act
unjustifiably by menacing them with the settlement of a number of their
families; but this, from their perpetual wandering, need never be feared.
Happy would it be for the Gipsies as a people, if these civil officers
did encourage them to stay longer in their neighbourhood; for they then
might be induced to commence and persevere in honest, industrious and
regular habits. Not long ago thirty-five Gipsies came to a parish in
Hampshire, to which they belonged, and demanded of the overseers ten
pounds, declaring that, if that sum were not given them, they would
remain there. Seven pounds were advanced, and they soon left the place.

CHAP. III. The Character, Manners and Habits of the English Gipsies,
continued.

From the mode of living among the Gipsies, the parents are often
necessitated to leave their tents in the morning, and seldom return to
them before night. Their children are then left in or about their
solitary camps, having many times no adult with them; the elder children
then have the care of the younger. Those who are old enough gather wood
for fuel; nor is stealing it thought a crime. By the culpable neglect of
the parents in this respect, the children are often exposed to accidents
by fire; and melancholy instances of children being burnt and scalded to
death, are not unfrequent. The author knows one poor woman, two of whose
children have thus lost their lives, during her absence from her tent, at
different periods: and very lately a child was scalded to death in the
parish where the author writes.

The Gipsies are not very regular in attending to the calls of appetite
and hunger. Their principal meal is supper, and their food is supplied
in proportion to the success they have had through the day; or, to use
their own words, _the luck they have met with_.

Like the poor of the land through which they wander, they are fond of
tea, drinking it at every meal. When times are hard with them, they use
English herbs, of which they generally carry a stock, such as agrimony,
ground-ivy, wild mint, and the root of a herb called spice-herb.

The trades they follow are generally chair-mending, knife-grinding,
tinkering, and basket-making, the wood for which they mostly steal. Some
of them sell hardware, brushes, corks, &c.; but in general, neither old
nor young among them, do much that can be called labour. And it is
lamentable that the greatest part of the little they do earn, is laid by
to