Introduction

This article deals with the Romany Gypsy singer Minty Smith, and two of her brothers, Levi and Jasper Smith. Rather than give each person a separate web page, I have covered all three together here, since their lives were so closely intertwined – not just as children, but in adult life too, they often travelled together or were encamped not far from each other. That is one reason why this page is so long. The other is the wealth of sources in which they appear. I have quoted at length from an interview with Jasper recorded in the mid-1960s. And also from the numerous local newspaper reports where one or other of the Smiths is quoted in an article on “the gipsy problem” (as it was invariably described), or where details are given of their many court appearances on charges of being encamped by the highway, or obstructing the highway. Readers may find the latter reports repetitious, and you may choose to skip through them; but I have quoted so many at length simply because this serves to bring home the extent to which travellers were subject to harassment from the authorities – for example, in 1967 Levi seems to have been in court facing the same charges, but with a rising scale of fines, on an almost monthly basis.

The following links may help to navigate this long article:

• The Smith family – background
• Minty Smith
  • Minty – collectors and recordings
  • Minty – songs
• Levi Smith
  • Levi – collectors and recordings
  • Levi – songs
• Jasper Smith
  • Jasper – collectors and recordings
  • Jasper – songs
• Discography

The Smith family – background

The Romany singers Minty, Levi and Jasper Smith were recorded by Mike Yates in the 1970s, at various locations in Kent and Surrey, and Mike’s recordings of the siblings have appeared on LP and CD releases on the Topic and Musical Traditions labels (details in the Discography). They were among the children of Liza, née Cooper, and Derby Smith who, according to an obituary of his son Jasper, “in 1887 was ushered into this world in a tent on Derby day”¹. Actually, most official records suggest Derby’s birth year was 1899 or, based on his given age in the 1921 census, 1895.

Derby’s parents were Alfred, known as Alf or Elf, born  around 1854, and Charlotte (Lottie) née Lee, the daughter of a gypsy hawker. They were married in 1879 at Christ Church, Battersea, 1879. Elf made chairs which he sold door to door, while Lottie told fortunes. They travelled around London – Fulham and Battersea – and Surrey, and would always go to the Epsom Derby in June.²

Derby Smith and Eliza Cooper were married on 3^rd January 1911 at St James’ church, Shere, in Surrey. He was 22 years old, and his occupation was given as Hawker. His bride’s name was on this occasion spelled “Elisa”. She was 20 years old, and her father William Cooper – known as ‘Bundle’ – was listed as a Hawker³. Both Derby and Eliza were recorded as residing at Hackhurst Downs (about 1 mile North of Abinger Hammer in Surrey); neither was able to sign their name on the register, so left their mark.

The 1921 census found the family living in a caravan on Epsom Downs, Walton on the Hill, Surrey. Both Derby and Liza were Licensed Hawkers. His age was given as 36, and hers as 32. Living with them were 7 year old Minty, 5 year old Amy, and 3 year old Levi. In total, Eliza and Derby had seven children: Minty, Amy, Levy, Jasper, Rachel, Reuben, and Emily.⁴

In the booklet to the Topic LP The Travelling Songster (12TS304, 1977) Mike Yates wrote:

The Smiths have certainly had plenty of practice in survival techniques. At the time the family of seven was left motherless, Minty was twelve, Levy seven and Jasper five. ‘It was like a loadstone on Father’, remembers Minty, who took over the mothering from then on. The children had to help as best they could, making pegs, skewers, wooden chrysanthemums, as they followed the traditional family routes – going off through Surrey and Kent for seasonal work on the fruit and hop farms, and always returning to the Epsom/Leatherhead area for the winter. Down at the pub someone would say: ‘There’s a boy outside who can sing’, and Jasper would come to the doorway, too young to go in, and sing for halfpennies.

Every summer, of course, the family never missed a Derby, the time when vast numbers of Travellers always congregate on the Downs for their annual get-together. It is a source of pride to the Smiths that Father was named after the race – he was born on the Downs one Derby Day, and there has been a ‘Derby’ in each generation ever since – the latest being a great-grandson who is now four years old.

From a young age the family would augment their meagre income by entertaining the racegoers. Sometimes the children dressed up in old pyjama trousers from the totting, and blacked their faces like the n****r minstrels who were there. Levy sang or tuned⁵, and played his tambourine, and Jasper taught himself the mouth organ: ‘Well, I kep blowing and blowing till it come to me – then I was away!’

Eliza’s death was recorded at Epsom in the second quarter of 1927, when she was 39 years old. This tallies with Minty being around twelve years old (at least, according to her age as recorded in the 1921 census). Her funeral was covered in local newspapers and, indeed, further afield. This report from the Sutton & Epsom Advertiser, 26^th May 1927, is typical:

GIPSY’S FUNERAL.

Scenes on Epsom Downs.

Strange scenes were witnessed on Epsom Downs on Tuesday afternoon on the occasion of the funeral of Mrs. Eliza Smith wife of Derby Smith, so named because he was born on the Downs on Derby Day, a well known member of the gipsy fraternity.

Mrs. Smith died in the Epsom Infirmary last week and on Sunday, when the gipsies commenced to assemble on the Downs for next week’s race meeting they placed the coffin containing the body in a specially constructed tent at the rear of the grand stand where the gipsy encampment is pitched.

There, with the lid unscrewed, it remained till Tuesday, when friends took their last view of the deceased woman, men, women and children surrounding the coffin and showing unmistakable signs of grief.

