Part 22

2. Not less than 100 cubic feet of space for each female above the age of twelve, and each male above the age of fourteen; and not less than 50 cubic feet of space for each female under the age of twelve, and for each male under the age of fourteen.

3. No male above the age of fourteen, and no female above the age of twelve, should be allowed to sleep in the same tent, or van, as man and wife, unless separate sleeping accommodation and suitable ventilation be provided.

4. A registration certificate to be obtained, and renewable annually at any of the urban or rural sanitary authorities in the country, for which the owner of the tent, or van, shall pay a sum of 10s., commencing on the first of January in each year.

5. The compulsory attendance at day schools a given number of times of all travelling children, or others, living in temporary or unrateable dwellings up to the age required by the Education Code, which attendance should be facilitated and brought about by means of a free educational pass book, procurable at any bookseller’s, for the sum of one shilling, as I have suggested to meet the case of canal children.

6. The children to be at liberty to attend any National, British, Board, or other day schools under the management of properly qualified schoolmasters.

7. No child under thirteen years of age to be engaged in any capacity for either hire or profit, unless such child shall have passed the “third standard” of the Education Code.

8. No child or young person to work for either hire or profit on Sundays under the age of sixteen.

9. Power to be given to any properly qualified sanitary officer, School Board visitor, inspector, or Government official, to enter the tents, vans, shows, or other temporary or movable dwelling, at any time, or in any place, and detain them if necessary, for the purpose of seeing that the law is properly carried out.

10. The Local Government Board to have power to appoint one, or two, or more officials to see that the local authorities enforce and carry out the Act; and also to report to Parliament annually.

11. All fines to be paid over to those authorities who enforce the Act and the regulations of the Local Government Board.

12. As an encouragement to those gipsy wanderers who cannot afford to have healthy and suitable travelling vans and other abodes, and who desire to settle down from their wandering and degrading existence to industrious habits the Government should purchase common or waste lands, or allot lands of their own to the gipsies in small parcels upon a long lease—say for ninety-nine years—at a nominal rent.

With these features embodied in an Act of Parliament, and properly carried out by the local authorities, under the supervision and control of the Local Government Board and Education Department, gleams of a brighter day might be said to manifest themselves upon our social horizon, which will elevate our gipsies and their children into a position that will reflect a credit instead of a disgrace to us as a civilized nation.

“And shall he be left in the streets to room, An outcast live and wild? ‘God forbid!’ you say. Then help, I pray. To provide for the [gipsy child].”

Rev. I. CHARLESWORTH, _Sword and Trowel_, 1671.

_The Canal Boats Act of_ 1877, _and the Amending Bills of_ 1881 _and_ 1882. By GEORGE SMITH, of Coalville.

In 1877 an Act was passed entitled “The Canal Boats Act of 1877,” on the basis sketched out by me in a paper I had the honour to read before this Congress, held at Liverpool in 1876; and also in my letters, articles, &c., which have appeared in the lending journals, and in my works since the passing of the Act and onward from 1872 to this date.

After the Bill was drawn up, and during its progress through committee in 1877, several features were foreshadowed in the measure which led me to fear that when passed it would not accomplish all we so much desired, and these I pointed out to the late Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, Mr. Salt, Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board; Mr. John Corbett, M.P., Mr. Pell, M.P., Mr. P. Rylands, M.P., Mr. Sampson Lloyd, MP., Mr. W. E. Price, M.P., and many others; but rather than yield to the opposition of the Canal Association, and the loss of the Bill, I suggested that it should be passed, notwithstanding the drawbacks that were in sight.

When Lord Frederick Cavendish, Mr. Price, and others, at the fag end of the session of 1877, put the question seriously to me, as to whether the Bill should not be massacred along with the other innocents, I replied as follows: “Push the Bill through Committee by all means. A piece of a loaf is better than none. It has its defects, but if we do not get the Bill passed this year we shall not be likely to do so next year. Let us get the thin end of the wedge in. The operation of the Act will be to bring about the registration of the canal boats, to give power to the sanitary officers to enter the cabins, to secure the education of the 40,000 canal children, and also to prevent overcrowding in the cabins.”

The first step towards carrying out the Act, after five years’ continued agitation and visits to various parts of the country, has been fairly accomplished; and the sanitary officers, by the power given to them under the Act, have done good by preventing, in some degree, the spread of infectious diseases; but the main features of the Act, viz., the education of the canal children, the prohibition of overcrowding in the cabins, and the annual registration of the boats, are almost entirely neglected.

