Note 161 — Rambles among the Gipsies at St. Giles’ Fair, Oxford.

“Our Gipsy Children.—(To the Editor of the Daily News.)—Sir, I counted to-day at the great Oxford Fair over two hundred and twenty vans and covered carts, in each of which there would be an average of four children and two men and women living and huddling together regardless of every principle of decency. In many cases filth, dirt, and ignorance prevailed to an alarming extent. Not a few of the poor women and children exhibited signs of their having been in close warfare with rough treatment. Not five per cent. of the thousand human beings could read and write a sentence. What a farce upon our Christianity and civilization it is to have this mass of human beings living actually in the centre of learning, religious influences, and civilization. We have Bibles, ministers, colleges, sanitary officers, and education inspectors on every hand, and no power but the police-man exerting any influence over our poor lost wanderers. What I want is that their thirty thousand children should receive a free education—as I propose in an amending Bill to meet the case of the canal children—and their vans registered and brought under the influence of the sanitary officers on a simple plan. The gipsies themselves will hail a measure of this kind with considerable delight.”