3-052-352 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches of gipsy life round London - tent at Hackney, 1880. Sketch '...designed to show the squalid and savage aspect of gipsy habitations in the suburban districts, at Hackney and Hackney-wick, north-east of London; where the marsh-meadows of the river Lea, unsuitable for building-land, seem to forbid the extension of town streets and blocks of brick or stuccoed terraces; where the pleasant wooded hills of Epping and Hainault Forest appear in the distance, inviting the jaded townsman, on summer holidays, to saunter in the Royal Chace of the old English Kings and Queens; where genuine ruralities still lie within an hour's walk, of which the fashionable West-Ender knoweth nought...It is estimated by Mr. George Smith...who has recently been exploring the queer outcast world of Gipsydom in different parts of England, that some 2000 people called by that name, but of very mixed race, living in the manner of Zulu Kaffirs rather than of European citizens, frequent the neighbourhood of London. They are not all thieves, not even all beggars and impostors, and they escape the law of vagrancy by paying a few shillings of weekly rent for pitching their tents or booths, and standing their waggons or wheeled cabins, on pieces of waste ground'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.