The following are the failing points of the Act of 1877:

1. The Act to a great extent is permissive. 2. Proceedings cannot be taken against the boatmen and boatowners for evading the regulations of the Local Government Board—the most important of all. Breakers of this

## Act can be brought under the lash of the law, but breakers of the

regulations cannot. 3. The Act of 1877 is placed in the hands of the local registration authorities to carry out, consequently the expenses fall upon the ratepayers, and the result is that the local sanitary inspectors, or registration officers, have had but little added to their salaries—in many instances nothing—and with strict orders not to go beyond their town or city boundaries. Thus it will be seen that boats plying between the registration districts, which are as a rule between twenty and fifty miles apart, are left to themselves. 4. Another oversight in the Act is the non-annual registration of the boats, and consequently there have been no fees to meet the expenses. It was intended from the first that there should be an annual registration of the boats. 5. The want of power in the Act to enable the Local Government Board to appoint officers to supervise, control, inspect, enforce, and report to Parliament upon the working of the Act and the regulations. 6. Another cause of failure in the Act has been owing to power not having been given to inspectors to enter the cabins or inspect the boats at any other time than “by day.” Boats are more or less on the move by day, and it is only when they are tied up—which generally happens after six o’clock—or when they are being loaded or unloaded, that the local registration officer has an opportunity to see or to form any idea as to what number of men, women, and children are sleeping and huddling together in the cabins. 7. The Act does not give the School Board officer power to enter a boat cabin. The education clauses of the Act have, I might almost say, entirely failed: (_a_) owing to the indifference manifested by the school authorities at which places the boats are registered as belonging to; (_b_) the extra trouble they give to the school attendance officers; (_c_) the facilities given and the chances seized by the boatmen to get outside the town or city boundaries with their children so as to elude the grasp or shun the eye of the School Board officer. 8. The payment of a week’s school fees demanded from the children who can only attend one or two days in the week. It is not either fair, honest, or just to compel a boatman to pay more for the education of his children than others have to pay. 9. Many boats in the coal districts, with women and children on board, travelling short distances, have escaped registration and inspection under the plea that their boats are not used as dwellings. 10. Another very important reason advanced by the registration authorities why the boatmen and boatowners have not been prosecuted for breaches of the Act is that all the trouble and expense attending prosecutions have had to be borne by the local ratepayers, while the fines, in accordance with the Act of 1877, have been paid over to the county fund, instead of the borough or local fund.

The Bill I am humbly promoting, and which has been before Parliament during the last two sessions, supported by Lord Aberdare, Earl Stanhope, Earl Shaftesbury, the Marquis of Tweeddale, Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., Mr. Albert Pell, M.P., Mr. John Corbett, M.P., Mr. Thos. Salt, M.P., Mr. Thos. Burt, M.P., and Mr. H. Broadhurst, M.P., provides a remedy for these faulty places. 1. I would do away with the permissive features of the Act of 1872. 2. Fines to be inflicted for breaches of the regulations, as well as for breaches of the Act. 3. I give under the Act the local registration authorities part of the registration fees. I propose that the annual registration fee should be 5s. for each boat, one half of this amount to go to the Government, and the other half to the local authorities. 4. The registration of the boats to be annual. This will be a very simple and inexpensive affair, no matter in what registration district the boat happens to be at the time of the renewal. 5. I give under the Bill the Local Government Board power to appoint one, two, or more officials to visit the canals in various parts of the country, and to see to the proper enforcement of the Act, and to report annually to Parliament. 6. I propose that the inspectors should have power to enter a canal boat at any “reasonable hour.” 7. No child shall be employed on a canal boat unless such child shall have passed the “third standard.” 8. I propose that children, whom the regulations allow to live in the cabins, should have a free educational pass book, which would enable them to attend any day school while the boats are being loaded and unloaded. 9. No child under the age of sixteen to work on a canal boat on Sundays. 10. All boats upon which there is accommodation for cooking or sleeping to be deemed to be used as dwellings. 11. All fines to be paid over to those authorities who enforce the Act.

When the Canal Boats Act of 1877 is amended in accordance with the lines I have laid down in the Bill, the stigma that has been resting upon the country and our canal population, numbering nearly 100,000 men, women, and children, during the last 125 years, will be in an easy way for removal, without inconvenience or costing the country one farthing, and the boatowners and captains not more than 2s. 6d. each per annum.

With the proper carrying out of the Act the 40,000 boat children of school age, not ten per cent. of whom can read and write, will be educated, and the boatmen’s homes made more healthy and happy; industrious habits will be encouraged, and the country will also be made richer by increasing the happiness of her water toilers upon our rivers and canals.

