With a few coppers given to her and the children we parted.
In another tent on the marshes there was a man, woman, and six children.
The tent was about twelve feet long, six feet six inches wide, and an
average height of about three feet, making a total of about two hundred
and thirty-four cubic feet of space for man, wife, and six children.
These were of both sexes, grown-up and in their teens. Their bed was
straw upon the damp ground, and their sheets, rags. The man was
half-drunk, and the poor children were running about half-naked and
half-starved. The woman had some Gipsy blood in her veins, but the man
was an Englishman, and had, so he said, been a soldier. With a few
coppers and sweets among the children, and in the midst of "Good-byes!"
and "God bless you's!" I left them, promising to pay them another visit.
Out of these twenty families only three were properly married, and only
two could read and write, and these were the poor woman who had been a
Sunday-school scholar and the man who had been a soldier, and, strange to
say, the children of these two people could not read a sentence or tell a
letter. No minister ever visited them, and not one ever attended a place
of worship. In a visit to an encampment in another part of London I came
across a poor Irishwoman, who had been allured away from her respectable
home at the age of sixteen by one of the Gipsy gang. When I saw her she
was sitting crying, with two half-starved children by her side, who,
owing to the coke fire, had bad eyes. Their home was an old ragged tent,
and their bed, rotten straw. When I saw them, and it was about one
o'clock, they had not tasted food for twenty-four hours. I sent for a
loaf for them, and they set to work upon it with as much relish as if
they had been gnawing at the leg of a Christmas fat turkey. The poor
Gipsy woman had been a Sunday-school scholar, and could read and write,
but neither her husband nor children could tell a letter. Her taking to
Gipsy life had broken her father's heart. Her eldest child, a fine
little girl of about seven years of age, had been taken from her by her
friends, and was being educated and cared for. A few weeks since the
little daughter was anxious to see her mother, consequently she was taken
to her tent; but, sad to relate, instead of the daughter going to kiss
her mother, as she would expect, she turned away from her with a shudder
and a shriek, and for the whole day the child did not