“Judging from the conversations I have had with the Gipsies in various parts of the country, not more than half living as men and wives are married. No form or ceremony has been gone through, not even ‘jumping the broomstick,’ as has been reported of them; and taking the words of a respectable Gipsy woman, ‘they go together, take each other’s words, and there is an end of it.’ I am also assured by Levi Boswell, a real respectable Gipsy, and a Mrs. Eastwood, a Christian woman and a Gipsy, who preaches occasionally, that not half the Gipsies who are living as men and wives are married. When once a Gipsy woman has been ill-used, she becomes fearful, and as one said to me a few days since, ‘we are either like devils or like lambs.’ In the case of some of the adult Gipsies living on the outskirts of London an improvement has taken place. There is some good among them as with others. A Gipsy in Wiltshire has built himself a house at the cost of £600. Considerable difficulty is experienced sometimes in finding them out, as many of the women go by two names; but in vain do I look for any improvement among the children. Owing to the act relating to pedlars and hawkers prohibiting the granting of licences for hawking to the youths of both sexes under seventeen, and the Education Acts not being sufficiently strong to lay hold of their dirty, idle, travelling tribes to educate them—except in rare cases—they are allowed to skulk about in ignorance and evil training, without being taught how to get an honest living. No ray of hope enters their breast, their highest ambition is to live and loll about so long as the food comes, no matter by whom or how it comes so that they get it. In many instances they live like pigs, and die like dogs. The real old-fashioned Gipsy has become more lewd and demoralised—if such a thing could be—by allowing his sons and daughters to mix up with the scamps, vagabonds, ‘rodneys,’ and gaol birds, who now and then take their flight from the ‘stone cup’ and settle among them as they are camping on the ditch banks; the consequence is our lanes are being infested with a lot of dirty ignorant Gipsies, who, with their tribes of squalid children, have been encouraged by servant girls and farmers—by supplying their wants with eggs, bacon, milk, potatoes, the men helping themselves to game—to locate in the neighbourhood until they have received the tip from the farmer to pass on to his neighbours. Children born under such circumstances, unless taken hold of by the State, will turn out to be a class of most dangerous characters. Very much, up to the present, the wants of the women and children have been supplied through gulling the large-hearted and liberal-minded they have been brought in contact with, and the result has been that but few of the real Gipsies have found their way into gaols. This is a redeeming feature in their character; probably their offences may have been winked at by the farmers and others who do not