Clarence Gray, a 20 year old musician and travelling showman, camping with several members of the Gray tribe at Yarmouth, Norfolk, reported his piano accordion stolen from his caravan. The miscreant turned out to be Angelo Gizzie, a fellow travelling showman, who was about 31 at the time, and had taken it as a joke, since Clarence had ‘taken the juice out of him,’ (teased him). He assured the court, when appearing to answer the charge, that he intended to return it, which was probably the case. Clarence Gray, in fact, appealed for leniency on his behalf, as he ‘had known him since childhood.’ Angelo Gizzie was, as a result, placed on probation and ordered to pay the costs of the case.
At Wymondham, Norfolk, in January 1902 Angelo Gizzie’s father, also named Angelo, an Italian described as an entertainer, had married into a Traveller family when he wed Anne Poll, recorded as a Gypsy. The elder Angelo’s parents and siblings had come to England sometime in the mid-1880s, and appear in the 1901 census in Norwich, living amongst several other Italian immigrants, where they are described as street organ players.
Carmeni Gizzie and his wife, Oranzia, had seven children by 1901, six having been born in Italy: three sons, Antonio, Angelo, Michele, and three daughters, Maria and twins Aleziatta and Matalena. In 1887, in Norwich, their youngest child, Filemena, was born. Angelo and his wife, Annie, had several children, mostly giving them family names. In the 1911 census Angelo is recorded as a travelling showman, and is with his wife and children Angelo, 8; Madeline, 6; Annie, 4; Violet, 3; Frederick, 1.
The family are camped at the fairground, Cock Meadow, Attleborough, in Norfolk and are travelling with some significant Gypsy families, including Bertie Gray and Alfred Gray, both sons of Adolphus Gray and his second wife, Harriet, and grandsons of the famous Osery Gray and his wife, Eliza Heron. Other families present include Cheesemans (Adolphus’s son Kenzer Gray had partnered Henrietta Cheeseman) and Parkins (two of Adolphus’s daughters, Annie Richender and Lily had married Parkin brothers, Frederick and Albert).
Bertie Gray had much in common with the elder Angelo Gizzie, for they were both musicians and the sons of musicians. Although, when Bertie had married Sarah Wheatley at St. Mark’s in Lakenheath, Norfolk in 1894, both he and his father, Adolphus, were described as dealers, but Sarah’s father, Albert Wheatley, declared himself a musician. The following year saw 21 year old Bertie described as a showman, when charged with an assault. Their first child, Elizabeth, was followed by Cornelia/Amelia, Herbert/Bertie and Oliver, the last three all baptised together at Hempton, Norfolk at the end of May 1901, together with the child of a Cheeseman couple, and just a few months’ later, in September 1901, at the same location Bertie and Sarah baptised a baby, Frederick, where Bertie is described as a hawker.
Bertie and Sarah were to have several more children, including Clarence, Ruby and Ida, and the family continued to travel the routes favoured by the Grays and their extended family for several generations, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Bertie’s parents were both buried in Norfolk, as was his grandfather, Osery Gray, and his grandmother, Eliza Heron. Angelo Grizzie and his wife, Anne/Annie, also travelled the same territory with their offspring, and were often in the company of the Gray family, which confirms Clarence Gray’s assertion that he had known the younger Angelo since he was a boy – and led to Angelo’s misplaced joke and subsequently, the court case.