fore be popular with his subjects, and he binds them to himself by the charms of the gipsy life under his direction. Coarse freedom, a noisy jollity, and obscenest impudence give attractions to the gang. Generally the gangmaster pays up in a public house; then he returns home at the head of the procession reeling drunk, propped up right and left by a stalwart virago, while children and young persons bring up the rear, boisterous, and singing chaffing and bawdy songs. On the return journey what Fourier calls “phanerogamie,” is the order of the day. The getting with child of girls of 13 and 14 by their male companions of the same age, is common. The open villages which supply the contingent of the gang, become Sodoms and Gomorrahs,[1] and have twice as high a rate of illegitimate births as the rest of the kingdom. The moral character of girls bred in these schools, when married women, was shown above. Their children, when opium does not give them the finishing stroke, are born recruits of the gang.
The gang in its classical form just described, is called the public, common, or tramping gang. For there are also private gangs. These are made up in the same way as the common gang, but count fewer members, and work, not under a gang-master, but under some old farm servant, whom the farmer does not know how to employ in any better way. The gipsy fun has vanished here, but according to all witnesses, the payment and treatment of the children is worse.
The gang-system, which during the last years has steadily increased,[2] clearly does not exist for the sake of the gang-master. It exists for the enrichment of the large farmers,[3] and indirectly of the landlords.[4] For the farmer there is no
- ↑ “Half the girls of Ludford have been ruined by going out” (in gangs). l. c., p. 6, § 32.
- ↑ “They (gangs) have greatly increased of late years. In some places they are said to have been introduced at comparatively late dates; in others where gangs … have been known for many years …. more and younger children are employed in them.” (l. c., p. 79, § 174.)
- ↑ “Small farmers never employ gangs.” “It is not on poor land, but on land which affords rent of from 40 to 50 shillings, that women and children are employed in the greatest numbers.” (l. c., pp. 17, 14.)
- ↑ To one of these gentlemen the taste of his rent was so grateful that he indignantly declared to the Commission of Inquiry that the whole hubbub was only
