of about fourteen, who had spent a
few hours occasionally at a Board school. With all the others the
knowledge that comes of reading was an absolute blank. They knew
nothing, except that the proceeds of the previous week had been below the
average; social events of surpassing interest had not reached them, and
the future was limited by 'to-morrow.' We questioned them upon their
experiences of the past winter, and the preference they had for their
tents over houses was emphatically marked. 'Brick houses,' said one
woman, who was suckling a baby, 'are so full of draughts.' Night and day
the brazier of burning coke was never allowed to go low, and under the
tent the ground was always dry, however wet it might be outside, because
of the heat from the brazier; besides, they lay upon well-trodden-down
straw, six or eight inches deep, and covered themselves with their
clothes, their wraps, their filthy rugs,