The Monmouthshire Beacon of December 1869 mentioned a significant Gypsy family when it noted that ‘Mary Ann Organ, daughter of Henry Organ, who is a hawker and travels the country with a horse and cart was charged . . . with hawking without a licence.’ Mary Ann had been less … Continue reading →

In August 1864 the London Evening Standard, along with several other London and national newspapers, reported on the death of a Gypsy, Barbara Lee, and the subsequent inquest at the Greyhound Tavern, Old Ford Road, Victoria Park, which leads into Bethnal Green. She was described as ‘a celebrated member of … Continue reading →

My parents named me Anne, and for my mother this was to name me after her grandmother, for my father it was rather a tribute to his favourite aunt, Anne/Annie, who was born in 1905, when her mother, Adelaide, was some forty years of age. Having been widowed in January … Continue reading →

She was my great-grandmother, a daughter of Tommy Boswell/Lewis and Counseletti Smith, and in 1887 Adelaide married her first husband, Frederick Breakspear, a marine store dealer. They had seven known children together, before his death in January 1901, and their eldest child was my grandmother, Tryphena. Baptised and registered with … Continue reading →

The old Gypsiologists of the nineteenth century had heard of Hezekiah and made reference to him in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, remarking that Mercy Lee, who came from an important Gypsy tribe, had ‘married a traveller with Gypsy blood in him named Kai Scott and had a … Continue reading →