I have been researching old newspapers online, mostly the history of gypsies, in a social regard, adding to other likewise articles I have found. I have chronologically referenced some of these stories, to be seen in a fuller blog on my website, beginning in the early 1700's with the main issue having been the habitual fortune telling of the gypsy women and a wish to suppress this. For all the ethusiasm among women to know their fortunes and to have insights into love, it can be seen that along with this there was some intentional fraudulence going on. It's not that this was a reflection on the gypsies at large, but it was surely there for some elements among them. Gypsies of the New Forest appear to have had a good reputation, and Queen Victoria herself had a fondness for these peoples, but this fine picture was not to be experienced everywhere, as will be seen. 1725 - Gypsies are put into prison for the pretense of telling peoples fortunes. Six of their women and three of their men are said to have been 'pilfering about the country'. 1733 - A 'country wench', aged 18, who was journeying alone to a village, was on the way attacked by a 'travelling tinker and his whore'. They stripped her naked and took away all she had. On then tying her to a tree with a strong cord, they set their dog on her, in such a manner that he almost tore off one of her breasts. A gentleman, happening to be passing at a distance, heard the dog barking and for curiosity rode up, hby which time the couple had disappeared, although the dog was still there with his hold upon the girl. The man made the dog let go, untied the girl, wrapped her up in his great coat, and followed the dog, who soon went to his master at an alehouse in the town, where he was there seized and sent to Nottingham jail. On going back to the poor girl, the man found that she was dead. 1736 - A years imprisonment and four stands in the pillory, it is announced by parliament, will be given to all those who tell fortunes or who employ 'crafty science' to find stolen goods. This was resorted to in response to 'ignorant people being frequently deluded and defrauded'. 1739 - A false prophetess, from among the idle strollers in summer times who 'pretend to tell fortunes' and who pose to have the 'gifts of prophecy', has bewitched a gentlemans money away from him in Essex. Sitting under a hedge listening to the gypsy talking, she persuaded him to give her all the money he had in his pockets, to go to his friends house and in the orchard to dig under a certain walnut tree where he would find 15 lottery tickets, all of which would win a prize, and in each ticket would be a diamond of considerable value. Before digging he was instructed to scrape all the bark off the tree and this instruction the infatuated gentleman followed and he dug deeply, before realising he had lost out and so had his friend. Warrants were now out to apprehend the false prophetess. 1758 - Susannah Fleming is imprisoned for a year for telling fortunes and is to be pilloried every quarter of a year for one hour during market day. 1758 - Of a gang of near 20 gypsies in different parts of Norfolk, the men have been robbing houses and the women have been telling fortunes. Two of them, Lomas Smith and James Lacey, have been committed to the castle jail for burgling the house of a widow in the night time. Lomas Smith is a gypsy, a tinker by trade. James Lacey sells buckles and knives. Theyr women tell fortunes. Ten of the gypsies are in the neighbourhood of Southrepps, Bacton, Trunch and about the sea coast. One of those gypsies, who is their captain, wears a laced hat and rides a good horse. 1768 - A fortune telling woman, accused of stealing near Banff in Scotland, has been ill treated by a mob. She had been going around the country telling fortunes, only to then be suspected of stealing some clothes, for which she was taken by a mob and dragged along the streets to the shore, where they ducked her, tying her hands to a cart and hoisting her up and down into the water. This barbarous exercise they carried on for so long that she would have died at their hands, but for someone more humane than the others freeing her. She then crawled about the streets, begging for shelter from the inclement weather, until at four in the morning a woman showed her to an outhouse. She was almost frozen to death by now and she soon after expired. The principal men behind this horrid affair, being sailors, were found and now lie in prison. 1808 - Gypsies sell a pony, then pick pocket the buyer. This happened at the Marlborough fair. 1811 - An 86 year old leader of a gypsy gang has married a 22 year old. The man, Lawrence Winsor, was a celebrated fiddler and travelling brazier, his young bride being Joanna Skelton. 