ADVANCEMENT OF THE ENGLISH GIPSY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2058, 3 August 1893, Page 41

ADVANCEMENT OF THE ENGLISH GIPSY.

No one can make of a gipsy anything but a gipsy, bnt a generation of change here has effected a more marked advancement in a rugged prosperity with this than with any other lowly olass. It has not seized him bodily and in a moment, or in a year, or in a decade, put fine clothing upon him and made the gipsy a man of affaire, but—something as with the destitute Italians who have landed upon our shores, whom we directly find as hawkers, willing labourers, restaurant-keepers, newsboys, bootblacks, controllers of retail and wholesale fruit and nut trades, and on the high road to prosperity beoause they are quick-witted and willing to labour— the English gipsy has found, along with old makeshifts tor livelihood,, many nesv though rude occupations and means of getting on in the wosd, all after hiß own mind and heart. To one not acquainted with the habits and ways of these interesting folk the old false notion still exists that they must one and all thieving vagabonds. How else can they exist? is asked by those willing to believe that a ragpicker or a Russian Jew with a pack on his back can hoard little earnings until he becomes affluent. Should you follow one of these wandering families or bands from London in spring time into every English, Welsh, or Scottish village to which its way is made, and back again to its winter haunt in London, I doubt if you could discover an act of a single member savouring more of dishonesty vthan fortune-telling or cunning horse jockeying at fairs. ' The cavalcade at its outset may comprise one or more vans. These are, briefly described, tiny houses upon wheels. They are drawn by donkeys, or often by broken-down city tram horses, which the gipsies get in London for a song, and which with care are finally transformed into excellent cattle. Following these may be three or four or a halfdozen little donkey carts, after the fashion of the costerroongers' city carts. These will hold the real resources of the band. An examination of the latter would reveal almost enough material in quantity, certainly enough in variety, to stock a little country store. This stock in trade has not been picked up at random. In the London Whiteohapel district there are great storehouses of " travellers' goods." Their owners, who I find include wealthy gipsies, could not continue in business without thegipsies' trade. The goods handled are somewhat similar to our American " bargain-counter " odds and ends, especially in tinware and metal goods, hardware, crockery, cheap oilcloths, and household knick-knacks, with the coarsest of beads and gilded' jewellery. It would be a revelation to ordinary English tradesmen to realise the enormous quantities of stuff annually disposed of in this manner throughout England, Scotland, and Wales, and the integrity of these gipsy wanderers where they ask and receive credit for their supplies, as they often do. Smaller "travellers' goods " stores may be found near the bullring in Birmingham, where carts may be refilled in the lazy journeyings ; but small shipments from time to time are forwarded by rail from London. I have friends in the fruit and nub trade in the Drury Lane quarter of London who have supplied gipsies in all parts of the provinces for the last 20 years. Half of this trade is done on credit, and the fruiterers all inform me that they have never lost a penny at the hands of their thousands of gipsy small customers. All these goods, fruits, and nuts are hawked in little villages and sold at fairs and on market days. Indeed, the English country fair of I to-day would lose all its pictureßqueness.and moßfc \oi its attractions for younger people, were the pretty gipsy booths and showmen withdrawn. About the middle of the century, when the British Eural Police Act, which was directed against gipgies and all wandering folks of the road, camo into force, we find Borrow lamenting that the "gipsy had nowhere to lay his head." The oppressive measure undoubtedly sent America 50,000 English gipsies within a period of 10 years, Indeed, it almost extirpated gipsy-

dom in Great Britain. But the coming gipsy soon saw a way to mend his fortunes. He took out a licence to become a travelling merchant. " Two and sixpence " gives him this right for the period of one year.' He could still remain gipsy in every other particular. Insensibly and by degrees he actually became the fellow whose vocation he originally assumed in order to merely exist. There gradually followed a system among the wanderers of providing "gipsy grouDd " on which to camp in safety from the raids of tbe mounted canstabulary. Gipsies here and there who had got a footing and could be trusted bought or leased bits of waste land, unused lanes, idle tracts at tbe outskirts of cities and towns, or camping rights In roomy old stable-yards. These are in turn sublet to arriving pilgrims at from Is dowa to Id a day. — Chicago News Becord.