John Westover, deputy of James Furnell, constable of Norwood, stated, that about two months before, the Gypsies in that neighbourhood had been apprehended as vagrants, and sent in three coaches to prison. This account was confirmed by Edward Morris, the landlord at the Gypsey house. It did not appear that these Gypsies were committed for depredations on property, but merely on the vagrant act.
Gypsies being _routed_, as it is termed, in this manner, from various parts of the south, may probably have occasioned their appearing in greater numbers in the northern parts of the nation. The writer of this section being at Scarborough, in the bathing season of 1815, had intelligence of there being, at the same time, an encampment of Gypsies at Boroughbridge, another at Knaresborough, and a third at Pocklington, in the east-riding of Yorkshire.
On returning from Scarborough, he was told by an acquaintance at Tadcaster, that a gang of about twenty Gypsies, were just gone from the neighbourhood, after telling fortunes to most of the people in the town. The same summer, a numerous horde had been driven from the township of Rotherham; and there had been two encampments in the neighbourhood of Sheffield.
The winter before the last, severe as it was, a gang of about fifty or sixty, lay upon Bramley Moor, three miles from Chesterfield. This information was received from Joseph Storrs of Chesterfield, who has been an assiduous coadjutor. From the same authority, the writer learns, that a number of Gypsies usually came to Duckmanton, near Chesterfield, at the feast, who appear to be in pretty good reputation in their transactions. Also that there is a party of Gypsies who frequent Socombe-lane, near Shirbrook, which is two miles east of Pleasley. They are called Bosswell’s gang, consisting of twelve, and sometimes more, who mostly come once a year, and sometimes continue there for most of it. A woman among them is about 90 years old. They support a good character; and one of them who bought a pony, had credit for it, and paid honestly on his return.
After obtaining information at Norwood, of the winter-quarters in London, to which Gypsies resorted; the author had an interview with branches of several families of them, collected at the house of his friend William Corder, Grocer, in Broad-street, Giles’s. And in justice to them, he must observe, that however considerably the fear of apprehension as vagrants, may dispose them, when on travel and among strangers, to elude their inquiries, no disposition to do so, appears in the company of persons to whom they are known, and in whom they can repose confidence.