1811 - A farmers servant girl named Elizabeth Collier was robbed and attacked by gypsies, whom she came upon while travelling by foot. Elizabeth had been sent on a misson by her mistress to purchase a bottle of wine for a sick cottager and was on her return, it being ten in the morning, when a gypsy woman came to her and insisted on telling her her fortune. Elizabeth was endeavouring to get away when two men rushed out from a park, grabbed her and dragged her some way from the road, where they took from her a pound and some silver, a shawl and the port wine. Not content with having already robbed and ill treated her, they most inhumanely stabbed her with a penknife under her right breast. The poor girl made it back home and reported what had happened, for which the farmer, procuring the assistance of a soldier, went in pursuit and found them. One did escape, but on some gypsies being rounded up, and Elizabeth being present to identify the culprits, he was captured, he being Adam Lee. 1812 - The two gypsies, Thomas and Adam Lee, who had robbed and stabbed the servant girl Elizabeth Collier, were executed for highway robbery. They were part of the gypsy gangs that travelled Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and Kent, and for years had been accomplices in various depredations. Thomas's wife, having been part of the robbery, was sentenced to be transported for life. A most affecting scene took place after their sentences were given, just previous to their being taken to separate cells, where on taking final leave of one another, the 'wretched criminal' Thomas, in a passionate manner, alternately embraced his wife and their little infant which she held in her arms. Thomas and Adam were taken to the scaffold with halters around their necks and their arms pinioned, the while of which Thomas Lee presented a most melancholy scene, being obliged to be carried and weeping in a most lamentable tone. Upon the scaffold, they had a few moments of prayer, then were launched off, and their bodies, after being suspended the usual time, were cut down and delivered to their relatives and several of their fraternity, who were more in number than had ever been remembered on such an occasion. 1813 - A gang of gypsies pitched their tent on waste ground in Herefordshire and an old gypsy woman from among them called at the house of a man named Gritton, saying she would tell him his fortune. She persuaded him that a large amount of gold lay concealed in his home and that he should put a large sum of money into a parcel, which she would endow with a charm, and then sew into the side pocket of his coat. The more money the parcel contained, the more considerable would be the treasure he should find, for which he put together £70 in gold, silver and bills. Nine days this was to remain in his coat, at the end of which she promised to return and that a coffer of guineas was to arise from the ground, to at once enrich her 'credulous dupe'. She never returned though and when he opened up the parcel he saw to his utter confusion that the 'witch' had turned that gold and silver into halfpence, stones and waste paper. Much of that money the man had borrowed from his neighbours and if he had been able to procure more he would have. As for the gypsy woman, she had escaped with her 'booty'. 1815 - New laws against vagrancy are affecting gypsies. By strict application of the law, magistrates are to apprehend and bring to punishment common beggars, gypsies, and other persons wondering about, who refuse or unable to give good account of themselves. 1820 - Two gypsies, Thomas Smith and William Lee, stole two horses from a field and were caught up with in Romford where they were offering the horses for sale. 1823 - Constables are fined 20 shillings if gypsies or other vagrants camp on the waste lands in their parishes , in accordance with the Vagrancy Act. 1832 - The death in a tent on a race ground has occurred of the 'King of the gypsies' alias Charles Lee, the 'monarch' of a 'murky tribe', maybe aged 74, but maybe much older. He has left about 50 children and grandchildren behind him. At his funeral, ten of his relatives attended, the rest of his family being absent at different fairs and races. A thousand spectators came to the church yard, curious to witness the funeral of 'so exalted a character'. 1833 - On entering certain countries the gypsies passed themselves off as Christians of Egypt who had been expelled from their land by the Saracens. In this article the dates are given for their arrival in Europe, in Hungary in 1417, as likewise in Bohemia, the German states and France. It was in France, as recorded by Pasquier, that they gave out the story about being Egyptians, saying they had come via Bohemia. In 1418 they arrived in Switzerland. In 1422 they came to Italy. From France they passed into Spain and Portugal. It was later, in the reign of Henry VIII that they came to England. The whole of this 'outcaste race' now amounted to five million, there being a million in Europe, 400,000 in Africa, a million and a half in India, and two million in the rest of Asia. 1836 - The gypsies have been overunning the Basque lands and