is
that the Gipsy encampment may be found, squatting within an hour's walk
of the Royal palaces and of the luxurious town mansions of our nobility
and opulent classes, to the very west of the fashionable West-end, beyond
the gentility of Bayswater and Whiteley's avenue of universal shopping.
It is a curious spectacle in that situation, and might suggest a few
serious reflections upon social contrasts at the centre and capital of
the mighty British nation, which takes upon itself the correction of
every savage tribe in South and West Africa and Central Asia. The
encampment is usually formed of two or three vans and a rude cabin or a
tent, placed on some piece of waste ground, for which the Gipsy party
have to pay a few shillings a week of rent. This may be situated at the
back of a row of respectable houses, and in full view of their bedroom or
parlour windows, not much to the satisfaction of the quiet inhabitants.
The interior of one of the vans, furnished as a dwelling-room, which is
shown in our artist's sketch, does not look very miserable; but Mr. Smith
informs us that these receptacles of vagabond humanity are often sadly
overcrowded. Besides a man, his wife, and their own children, the little
ones stowed in bunks or cupboards, there will be several adult persons
taken in as lodgers. The total number of Gipsies now estimated to be
living in the metropolitan district is not less than 2,000. Among these
are doubtless not a small proportion of idle runaways or 'losels' from
the more settled classes of our people. It would seem to be the duty of
somebody at the Home Office, for the sake of public health and good
order, to call upon some local authorities of the county or the parish to
look after these eccentricities of Gipsy life."

On January 3rd, 1880, additional illustrations were given in the
_Illustrated London News_. 1. Tent at Hackney; 2. Tent at Hackney; 3.
Sketch near Latimer Road, Notting Hill; 4. A Bachelor's Bedroom, Mitcham
Common; 5. Encampment at Mitcham Common; 6. A Knife-grinder at Hackney
Wick; 7. A Tent at Hackney Marshes. "A few additional sketches,
continuing those of this subject which have appeared in our journal, are
engraved for the present number. It is estimated by Mr. George Smith, of
Coalville, Leicester, who has recently been exploring the queer outcast
world of Gipsydom in different parts of England, that some 2,000 people
called by that name, but of very mixed race, living in the