There was a walking procession to the cemetery about half a mile away, the coffin being carried by eight male relatives in two relays of four each.

The husband walked behind the coffin carrying a child, four other children toddled by his side and two others followed, all carrying flowers.

The service was conducted by the Vicar of Epsom, the Rev. C. Pattison Muir.

A report in the Liverpool Echo, 25^th May 1927, began “A gipsy funeral on Epsom Downs has cast a gloom over the annual gathering of the tribes for the Derby”, and spoke of “many affecting scenes as men, women, and children filed past the coffin”. The report stated that “Mrs. Smith has left seven children under the age of fifteen”. Eliza had in fact borne at least one other child – the West Surrey Times, 6^th August 1920, reported as follows:

GIPSY’S CHILD SUFFOCATED.
Coroner Cautions Parents.

An inquest was held at the Leatherhead Institute on Saturday on the female child of Derby and Eliza Smith, gipsies.
The mother gave evidence that the child was born five weeks ago on Epsom Downs. They were now living in a tent on Great Bookham Common. On the night of July 29th when she went to bed the child was lying on her left arm. She did not wake until 7.30 the next morning, and then found the child dead. Its face was buried in her clothes.
Dr. G. Spence Candy said death was due to asphyxia.
A verdict of accidental death, due to suffocation, was returned, and the Coroner told the parents to be more careful in the future.

Sadly, the only mentions of gypsies in local newspapers tend to be in relation to deaths, or brushes with the authorities. The name of Derby Smith certainly occurs regularly in Surrey newspaper reports between the Wars. The following examples serve to show the nature of their offences, and the regularity with which they attracted the attention of the local constabulary.

Surrey Advertiser, 8^th February 1919:

DAMAGE ON EPSOM DOWNS.

“Derby Smith,” Hy. Cooper, and Alfd. Collins, gipsies, were summoned at the Epsom Police Court on Monday for being concerned together with three other men, whose cases have already been dealt with, in doing damage to the amount of £30 to dolls, hurdles, turf and underwood, on the gallops at Epsom Downs, the property , of the Grand Stand Association.—Mr. P. M. MacMahon, who prosecuted, said the previous week three other gipsies were bound over in the sum of £20 to keep away and not frequent the gallops on Epsom or Walton Downs with horses, carts or caravans for two years. He would be satisfied if the present defendants would enter into a similar undertaking.—This they agreed to do, and they were bound over as in the previous case.

Surrey Mirror, 19^th March 1926:

GIPSIES’ OFFENCES.– J. Winsor, gipsy, of no fixed abode, was summoned for obstructing the highway on the White-road, Chipstead, by leaving a caravan upon it.—P.C. King stated that defendant’s caravan was on the highway at 12.30 p.m. on February 26th, and he requested him to move it. He did so, but only 800 yards away, where witness found it the next morning. Fined 5s.– For a similar offence on the same date,  Derby Smith was fined 10s., the defendant in this case making two moves on the highway of 400 yards each. P.C. King said that the caravans gave much trouble up and down the roads, and some of the owners kept the same name for only a week.—Abraham Lee and William Harbour were each fined 10s. for obstruction, and 10s. for having no lights on the caravans, and the latter an extra 5s. for not having his name painted on the caravan. P.C. Brake proved these cases, and said that he could not find the defendants for a long time, children being left in charge of the caravans.

Surrey Advertiser, 30^th May 1931:

Derby Smith was fined 10s. at the Epsom Police Court on Wednesday for camping on the highway at Forty-foot-road, Leatherhead.

Surrey Mirror, 23^rd August 1935

CAMPING ON THE HIGHWAY.—Two gipsies, Darby and Jack Smith. were summoned for camping on the highway in Tandridge-lane, on August 9th, and also for not having their names and addresses on their vans. Inspector Brake said that in consequence of complaints he went to Tandridge-lane and saw two vans drawn on the greensward of the highway. He had requested defendants to move two days before. There were no names or addresses on the vans. In a letter enclosing a postal order for 7s. Darby Smith wrote that he had had a breakdown and therefore was forced to stop at the side of the road. Jack Smith, who sent 5s. said he repainted the van and put his name on the top “where he (Inspector Brake) did not look.” Both defendants stated that they would pay any balance not covered by the postal orders they had sent. Defendants were fined 10s. each for camping on the highway and 10s. each for not having their names and addresses on the vans.

Surrey Advertiser, 24^th August 1935:

For allowing a horse to stray on the highway at Burstow on August 3rd. Derby Smith, a gipsy, whose address was given as Guildford, was fined 5s. and costs at Dorking on Wednesday.

Surrey Mirror, 9^th April 1937:

Six gipsies were summoned at the Godstone Sessions on Monday for camping or lighting fires on the highway. Eliza Harbour, who camped in Bones-lane, Horne, on March 18th and 19th, was fined 5s. for each offence; George Harbour, camp, on March 19th, fined 5s.; Derby Smith, who was in Horley-road on the 20th, had to pay 5s.; Bentley William Bentley (sic), camp, on the 20th, 5s.; and Mary Chapman, camp and fire, on the 21st, 2s. 6d. on each offence.