“Oh, help them, then, if ye are men, And, when thy race is run, Turn not aside, nor think with pride Thy work in life is done.”

ELLIS, _Quiver_.

My papers passed off in the midst of smiles and kindly and lengthy _press notices_. Editors have always been more kind to me than I have deserved, much more than I had anticipated. The fact is, I had expected some rough handling, and armed myself with a few little rough, awkward facts. Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the majority of my hearers were of the gentler sex. Bless their dear hearts! Their encouraging smiles and words have helped me through many a difficulty in pushing on with the cause of the children. May God reward them a thousandfold.

The act was ended, and the curtain dropped. I therefore “picked up my crumbs,” and bade my friends goodbye till—D.V. and if all’s well—we meet again next year at Huddersfield. I then made my way to the station, and home. Upon Leicester platform I met with a few old friends, who had pleasant greetings for me, including Mr. Thompson, Mr. Fox, and a literary friend, the Rev. W. L. Lang, F.R.G.S., who has given myself and the cause I have in hand many lifts—bless him for it. Onward and upward may he travel to the time when it shall be said, “It is enough.” And to my many other friends who have helped me by their influence and with their pens, I repeat the same thing over and over again.

My little stock of the “one thing needful” had begun to turn quite modest, and crept into the corners of my pocket, so as to be scarcely felt among the keys of boxes, drawers, cupboards, and lockers, knives, and other pocket trifles. I took my ticket to Rugby, which left me with one shilling. I had not gone far before my ticket was missing out of my hand. I was in a minute “all of a stew.” Cold perspiration crept over me. In a twinkle, before any one could say “Jack Robinson,” my hands were at the bottom of my pockets using their force to persuade Mr. “Ticket” to turn up; but no! it was not to be found. Fortunately a porter came panting after me and asked if I had not lost my ticket. He had lifted a ton weight off my shoulders, and I thanked him very much. At Rugby I spent my last coin in copies of the _Times_, _Standard_, _Daily News_, _Telegraph_, _Daily Chronicle_, _and Morning Post_. In nearing our old antiquated village along the lovely green lanes, little village children were to be seen gathering blackberries. The sun was shining most beautifully in my face. The autumnal tints and hues were to be seen upon the trees. The gentle rustling wind brought the decaying and useless leaves hesitatingly and in a zigzag fashion to the ground, as if they were loath to leave the trees which had given them birth, before settling among the mud to be trampled upon by tramps and gipsies. While climbing the last hill, with a heavy heart and light pocket, weighed on all sides with nervous hope, trembling doubts, and anxious fears, I never more fully realized the force of John Wesley’s hymn, as I tried to hum it over. In soft but faltering accents I might have been heard by the village children singing—

“No foot of land do I possess, No cottage in this wilderness. A poor wayfaring man, I lodge awhile in tents below, Or gladly wander to and fro, Till I my Canaan gain.”

The first thing that caught my eye upon my library table was a letter from Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., in which was enclosed a cheque to aid in building a Good Templar hall at Northampton, about which I had written. This was duly sent to Mr. Hollowell, the secretary. Underneath Mr. Morley’s letter lay one from a friend, Mr. Frank A. Bevan, of 54, Lombard Street, enclosing a small cheque on behalf of himself, Lord Aberdare, and a number of friends, to help me in my work, and to provide for the daily wants of my little ones, till we arrived at the next stile on our rough, steep, and somewhat zigzag journey. The sight of his cheque sent a thrill of joy through my soul, and I could not help shouting out, “Thanks! a thousand times.”

Light again dawned at eventide, and we were enabled to retire to rest singing God’s praises as the candle flickered in the socket.

In my “Gipsy Life” I have shown, among other things which have never been mentioned by any gipsy writer before, the following particulars. First, the cause and probable date of the gipsies leaving India; second, the route by which they travelled to Europe; and third, the cause of their persecution after their arrival in England from the continent.