turning to violent crime. Innumerable bands of gypsies there no longer confine themselves to their old system of begging, frauding the credulous, and taking hens from roosts and rabbits from hutches and occasionally sheep too, but have taken to violent robberies, sometimes even mudering, watching the farmers on their return from market, to steal from them their moneys for the sales of cattle and all else. When pursued in France they escape to Spain and vice versa. Orders have been given to arrest all the gypsies, 30 of these 'dark complexioned marauders' having already been captured. It is despaired of though that never will these vagabonds acquire fixed habits of industry, but that they will return to their evil courses once released. It has been observed that there are at least 2,000 of this wandering tribe, who have no means of subsistence but fraud, robbery and murder. Therefore, the only way to rid the country people of this scourge is to seize 'the whole of these wretches' and to 'transport them en masse beyond sea'. Such gypsies are not to be considered as Frenchmen, as they are outcastes to all society and are alien from the laws. They are altogether strangers in the land to which they are a burden. 1838 - A girl caring for children repelled gypsy burglars with a gun. Her master, of Woodford Hall, had gone to church with all the other servants, leaving her with his three children, all under the age of ten, her name being Eliza Whitmel. Two gypsy men came demanding admittance, which upon her denying them, they tried to batter in the door. Eliza told them from the first floor window to go away, and that she would rather die than let them rob the house. Disregarding her, they continued to batter the door, upon which she got her masters gun and fired it at them four times. The oldest daughter, who was nine, was supplying her with powder and shot so that she could keep reloading. The thieves, finding her to be determined, and having small wounds already from the shots, they gave up and left. 1841 - Talk of the early persecution of gypsies, their hiding in caves and holes, and their habits since then. So it begins, that shortly after their first arrival in England, which is upwards of three centuries since, a dreadful persecution was raised against them, the aim of which was their utter extermination. Being a gypsy was esteemed a crime worthy of death and the gibbets of England groaned beneath the weight of gypsy carcasses, and the miserable survivors were literally obliged to creep into the earth in order to preserve their lives. These days passed by, their persecutors became weary of pursuing them, and so they showed their heads from the holes and caves where they had hidden themselves. Venturing forth, they increased in numbers, each tribe of family choosing a particular curcuit, they fairly dividing the land among them. In England the male gypsies were all horse dealers, who sometimes would mend the tin and copper utensils of the peasantry. The gypsy women were fortune tellers. They would pitch their tents in the vicinity of a village or small town, by the roadside, under the shelter of the hedges and the trees. Their complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so. Their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry and are far more active. They all speak the English language fluently. In their gate and demeanour they are easy and graceful, whereas the peasantry are slower, uncouth and in manner dogged and brutal. This report is gleaned from Borrows 'Gypsies of Spain'. 1842 - A remarkable circumstance is noted to have been the ceremonial expulsion of one of the gypsies of the New Forest, by the name of Lee. Between 300 and 400 gypsies, both men and women, belonging to different tribes, including the Lees, Stanleys and Coopers, assembled at Boltons Bench near Lyndhurst. The offender, a handsome looking man, in his 30's, was placed in the middle of a ring, comprised of the king of the gypsies and the patriarchs of the different tribes. A second ring was made up of the rest of the men and an exterior ring to that was made up of the women. The King, who was one of the Lees, a 'venerable old man', looking to be in his 90's, addressed the culprit for nearly an hour in a tongue that was strange to any bystanders, spoken impressively with vehement gesticulations. Only the gypsies themselves knew what was this mans crime, but it must have been very obnoxious, as the act of expulsion among them is exceedingly rare. When the king finished his speech he spoke to all present, saying in English that Jacob Lee was expelled from among them and was no longer of their fraternity and must leave the camp of the gypsies forever. The king then went and spat on him and the circles opened to allow the mans departure, they hitting him with branches as he did so. The meeting then broke up, all going their different ways, some having come to witness this from a considerable distance. The whole ceremony took place under an imposing ancient oak tree. 1848 - Sophia Locke, the daughter of a gypsy traveller, was born in a cave near Crocker Wood, and was one to always roam the land in male attire. She posed as a man, calling herself John Smith, working either as a tinker or a scissor grinder. For 14 years she even had a woman lover, with whom she travelled all over England. In 1847 it is to be seen that the two of them were picking hops in Worcestershire. They lived very happily together and would earn around a guinea a day. Upon her death, Sophia was buried as John Smith and a great many people came to witness her funeral. 