Surrey Mirror, 14 May 1937:

GYPSIES FINED. — Six gipsies were summoned for encamping on the highway, two in White Hill-lane, Blechingley, on April 29th, and four White-lane, Titsey, on May 6th. Two of them were also summoned for doing wilful damage at Pendell Farm, Blechingley, on April 28th. Frank and Derby Smith were fined 5s. each for camping, and 5s. fine and £1 each for the damage done, and Jack Winson, jun., G. Smith, Ned Brazil and William Smith, 10s. each for camping.— Hubert Tobitt, Sandhills Farm, Blechingley, said he had been worried very much by these gipsies in his grazing meadows. He saw one of them in the lane and told him this trespassing, breaking down hedges and grazing horses had got to stop, and if they did not go he would summon them. Defendants took no notice, but turned out their horses and broke down the fences.—Supt. Cox said the police received complaints every day about these gipsies. They were frequently moved on from place to place, but they just went round the district, in circles.

Surrey Mirror, 6^th January 1939:

GIPSIES FINED.—Four gipsies were summoned at the Godstone Sessions on Monday for various offences when encamped at Grants-lane, Limpsfield, on the previous Friday. Arthur Chapman, Jack Fuller and Albert Chapman were all summoned for camping and lighting fires on the highway, and for leaving their caravans on the road without lights. Derby Smith was summoned only for leaving his caravan without lights. P.C. Wellington said three vans were on the highway at 4 p.m. and they were still there at 7.20; in the meantime, Derby Smith had arrived with a van. The vans were unlighted and between the shafts of three of them fires had been lighted. The horses were in a nearby meadow. The road was only 18ft. wide. Three defendants pointed out there were lights inside the vans and that the rear windows were covered in red. They denied there were any fires on the ground. Jack Fuller and Albert Chapman both said their vans belonged to their wives. Arthur and Albert Chapman and Jack Fuller were each fined 5s. for camping, 4s. lighting fires and 1s. for having no lights on the caravans; Smith was fined 1s. for no lights.

Surrey Mirror, 27 March 1942:

GODSTONE PETTY SESSIONS.

Oxted, Monday. — Before Mr. F. H. Elliott (Chairman). Mrs. O. B. Toynbee, Brigadier-General A. H. Cotes James, Capt. C E. Hoskins Master and Mr. A. W. Bruce-Roberts/

GIPSIES FINED. — Jack and Derby Smith were summoned for obstructing White Hill-lane, Blechingley, with two caravans, and also with lighting fires near the highway on March 16th —P.C. Robinson gave evidence.—The Chairman asked if anything was known of these defendants, and Supt. King replied, “Yes, sir, all over the county.” — They were each fined £1, or seven days’ imprisonment in default.

Derby’s son Jasper, interviewed by John Brune in around 1965, recalled that

before the war, I mean, the gypsy’s life was very, very hard. It was a lot sight harder than it was now, because, I mean, I remember the time when my father’s travelled all day long. From daylight to dusk, at night. And he sent my brother out with a few pegs round the houses to see if he could get a bit of food, like. And he says to the… to him “Well, you’ll come out to such a place. I’ll wait there for you”. But before you get there, like, the police have been on and moved us on further. So they followed us from one boundary to another.

[…]

Well, in the old days what we used to do is, uh, get to a place, a spot that we thought we could be all right in the winter. But then sometimes it wasn’t all, it didn’t always work, I mean. You got travelling just as much in the winter as you did in the summer, you see, as you did in the other time, but… only the best part you had about it was in the summer time, that’s when you got on the farms, then you got to work on the farms. And for the period of time you was there on these farms working, well then they allowed you to stay. After the work was done, well, then you had to go on the road. You see? But I mean, them days, the policeman would come along and they’d just give you ten minutes to put your horse in shafts. Say probably 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning they’d come and tap on the door and say “Come on, governor, get going”. See. “You been here all night. And I’ll give you ten minutes to put the harness on the horse”. And if you didn’t put it on in ten minutes you was knocked in the hedge, or in the ditch. See, you just had to stood standing and take it. “It’s all right, governor, all right, just pick your harness up, put it on your horse, and put it in your caravan and go”.

Well, then, probably when you put your horse in your caravan and pulled off with it, then probably that policeman, he would jump on his bike. And he would follow you behind, do you see, to the end of his boundary. By the time you got to the end of his boundary, there’d be another one a-waiting for you, at that boundary, where his boundary ended, to follow you all again from his boundary. Out of his boundary.

Well, I remember the time when I came home on leave in the army in the war. I came ‘ome on fourteen days’ leave from Middenhall (?) Barracks, London. Fourteen days’ leave. Just before I was going abroad. And I came back to Epsom, a place called Ashton Gap, Epsom, where my father wrote a letter and told me he’d be. When I got to Epsom it took me three days to find him, and when I found him I found him at Yalding Lees in Kent. Where the police had shifted him on. And the War was on then… I mean, didn’t give me a chance.⁶

In the same interview, Jasper talked about the gypsies music-making:

Jasper Smith: Well, we… used to play the old Epsom Downs years ago for to get a living, and in the street we used to play tambourines and mouth organs.

[…]

John Brune: And Jews harps and fiddles?

JS: Yeah, Jews harps

JB: Some played fiddle?

JS: Yeah. And the flute. Yeah.

