In the throng and crush we arrived at Banbury. I paid my fare—all the way from Daventry, one shilling and sixpence—shook hands with my kind friends, and made my way into the crowd of sightseers, gipsies, mendicants, tramps, the fashionable, and the gay.
The first gipsy I met with was an old friend, “Righteous Smith”—which name was printed on the van—and his large family, at a cocoa-nut establishment. One of the daughters, dressed in lively colours, was in charge of the balls, and shouting out to the “chaps” as they passed forward, “Try your luck, gentlemen!” and the father shouted out, “Now, gentlemen, bowl away! all bad nuts returned.” In response to their bewitching entreaties some old cricketers tried their hand, and, much to the chagrin of “Righteous Smith,” they sent the nuts “spinning away” rather more freely than was profitable and pleasant for “Righteous,” to the extent of putting his good name in the shade. This family of gipsies have, I should think, about three parts of Romany blood in their veins. Their van was a good one, and beautifully clean, and will pass muster when the new order of things comes about, for which I am working night and day, and which, I am thankful to say, is casting its shadows before it. The eight cocoa-nut establishments were owned by cross-bred Romanies, and one or two of the families lived in vans fairly clean. There were over thirty families living in the vans attending the fair, in which there would be an average of three children, one man, and one woman in each van. In five of the vans there were two men and two women in each. A number of those who owned small short shooting galleries and “rock stalls” slept with their children under the stalls.
From this cocoa-nut going “concern” I strolled among the shows, bosh, nonsense, and cheap Jacks. The introduction to one of the sparring establishments was by an old woman screaming out, “We are just going to begin.” By her side was a dandily dressed and painted doll, setting herself off to the best advantage. On some steps between the two women there stood a man painted as a fool, and dressed in tight indecent sparring costume. “Darkey,” with his pug nose, short hair, low narrow forehead, high cheekbones, deep sunken eyes, glistening fire like a black glass bead in the centre of a white china button under the glare of a lamp, which he frequently turned sharply, quickly, and inquisitively to me as if anxious to know my movements. If he had been an uncaught thief, and conscience was telling him that I was a detective, he could not have eyed me over more quickly and closely than he did.