1851 - Two gypsy men, David Yelding and Joseph Barton, assaulted a French man named Jacques Ponsonque who travels with his bear named Bruin. On meeting them on the Canterbury road, the gypsies began taunting the bear, playing tricks, and when Jacques tried to stop them they beat him up. 1887 - A description is given in the Thanet Advertiser of the gypsy woman, she being not always handsome in later life, but as a maiden is always attractive. Even when older though, she never loses her glowing eyes, nor is she ever feeble. As a rule they outlive their gypsy men. She has an apparently wondrous power of sorcery and divination. Her spirit is exhaustless. She has a certain personal charm and an untrained intuitive intellect, for which she may even be considered to be the brightest of women.
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A request has come from Ella May, wanting me to look into her ancestral line of Spurgeons of Lowestoft, within which she is keen to find a link to a famous preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. So I delved deeply into her Spurgeons, and yet even going back quite far didn't find this link, even though her family have told her this is a real connection. I do find tales of a fishing family by the sea, which I get absorbed in, but if there is a connection to the preacher then it is way further back. I found news about Ella May's Lowestoft ancestors saving lives at sea, one being a child, who though as if perished, was brought back to life by being laid down in bed with the warmth of a naked local lady, hero's all of them. And further back, one of her greats was prosecuted for what were called 'sodomitical practises' with another man, for which a prison sentence was in order. This was all on her mothers side. Her fathers side looks well dodgy, being prosecuted for this or that, or suing others. They were Barnsley farmers, ill treating their animals, adulterating the milk they sold, lying, stealing; quite a bunch. No matter what fines they kept paying, they accumulated quite some wealth. I discovered some interesting family for Ella May, her Steed's, who for a while were in Boulogne in France, after which came prison in London, the wife and children having to resort to the workhouse, after which one of the sons, Harry, became a theatrical agent, acting, singing, comedy and burlesque, running a theatre in Tottenham, and mentions in the papers for playing well the part of a pirate in Robinson Crusoe. Harry's wife, Josephine Minnie, was one of a bunch of women sentenced to a stint in prison for obscene language. One of their sons was given the middle name Shakespeare, having been born in Stratford on Avon to this acting family. Ella May had heard about them, though didn't know such detail. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I research through so much genealogical material, and all can seem so fruitless and time consuming, finding nothing of value. And then comes a breakthrough, in this instance concerning what had become of Sarah Green of Lambeth's mother Elizabeth after that first 1841 census showing her to be a widow. And I crack it. She had become wife to John May, a Lambeth labourer, a younger man. They they are in the census's, her Green children giving the clue, John and Charlotte Green being with these May's in the 1851 Census. And was Elizabeth even married to John May, as I find no marriage between them, and still no death for her first husband, Henry Green the tailor. And London abounds with Henry Greens. One, who was indeed a tailor, was caught making some indecency in a pub with a soldier. Interesting. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. When my neighbour Jean Raymond called round I showed him that I am such a melange of rich and poor, royal and peasant, of how my closest royal is James V of Scotland, whose mother is Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII, and then back to the French princess Isabella, married to the gay King, with her father being none other than the notorious Philippe le Bel. My grand French ancestor was something to be hush-hush about in our area of France, he having been an enemy to the Cathars and Knights Templars. This was so amusing to Jean Raymond. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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