[…]

Our father and parents before us, I mean, when I was a kid, I remember that they used to go to the pub and… have a few pints of beer when… they had a good day, mostly up Epsom Downs, you know, because they was allowed to stop on there for three weeks… when there was a race on, you was allowed to stay there for three weeks, you see. And when they used to go to the pub, they used to meet all different sort of relations and people that they knew. Because they all get to get over the old pub and used to fetch a lot of beer back around the fire. Well that’s when it used to start. They used to have a big fire built up there, and some, they used to pick up the best tap dancers, and one bloke would say, “Well, I bet you a quid my daughter will beat you on tap dancing”, or “I bet you, a gallon of beer”. And there was some pretty good tap dancers. I had Uncle Bill Smith, Billy the pro. His name was Billy, the pro. He danced on the stage in London.  My father’s brother, tap dancing. Until he met his wife, Minnie the travelling girl, gypsy girl, and then… He had plenty of offers to get married to other girls. But he wouldn’t. He just wanted a gypsy girl… And then because they got married, he never danced no more. He learned her the dance then they used to go on Epsom Downs and… Ascot races and Goodwood races and… tap dancing on a board while another one played a tambourine and mouth organ.

JB: That was before the War?

JS: Yeah, well I’m talking about when I was about 15 years of age, and I’m 45 now.⁷

Questioned further about music-making, Jasper listed the main instruments that gypsies would play, and gave example of his father’s skills:

JS: It was mouth organs, tambourines, accordions, the old button accordions, you know, and fiddles, and that sort of thing, and flutes.

JB: Yeah, that’s the penny whistle sort of thing.

JS: Well, sometimes the old travellers used to make them themself. They used to get the… The thing that grows along the road, I forget the name of the weed, it growed hollow in the middle. Very hollow, it’s a big…

JB: Yeah, like a bamboo almost.

JS: That’s something like a bamboo, and they used to cut it and make it, make the flute out of it, the sort of flute out of it for their self, that’s the old, the old people, but there’s not many of the young ones taking that up now. But I have knowed my father years ago, he could… cut one out of the hedge. Just walking along with the old  horse and van. And he could just… say “‘ere Boy, ‘old the horse, and lead the horse along for a minute”. While you’re leading the horse, he’d be with this old flute, cutting it out with his old ‘ooking knife, what we used to call ‘ooking knife, was a peg knife that we used to make pegs with, clothes pegs. It was in the shape of a half a moon with a handle that we made ourselves.

And he’d cut this thing out and he’d go along and he’d play some of the beautifullest tunes on it, play all the old jigs, the same as I’ve been playing now, but he’d play them on that flute…

JB: If he’d get some grass growing anywhere, he could make music with it?

JS: Yes, anywhere, anywhere. And sometimes he’d go to the pub and they’d say, “Give us a tune on that”, and he’d start playing the mouth organ and all that, and they’d be buying his beer all night long.

…he’d either play a mouth organ or this old flute or sometimes these jujars, you know, what do they call them?… What, you know, a little, a little…

JB: Oh, a Jews harp.

JS: A Jews harp, yeah. Sometimes he used to play those and all.⁸

The death of Darby Smith was recorded in Surrey in 1966; his age was given as 82, although this was probably an overestimate, as it would place his birth in 1884⁹. He was buried in St Peter and St Paul Churchyard, Lingfield, Surrey.

Mike Yates met and recorded Minty, Levi and Jasper Smith in the mid-1970s. In his notes to the Musical Traditions CD Here’s Luck to a Man… he wrote:

Shortly after meeting Mary [Sussex Gypsy singer Mary Ann Haynes], Tony Engle of Topic Records mentioned that he had been approached by friends of Jasper and Levi Smith, who felt that somebody should record their songs.  One of the friends, Cecily Taylor, allowed me to meet Jasper, Levi and their sister Minty, at her home where many of these recordings were made. Minty was born c.1910, Levi in 1915 and Jasper c.1920.  Their father [actually, their mother] died in the mid 1920s¹⁰ and Minty, then only aged about 12, took on the job of looking after her siblings.  To earn money, Minty would tell fortunes (they called it dukkering), a skill taught to her by her Granny Charlotte, though she ran away from home when she was sixteen to marry her husband Frank, a knife-grinder.  The couple raised thirteen children and they were living in a lay-by at Sevenoaks, Kent, when I first met them.  Levi was also camped by the roadside, just outside Westerham, Kent, though he was moved-on by the police shortly after I came across him.  He then moved to Epsom, to an unofficial site where Jasper and his family were living. Derby Smith, one of Jasper’s sons, came with his father to one of the recording sessions at Cecily Taylor’s house and it was then that we recorded his superb protest song  Will There Be Any Travellers in Heaven?¹¹

Minty Smith, 1911(?)–2000

A baptism or birth record for Minty has not so far been located. The 1921 census gives Minty’s age as seven, suggesting that she was born in 1913 or 1914. However when her death was recorded in 2000 her birth date was given as 8^th January 1911.

Following her mother’s death, when Minty was not yet in her teens, she had to take on much of the responsibility for looking after her six siblings. In the booklet notes for the Topic LP The Travelling Songster Mike Yates writes:

Minty danced and sang when she was a little girl, but as she grew older she did more dukkering (fortune telling) like Granny Charlotte¹² before her. Now she is very shy about performing, and doesn’t consider herself a singer at all.

At the age of sixteen she ran off with Frank and ‘jumped the broomstick’. Her husband was a knife-grinder like Father’s brother, but he also recaned chairs and taught the others mat repairing – how to plait coconut string into a border and sew it on to the mat edges with a big hooked needle. Minty and Frank had a family of thirteen and now she is the proud grandmother of fifty-four grandchildren, which the Gypsies think must be an all-time record.