My gipsy paper did not give universal satisfaction to everybody outside the congress. My plain matter-of-fact statements raised the ire of a few little narrow-souled mortals, who had not the courage to appear in their own dress, and borrowed other people’s clothes—_shooba Rye_, &c.—to crouch in while they fired their popguns at me. Just as they were trying to swallow my papers, an article appeared in the _Morning Post_, stating that I “knew more than any man in England about the gipsies.” This was more than _O Bongo_, _ho_, _no tïckno chavo_ could stand. Editors are not like most mortals, they have a perfect right to say what they please about anybody and everybody. They and other literary friends have been more than kind to the cause of the children and my unworthy self, for which I thank them from the bottom of my heart. Without their help I could not have got along. I sent the following letter to the _Morning Post_, bearing date October 11, 1882, relating to “_Shooba Rye_,” _O Bongo_, _hó_, _no tïckno chavo_:

“Your correspondent complains that I do not know sufficient of the gipsies. My congress papers and my ‘Gipsy Life’ show that I know a little. It is evident I know more than is pleasant to him, or he would not have hastily snatched up some one else’s badly-fitting night-dress to sally forth with his farthing candle in hand to put a ‘sprag’ into my wheel. Such backward movements are too late in the day to stop the sun of civilization and Christianity shedding its rays upon the path of the poor gipsy child and its home.

“I do not pretend to know more than forty years everyday practical observation and insight into the real hard facts of the conditions of the women and children employed in the brickyards and canal boats, and the dwellers in gipsy tents and vans can give me.

“Two days ago I came upon a family of gipsy ‘muggers,’ father, mother, and four children, travelling in a cart. The poor little children, whose ages ranged from four to twelve years, were stived up in a box on the cart, which box was 5 ft. long by 2 ft. 9 in. wide by 3 ft high, or about eleven cubic feet of space for each poor child. The children were all down with a highly infectious disease, carrying it from a village, where it had been raging, to Daventry and Northampton. I gave the children some apples, but the poor things said, ‘We are all ill and cannot eat them.’ None of these children could tell a letter. These are facts and not fiction; inartistically dressed, I admit, and without the flowers of poetical imagination to adorn them. Knowledge gained under the circumstances in which I have been placed, will, I think, be found nearly as valuable in improving the condition of neglected and suffering children as imaginative, unhealthy backwood fiction spun by the yard under drawing-room influences and by the side of drawing-room fires can be. At any rate, I have tried for many long years in my rough way to look at the sad condition of the women and children whose cause I have ventured to take in hand with both eyes open, one to their faults, and the other to their virtues; and also with a heart to feel and a hand to help, as my letters, papers, and books will show to those who have the patience to read them.

“I have not been content to sit upon mossy banks by the side of rippling rivulets, with a lovely sun shining overhead, and beneath the witching looks and mesmeric smiles of lovely damsels, swallowing love and other tales as gospel.

“It is time the hard facts and lot of our gipsies and their children—_i.e._, those travelling in vans, shows, and tents—were realized. It is time we asked ourselves the question, ‘What are the vast increasing numbers—over 30,000—of children tramping the country being trained for?’

“The fact is this: Parliament, Christians, moralists, and philanthropists have been content for generations to look at the gipsies and other travellers of the class through glasses tinted and prismed with the seven colours of the rainbow, handed to us by those who would keep the children in ignorance and sin, instead of taking them by the hand to help them out of their degrading position. My plan would improve their condition, without interfering with their liberty to any amount worth naming, considering the blessed advantages to be derived by the gipsies and others from it.

“No amount of misleading sentiment will stop me till the case of the poor children is remedied by the civilizing measures of the country—viz., education, sanitation, and moral precepts—extended to them by an Act of Parliament, as I have described in other places, which could be carried out, and a system of free education established, by means of a pass book, without any inconvenience or cost worth mention. Why should our present-day canal and gipsy children be left out in the cold?”

“’Tis not the work of force, but skill, To find the way into man’s will: ’Tis love alone can hearts unlock; Who knows the Word he needs not knock.”

RICHARD CRASHAW, “_Fuller Worthies_.”

Rambles Among the Gipsies at Daventry and Banbury Fairs.

THE eleventh of October, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two dawned upon “Old England” while rain was coming down too drearily, drizzly, and freely for either man or beast to be comfortable. Foggy, cold, and murky November seemed desirous of making its advent earlier than usual. Not a songster was to be seen nor an autumnal chirp heard round our dwelling. Long dark nights had begun to creep over nature. “The last rose of summer,” the Queen of English flowers, was drooping its head and withering up, and the leaves were dwindling down to nothingness. The lanes were strewn with dying leaves which had done their duty nobly and well.

Through the low and heavy clouds the voice and footsteps of children, as they trotted off with their milk tins, seemed to echo in my ears, and other sounds to hover round me, carrying with them a kind of hollow sepulchral sensation, telling me that summer was dead and autumn was preparing nature for the winter shroud, which was undergoing the process of weaving by angelic hands.