Pat Collins - Showman

Pat Collins was a Showman and lived in Walsall, I went to a talk about him and the fairground that he ran at our local 'hut' night, it was really interesting, what made me smile was the people who ran the Boxing ring where the Hickmans ( my step fathers family name )  one of my partners family made the Motorbike ring of death. My Moms extended family The Kemps worked on many fairgrounds and probably knew the Collins' it is a weird and wonderful world with many coincidences along the way.

information on Pat Collins

Nomad.

We were once all nomadic, moving with the seasons to forage the land to survive, then small groups lived together to farm the land and from this towns grew, yet there is prejudice against travellers even though this is where we began.

Are people envious of the freedom or do they need the structured world, would the thought of moving weekly to be stressful and not knowing where they would rest their heads and eat a meal?

I am currently reading a biography of a woman who grew up post war with her traveller family, when Gypsies helped with harvests of hops in Kent and apples in Hereford, or collecting rags and metal to resell,  life was hard work but happy when with the family and community, mixing with the non gypsy folk was another matter. Her Mother had decided her and her brother should learn to read and write so took them to a local school, they were bullied not only by the other pupils but the teacher who also turned a blind eye to the children’s’ behaviour .

The constant ‘being moved on’ by the police was also a stress for the whole family, for this family though came the comfort of being able to buy a small piece of land close to relatives where they had a base, not permanent but somewhere to return to when not working in the fields.

I would like to imagine a world where people can live as they wish,

Locke Family

A wonderful piece of film about the Locke Family who lived around Shropshire. ATV 1964

 and a photo of a horse.

Great Researching

BBC

I love the BBC for research, you find some real gems and this is one.

A wonderful selection of information about Gypsies.

Richard Long : 1983

Richard Long on Omnibus

While researching for the Dissertation I found this Gem ! if you like Richard Baker and Old style Tate Curators this is for you :-)

Looking For Esmerelda

While reading through reseach online I found that thier is a posibility that Esmerelda Lock(e) who was a Shropshire Gypsy was painted by Rossetti while in Edinburgh, I have found a couple of pieces about this and hope to come up with an image, I have emailed the Birmingham Gallery which has a collection of Pre Raph work of its own and has some from Tate aswell at the moment, in the hope of finding an answer.

Discussion about local Gypsies

I am part of a local historical group and thought this would also be a good place to ask about Gypsies and have had some interesting responses. I have removed names for privacy.

1.Yes gypsy travellers were regularly parked with their horse drawn mobile home on land owned by Arthur Burton and sited off Back Lane. off Hobbs Hole Lane. Aldridge. I can only say that this was prior to the mid 1980's and also it was presumed they worked on the farm whilst there. They left dozens of empty two pint cider bottles some of which are still found to this day. I do not recall them anywhere else in Stonnall but there were of course the Irish men who came over annualy to harvest the potatoe crop and were not otherwise travellers  ·

2. My Grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Horton, nee Blann, of Keepers Cottage, Footherly Lane, Welcomed the return of the travellers with their horse drawn vehicles, each Summer. They weren't working for her, and I don't know who they were working for, but my mother tells me that Granny and the old gypsy lady would sit down together with a pot of tea and catch up on each other's year's worth of family events. This would be late 40s-early 50s. How far removed was my grandmother's life from that of her friend. The gulf was certainly not as wide as it now would be. Granny brought her children up in a small cottage with no running water or electricity. In the summer months when it was too hot to cook indoors, she would employ bricks and iron to rig up a "barbecue" (anachronistic word)

3. The Irish seasonal workers that Gordon mentions were a continuation of a tradition that had existed since the Iron Age. When agriculture got going in earnest in Britain, it would attract seasonal workers from across the Irish Sea. These people used Watling Street as a means of getting to places of interest in southern Britain. Bearing in mind that this country was Celtic speaking in those days, the road they used was named after these annual migrants. The Welsh word for Irish is Gwyddel and that is precisely where the name of the road comes from.

4.I remember gypsy ladies travelling through stonnall during the 1940's selling home made cloths pegs which were closed at the top by a metal band peeled from a tin can, if the house holder did not purchase them they were subject to rather strong curses, one such event I remember very clearly

5. I remember travellers hawking clothes pegs door-to-door

6The same gypsy family came annually, to help with the veg picking. They would call into our corner shop. Grandma was in charge and would be helped down from the truck by the family who all had Biblical names, eg Abraham. Grandma would sit down on the chair in the shop and ask for the goods. Once bought, Grandma would scoop all the goods into her apron rather than using a bag. They respected my Mum always calling her Mrs B. When they were stopped from staying on the layby (sometimes near Wall towards the riding school - is that Gentleshaw) they moved to a designated gypsy site. Unfortunately they weren't allowed to take their chickens with them so they gave them to us. We put them with my pet bantoms which were kept under the fruit trees at the back of the garage forecourt. These were the "proper gypsies" and not the ones that came round selling pegs and sprigs of heather or offering to sharpen your kitchen knifes.

Im really pleased that the inklings of them coming through here were right and also as they worked on the farms. It was a shame that there were no surnames for me to follow up.