In Old ways, new days: a family history of Gypsy life in South London and Kent Minty’s granddaughter Rosie Smith paints a vivid picture of the hard life which Gypsy women led:

When I think of all the women in my family, from a time and way of life long gone now, I can’t help but feel great respect. It’s true that life was hard for all Gypsies in the years passed, but it was the Gypsy women I feel that suffered the most. Gypsy girls would start cleaning and looking after younger brothers and sisters from a very young age, taking on the role of mother and cleaner until their own mother would return from hawking.

Although they worked hard as children, it was not until they became wives at ages as young as fifteen and sixteen that life really became hard for them. Almost every year a baby would be born until their bodies could no longer conceive children. They would give birth with little or no help, many dying in childbirth.

Pregnancy was not a reason not to work and most Gypsy women would go out hawking until they gave birth. Most times with a basket in their arms and baby tied to them in a blanket, they would walk for miles like this in all weathers munging whatever they could such as shoes and clothes and selling whatever their husbands had made for them to sell out of their baskets. They would have many doors slammed in their faces and insults spat at them but still go on to the next door with a smile forced on to their faces.

Many would tell fortunes making up whatever stories they thought the person wanted to hear and the better storyteller they were the more money they would earn.

At the end of their workday when they returned home, still their work would not be finished for they would still have the night’s meal to prepare and children to wash for bed. Then at night, when they were so tired they would fall into bed, their husbands would want loving which for Gypsy women just meant the fear of another pregnancy.

They would wake next morning and cook breakfast on the fire their husbands had made for them, and then wash the children, then it would be another day of walking and tapping doors. In most Gypsy families, although the father was loved and was the head of the family it was the mothers that were adored by their children. My father has always spoke of his mother with great pride, love, and respect, and it is little wonder, for the old Gypsy women, truly were women to be admired.

[…]

All of the sisters lived hard lives, all having big families of children and struggling through the war, and after the war when times were hard, they were always worrying about where the next meal for the children would come from.

Granny, aunt Amy and aunt Rachel all went out with baskets over their arms, most times with a tikna [baby girl] in one arm and the basket in the other, tapping doors, selling pegs, wooden flowers or primrose baskets. Some days they would walk for miles trying to get enough money to take grub home for their chavvys [children], only to get back to where the wagons had been and find they had been moved on by the gavvers [police]. Then they would have to follow the signs left for them by their families such as broken sticks pointing in the direction they had gone. All day they had walked and now they would have to walk until they found where the families had gone. Always their husbands would ask the gavvers could they just wait until the women came back, but rarely would the gavvers  agree to this.¹³

The author describes her Granny going hop-picking, with a tikna in one arm enrobed in a blanket, leaving the other arm free to work. The family also went cherry-picking. “Every summer for the first eighteen years of my life we did cherrying down in Kent” – the work was hard but “I remember them summers as the best in my life… At night when the work was done we would all sit round the yog an rokker, joke, or listen to older ones tell stories and some nights me dad would play his accordion and we’d all have a sing-song. On most of these times Ambrose Cooper (Smith) would be there and play his guitar and sing his songs or just sing country songs”. On Saturday nights, they would go to the Two Brewers in Yalding.¹⁴

While Jasper Smith recalled the harassment which Gypsies received at the hands of local police before the Second World War, the 1960s were not a happy time for travellers in Kent. There had always been a large number of travellers in the county – indeed farmers relied on them to provide additional temporary labour, for instance at hop-picking time, and in the cherry and apple picking seasons. After World War 2 the number of travellers was swollen by former house-dwellers.

Wartime bombing had created an acute housing shortage and in the immediate post-war years the number of people on the large, established sites had increased considerably as more former house-dwellers joined these traditional Gypsy communities. Amongst them were de-mobbed soldiers, perhaps experiencing emotional or family difficulties and unable to fit back into a more settled existence. There were many others made homeless by bombing or otherwise displaced by the turmoil of war. They lived in whatever they could get hold of and converted vans, lorries and buses, sheds and tents appeared next to the Gypsy caravans. During the war a considerable number of East Enders had simply upped and left London when the bombing started. They were familiar with Kent and the ways of the Traveller, having lived the outdoor life alongside them for a month every autumn during hopping.¹⁵

In addition, mechanisation of farming meant that the number of temporary agricultural jobs was declining, while the number of stopping places was also getting fewer. This was partly because the motorised caravans now being used by travellers could not simply be parked on any vacant piece of rough land, as had been the case with the old horse-drawn wagons. But it was also because the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, which aimed at ensuring the proper control of development and preventing uncontrolled urban sprawl, was increasingly used to close down sites used by travellers (permanent caravan sites could be classed as sub-standard accommodation, while camps with little or no sanitation could be closed as they contravened the 1936 Public Health Act). The Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 gave local borough or district councils the responsibility of licensing and regulating caravan sites. In practice this gave councils powers to close down sites used by Gypsies, and it was not until the Caravan Sites Act of 1968 that local authorities had any responsibility to provide sites for travellers.

In 1960 there were around one hundred Gypsy families living on a site at Darenth Woods, near the A2 at Cobham, and Minty Smith’s family was among them. Responding to the vocal opposition of local residents, both Darenth Parish Council and Dartford Rural District Council were keen to close the camp down. Despite gaining the active support of Norman Dodds, Labour MP for Erith and Crayford, the travellers were eventually evicted on 20^th January 1962 – even though this left some 300 people living by the side of a busy road.

