“I then joined a gang of gipsies of the name of Lee, and with them I have lied, lived, stole, and slept, more like a dog than a human being. I used to run donkeys all day, and when the old woman came home from fortune-telling she would give me two pieces of bread and butter from somebody’s table for my dinner and tea which some of the servant girls had given to her. Among the gipsies I used to be reckoned the very devil. I have fought hundreds of times, and was never beaten in my life. The time when I was more nearly beaten than any other was with my brother-in-law, a gipsy. We fought hard and fast, up and down, for nearly an hour, and then we gave it up as both of us being as good as each other. I have had both my arms broken, legs broken, shoulder-blades broken, and kicked over my head till I have been senseless, in gipsy rows. Oh! sir, I could tell you a lot more, and I will do so sometime.”
This terrible recital of facts—of the cruelty, hardships, wrong-doing of present-day gipsy life—almost caused my hair to stand on an end whilst he related the horrors of backwood and daylight gipsyism in our midst.
I asked Mr. Pether if the gipsies were on the increase in the country so far as he knew. He answered—
“I should think they are very much. Gipsies seem to be in the lanes everywhere. I have seen as many as five hundred tents and vans in the forest before now at one time. There are not so many now, as you know; but they have spread all over the country, because the rangers would not allow the gipsies to stay upon the forest all night. Some of the gipsies have made heaps of money by fortune-telling. Lord bless you! I knew the family of gipsy Smiths, they seemed to have so much money that they did not know what to do with it. They seemed to have gold and diamond rings upon all their fingers. They took their money to America, and I have not heard what has become of them since. Some of the family are left about the forest now as poor as rats. The gipsies are a rum lot, I can assure you. I do not know a dozen gipsies to-day who can read and write, and none of them ever go, or think of going, to church or chapel.” “Have you ever been in a place of worship since you ran away from home?” “No,” said “Scare,” “except when I went with my old woman to be wed; and thank God I can show the ‘marriage lines.’ Not many of the gipsies can show their ‘marriage lines,’ I can assure you. I have not been in either church or chapel, except then, for nearly fifty years.” I said, “Did you ever pray?” “No,” said “Scare,” “but I swears thousands of times. Mother prays for me and that has to do. She’s a good old creature.”