psies, in many
respects, are not so good as what they were fifty years or more ago; and
this fact, to my mind, calls loudly for Government interference as
regards the education of the children. Abraham Smith also further stated
that nearly all the old people belonging to one family of S--- had died
in the workhouse in Bedfordshire. Another thing has forced itself upon
my attention, viz., that there seems to be a number of poor unfortunate
idiots among them. I know, for a fact, of one family where there are two
poor creatures, one of whom is in the asylum, and of another family where
there is one, and a number in various parts where they are semi-idiotic,
and only next door to the asylum. These painful facts will plainly show
to all Christian-thinking men and women, and to others who love their
country and seeks its welfare, that the time has arrived for the Gipsies
to be taken hold of in a plain, practical, common-sense manner by those
at the helm of affairs, and placed in such a position as to help
themselves to some of the blessings we are in possession of ourselves.
During all my inquiries, when the Gipsies have not fallen in with all I
have said with reference to Gipsy life, they have all agreed without
exception to the plan I have sketched out for the education of their
children and the registration of their tents, &c.

In the days of Hoyland and Borrow the Gipsies were very anxious for the
education of their children and struggled hard themselves to bring it
about. Sixty years ago one of the Lovells sent three of his children to
school, at No. 5, George Street, taught by Partak Ivery, and paid
sixpence per week each with them; but the question of religion came up
and the children were sent home. The schoolmaster, Ivery, said that he
had had six Gipsy children sent to his school, and when placed among the
other children they were reduceable to order. It is a standing disgrace
and a shame to us as a nation professing Christianity that at this time
we had in our midst ten to fifteen thousand poor little heathen children
thirsting for knowledge, and no one to hand it to them or put them in the
way to help themselves. The sin lays at some one's door, and I would not
like to be in their shoes for something. While this dense ignorance was
manifest among the poor Gipsy children at our doors we were scattering
the Bibles all over the world, and sending missionaries by hundreds to
foreign lands and supporting them b