John Brune met Minty at Stone near Dartford in 1962, and recorded her singing the newly composed song ‘Me Brother’s ‘Orse’, along with this explanation:

Now I was squatting out in these woods at Darenth for years, and the vicar in charge of the land did not really mind me or any of the other gipsies staying there, but the local council requisitioned the land and had us evicted on to the side of this trunk road.

My brother [Levy] had a very clever horse—the finest horse that ever was seen on the road. The grass was a bit more lush on the other side of the road; a car ran into him and there he was lying dead. Along came a policeman and took down our names and postal addresses and we gave him a lot of wrong information.¹⁶

A clip from another recording of Minty “recorded in a field in Cobham, Kent, 1964” was used in Ewan MacColl’s Radio Ballad The Travelling People, first broadcast by the BBC on 17^th April 1964:

I was expecting one of my children, y’know, one of my babies, and my son ran for the midwife. In the time he was going after the midwife, the policeman came along. ‘Come on!’ he said, ‘Get a move on! Shift on! Don’t want you here on my beat.’ So my husband says, ‘Look, sir, let me stay. My wife is going to have a baby.’ ‘No, it doesn’t matter about that,’ he says, ‘you get off.’ They made my husband move and my baby was born going along while my husband stayed on the road… born on the crossroads in my caravan. The horse was in harness and the policeman was following along, y’know, drumming us along. Born on the crossroads.¹⁷

In the Radio Ballad this clip is immediately followed by MacColl’s powerful Moving On Song, which must surely have been inspired at least in part by Minty’s experience.

Minty features in Philip Donnellan’s film, Where Do We Go from Here? first shown on BBC in April 1969, and her complaints about the way that travellers were treated can be found in local newspapers in the 1960s and 1970s. Under the heading “GIPSIES COULD BE CLEAN AND DECENT” the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 27^th November 1964, contains this letter from a Mrs Higgs of Kemsing:

I asked two gipsies in for a cup of coffee the other day when they called at my house selling lace and, while discussing their problems, one of them asked me if I would write a letter for her to the papers.

This is what she said:—

“What can the poor gipsies do? They’ve got to live ain’t they? They go around scrap dealing to get an honest living. If they had a permanent site to put their caravans on they could live clean and decent. The caravans are clean inside, but there is so much mud and water it is difficult to keep them clean. All the children could go to school to learn to read and write. As I cannot read and write myself, I would like my children to read and write.

“Lots of ladies and gentlemen do not like the gipsies and they do all they can to get us shifted on.. They only call us gipsies because we travel around in caravans, but we are BRITISH people! Perhaps some kind lady or gentleman who has lots of land will see this letter and give us somewhere to put our caravans on.”

Minty Smith,
Dry Hill Quarry,
Sundridge.

I would like to add that the last plea was not made in a bitter or sarcastic manner, but with simple faith and honesty. I, too, would be glad to hear of a kind lady or gentleman who would offer land to homeless people, and a parish who would welcome the gipsies instead of petitioning to be rid of them. what offers?

Much space was devoted in this newspaper to what should be done to solve the “gipsy problem”, particularly after the death in December 1964 of a three month old baby, Minty Rose Smith. A report on the inquest into the baby’s death was on the front page, 8^th January 1965:

GIPSY CAMP APPALLING SAYS Dr. HARRISON

The “appalling conditions” of the gipsy encampment at Dry Hill Quarry, Hill Lane, Sevenoaks, was detailed by the staff medical officer at Sevenoaks Hospital, Dr. Geoffrey Harrison, at the inquest at Tonbridge on Wednesday on three-month-old Minty Rose Smith, who died in hospital on December 30.

“There is no sanitation and no permanent water supply,” he said. “The whole camp is a sea of mud, the caravans are grossly overcrowded, and the conditions outside, make it impossible for the children to play in the open air, so they are kept shut up in the caravans all day.

“On December 30 and 31 six other children were admitted to the hospital with chest infections. Two of them had septic rashes on their bodies and four of the six were anaemic.”

Dr. Harrison said that when he examined baby Rose she had a temperature of 107 degrees – “I couldn’t believe it so I took it myself” he said.

The coroner recorded a verdict of death from natural causes. “There is no question of the child being ill treated. It seems to have been properly looked after as far as the mother was able”

The Sevenoaks Chronicle took the child’s death as an urgent sign that action must be taken, and quickly. On 15^th January V. W. Froud, the editor, wrote an impassioned piece  headed “We beg to be ashamed. DID ANY OF US KNOW OR CARE WHY THIS GIPSY BABY DIED?” starting as follows:

The article and pictures published on this page will shock many readers of the “Chronicle.” Some readers will be offended and will dismiss the whole matter as, at worst, sensational journalism or, at best, as mawkish sentimentality. It is a risk which we take deliberately.

We do so because the “Sevenoaks Chronicle” is a paper with a conscience and because we seek to rouse the public’s conscience over a matter which we say is a disgrace to our affluent community.

It could not be said that Froud painted a rosy picture of gypsies and their behaviour:

The “Chronicle” holds no brief for people who cannot observe reasonable standards of conduct, and upholds public policy of making gipsies part of the normal community as quickly as possible.

However unpleasant and unwelcome they may be, as near neighbours, gipsies are human beings and are as much entitled to expect the same regard for sanctity of human life as convicted murderers are now given.

