3-052-354 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches of gipsy life round London - Latimer-Road, Notting-Hill, 1880. '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. The western side of Notting-hill, where the railway passenger going to Shepherd's-bush or Hammersmith sees a vast quantity of family linen hung out to dry in the gardens and courtyards of small dwelling-houses, bordered towards Wormwood-scrubbs by a dismal expanse of brick-fields, might tempt the gipsies so inclined to take a clean shirt or petticoat - certainly not for their own wearing'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.