Gypsy Coppersmiths in Liverpool and Birkenhead

Gypsy Coppersmiths in Liverpool and Birkenhead

When you want to find a Gypsy the police are more likely to be able to give you his address than directories, bankers, or ministers of religion; and it was a Liverpool policeman who sent me to the back of the municipal slaughter-house to seek a horde of Hungarian Roms whose arrival had been announced by the evening papers. In a squalid street, at a corner where insanitary dwellings had been demolished, I found a vacant plot of brick-strewn ground surrounded by high walls. There, evidently, were my Gypsies, for a crowd of boys had gathered round the one door, struggling for a glance through its keyhole. Mistaking me for a detective, they made way, and I knocked loudly and long. The boys were not mistaken. There was a scene within which was worth looking at. The strangers had journeyed so rapidly from Marseilles p. 2to Liverpool that they had outstripped their heavy baggage, and, arriving before their tents, were obliged to bivouac under tiny extemporized shelters propped against the windowless house-walls which formed two sides of the square. They were making the best of circumstances with considerable success, for they had with them countless beds of eiderdown in brilliantly coloured covers, and they had their all-important samovars. The men were out, but the women, protected by a police-serjeant from the inhospitable attentions of their neighbours, were in the camp, and into that shabby yard they had brought an unaccustomed glory which was altogether foreign and oriental. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 62269
Author: Macfie, R. A. Scott (Robert Andrew Scott)
Release Date: May 29, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English