The newspaper organised a public meeting on 26^th January, which was attended by 250 people, including some members of the gypsy community. In the short term, the gypsies were forced to move out of Dry Hill Quarry early in February. They went initially to Ide Hill, but stayed there only one night before “scattering elsewhere”, some to Hosey Common and others to Westerham.¹⁸ It was some months before the new Council site opened at Hever Road, Edenbridge, and it was not large enough to accommodate all of the families who wished to stay there.

Needless to say, not all local residents were sympathetic to the situation in which local gypsies found themselves. Local landowner, 84 year old Lord Stanhope, was particularly vocal on the topic. In February 1965 he threatened to sue Sevenoaks District Council if they allowed gypsies to camp near his land (he had recently bequeathed his Chevening estate to the Prince of Wales, and was reported as having said that “when the Royal family takes over his house and estate they don’t want a lot of scruffy gipsies on their doorstep”).¹⁹ In a letter printed on the front page of the Sevenoaks Chronicle, 5^th February 1965, he drew attention to the growth in the numbers of gypsies in the area in recent years, questioned whether modern gypsies actually meet the definition of a traveller, as so many of them stayed in one place for extended periods of time, and painted a grim picture of the state of sanitation and cleanliness in gypsy camps. The letter concluded

How do these gipsies earn a living and how do they feed, clothe and educate their children? It is true that some of them work as scrap merchants and do odd repair jobs, leaving in most cases a considerable amount of junk and residue to be cleared by the local authority at the expense of the ratepayers. Few are employed on farms in these days of mechanisation, and what else is there for them to do in these country districts? In one case that I know about the lady of the house near to an improvised gipsy encampment, having shown kindness in several ways to them, ended by having her poultry stolen, fencing cut down for firewood and young trees from a neighbouring wood cut up.

Surely it is time that these so-called gipsies should be registered for employment and, if they refuse work offered to them, their children should be placed in county council homes until their parents can find work and are prepared to provide suitable homes. This would at least give the children a chance to be properly clothed, fed and educated and, knowing how dearly the gipsies love their children, it would give the parents an incentive to earn an honest living.

The following week, 12^th February, the newspaper printed a letter from a Mr F.G. Eglesfield, who praised it as “refreshing”, and said that it “gave a more realistic approach to the gipsy problem than much of the sentimental clap-trap which has been published in recent weeks”.

Clearly these letters were drawn to the attention of Minty Smith, as the Sevenoaks Chronicle for 19^th February printed her response, under the heading “PLEA FROM A GIPSY MOTHER”:

I have had the letters from Lord Stanhope and Mr. Eglesfield in your paper read out to me.

My answer to these gentlemen is that the council have not tried the gipsies yet. They have not tried giving us sites with water and sanitary places, a settled place to stay. If they did, the children would go to school and we would go to work.

The gipsy children are as clean as those that live in houses. We can’t be all that dirty because we have our babies in the caravans and the midwives come to us. We don’t go to the hospital. I have a daughter who had a baby girl born on May 4 and the midwife from Otford tended her. The baby was delivered in the caravan and the nurse was wondering at how clean the caravan was. She said it was cleaner than some of the houses she goes to.

Me and my husband have brought up a large family of children and have never given any trouble to anyone. The police move us on but we want a place to stay.

When the foreign people come over here they get given a place to sleep and jobs, but we are English people.

There are some ladies and gentlemen who like the gipsies, but there are some that don’t and want them moved on.

As for the idea of the County Council taking our children away from us, I wonder if the kind gentleman had children, would he like them taken away if he wasn’t able to work. To take the children away, just would be the worst burden on his mind, to do a thing like that to the gipsies.

If there is a lady or gentlemen what has a bit of land to share, would they let the council have it for a caravan site? I would thank them for it very much and we would be pleased to pay a little. It would be a tidy bit of money for the council to pay out, but they would get it back from the gipsies paying each week.

How can the gipsies go to work and send the children to school if they are travelling and have no place to stay? There is plenty of ladies and gentlemen who have a lot of land and don’t know what to do with it.

Written for

Mrs MINNIE MINTY SMITH
From a caravan,
Chevening Road,
Nr Sevenoaks

With regard to gypsies and cleanliness, when I met Stephen Sedley – who made numerous visits to gypsy sites in West Kent in the mid 1960s – he was keen to point out that, despite the unfavourable surroundings in which they found themselves, the interiors of gypsies’ caravans were invariably spotless.

Of course that was not the view most commonly presented to the public. The Sevenoaks Chronicle for 11^th March 1966 reported that Minty and her husband Frank had been evicted from the new site in Edenbridge:

Following strong complaints from the warden of the rural council gipsy encampment at Hever Road, Edenbridge, two tenants have been evicted from the site.

Meeting on Thursday of last week, Sevenoaks Rural Councils public health committee were told that the warden. Mr. E. J. Bignell, had written to the rural surveyor, Mr. N. W. Cole saying his authority is being “completely flouted by those families occupying sites 11 and 12.” The tenants were Frank Smith and Francis Frank Smith.

Mr. Bignell continued:

“From the early days of the camp the well known character ‘Minty Smith’ has quarrelled with other occupants.

“Only last week I had a complaint again from other licencees to the effect that not only had foul language been used to them, but that their caravan had been pelted with bricks by members of the families in question, causing damage.”

He also observed that “the occupants of these two sites are dirty in appearance, the children especially so, and I feel that we are courting trouble by letting them remain on the camp.

Minty featured prominently in a two-page spread in the Sevenoaks Chronicle for 5^th July 1968, headed “THE GIPSY STORY”:

‘It’s the life we know, I’d be lost in a house’ says grandmother Minty Smith

Minty Smith has 11 children and 40 grandchildren and flits about the Edenbridge camp like a colourful bird.

