Note 144 — APPENDIX.
Reading edition
Our enquiries incline us to believe that in England gipsies usually seek the baptismal rite for their children, and that their dead are generally buried in consecrated ground. On some occasions the attendance at a funeral has been large, and a tomb or grave-stone erected to the memory of the gipsy who sometimes was said to be a gipsy king, as, for instance, James Boswell, buried at Rossington, near Doncaster, 1708-9; also the instance of a gipsy said to be a gipsy king mentioned in “Notes and Queries” as having been buried at West Winch, Norfolk. In the “Gentleman’s Magazine” mention is made of Henry Boswell, said to be a gipsy king, who died in affluent circumstances, and was buried in 1687, at the parish of Wittering. We are also informed that a grave-stone marks the grave of a gipsy in the churchyard of Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. In the churchyard of Calne, Wiltshire, a handsome tomb was erected to the memory of Inverto Boswell, said to have been the son of a gipsy king, who was buried there, 1774. In “Notes and Queries,” series 4, vol. 4, page 206, it is stated that a grave-stone erected on the grave of a gipsy buried in the churchyard of Coggeshall, Essex, has the following inscription:—
“In Memory of Cassello Chilcott, Who died in this Parish, Sept. 29, 1842, Aged 28 Years. Cassello Chilcott truly was my name, I never brought my friends to grief or shame; Yet I have left them to lament. But why Lament for death? ’Tis gain in Christ to die!”
We could cite many other instances, if space permitted; and we believe that the non-burial of their dead in consecrated ground in England has occurred only under very exceptional circumstances.