Any question she cannot answer she calls to one of the men and he comes over. Anybody who interrupts is told to be quiet. People do not answer back to Minty Smith.

She is 57, pure Romany and looks it. Her vivacious, sunburned face is attractive and laughing, black eyes obviously see a lot of fun in life.

A true Romany aristocrat, Minty was born in a caravan. She has a new one coming in a few weeks’ time, complete with bathroom and three bedrooms.

“It is the life we know,” she said, carrying on three conversations at the same time. “It is what we are brought up to. If they were to offer me a house I would be lost in it, I would be lost without my caravan.”

HOUSE PREFERRED

An exception to the rule is Jasper Smith’s family at Edenbridge. They would rather live in a house if they could get one.

Mrs. Priscilla Smith, Jasper’s 39-year-old wife, who was born in a caravan, said: “We have been travelling about the roads all our lives. Now we would rather live in a house.”

Elsewhere in the same feature, Minty’s brother Jack (husband of her sister Rachel) is quoted as saying “Minty is a very religious woman… She sleeps with a Bible under her pillow and says her prayers every night.”

Clearly, in July 1968 Minty was resident once again at the Edenbridge camp, but it seems that this was not permanent. In June 1974, at the age of 64, she was cited as the oldest resident on the gypsy site at Cold Arbor Road, Riverhead, when Jim Fleming, a local builder, deliberately drove a lorry onto the site and emptied a load of rubbish – in protest against Sevenoaks District Council allowing the travellers to stay there free of charge. Minty was quoted as saying

We were told that there was a place for us at Kemsing, by the brick works, but now we are told that we can’t go there.

The men are frightened to go away to work for the summer, in case they come back for the winter and find they’ve got nowhere to live. We don’t want to go on living here, but where else can we go?²⁰

Mike Yates’ notes for the LP The Travelling Songster, released in 1977, say:

She and some of her family have been living at the side of the dual-carriage at Sevenoaks for about fourteen years now. They are still waiting for caravan pitches having been in and around the area over the last 25 years. Two years ago a passing lorry went out of control killing her daughter‘s husband and injuring one of the Gypsy boys.

That same year a newspaper report showed that even when they had the best of intentions, a Gypsy was all too likely to end up being fined for an infringement of the law:

Gipsy Minty Smith encamped on the roadside at Badgers Mount because she wanted to meet the social security officer there.

She had already given her address as c/o the Badgers Mount Post Office and she had her caravan towed to the spot in order to be there to receive her mail.

But a policeman turned up before the security officer, and Minty was charged on Tuesday at Sevenoaks with encamping on the highway.

In her absence on Tuesday she was fined £10.²¹

There had been some better news in 1973 when Kent Education Committee opened a school for gypsy children in the Memorial Hall at Riverhead. A report in the Sevenoaks Chronicle, 27 January 1973, said that the school would run for ten weeks. The classes would be “of a remedial nature, designed to bring the children, aged from seven to 12 years, to an educational standard at which they could be integrated into schools… It was hoped later to substitute a mobile classroom which could be parked nearby a school somewhere in the area”. The following week, in the issue for 3^rd February 1973, Minty Smith was quoted as saying “We are very grateful to all the good people that have done this for our children. We want our kids to go to school and get an education”.

Minty – collectors and recordings

As noted above, John Brune recorded at least one song from Minty at Stone near Dartford, in 1962.

Mike Yates’ recordings of Minty were made between 1974 and 1976. Two songs (‘Basket of Eggs’ and ‘The Jew’s Garden) were included on the Topic LP The Travelling Songster in 1977, along with ‘Derby, Derby’, an example of “tuning” i.e. diddling or singing to accompany step dancing. These songs, along with the handful of other pieces which Mike recorded from Minty, were subsequently included on CD releases from the Topic and Musical Traditions labels.

Denise Stanley met and recorded Minty Smith and members of her family in March 1981, as part of the research for her PhD on Gypsy singing. At that time they were camped on a site at Green Street Green, just off the A21 near Darenth. The singing session which Stanley recorded took place in the sitting room of Minty’s trailer – although initially there was some reluctance from the Smith family to have anything to do with this gaujo.

(R) in the following account refers to the researcher, Denise Stanley:

The family had previously encountered gaujo collectors and a gaujo, Cecily Taylor, was currently working on the biography of Jasper Smith. Mrs Taylor was apparently recording the ‘old’ songs, paying for them and telling the Smith family not to record them for anyone else. Minty had suggested that (R) made contact with Mrs Taylor but (R) found Mrs Taylor did not wish to communicate with (R). Michael Yates had previously recorded both Jasper and Minty Smith singing the ‘old’ songs and a record had been produced on the Topic Records label. The Smith family were convinced that ‘old’ songs were valuable to the gaujo collector and that, therefore, the collector would pay for them.

[…]

(R) had been directed to Minty Smith by Levi Smith of the Powerscroft Road site, Footscray and arrived at the site at about 4.30pm. Two Gypsy men directed her to Minty’s trailer and Minty just happened to be outside. After talking to both her and her daughter, Louie, who seemed quite suspicious and reluctant to discuss singing, (R) spoke to Louie’s son, Fred. He, then, invited (R) into the trailer and pointed at a steel-strung guitar with the high E-string missing and invited (R) to play him a song.

Her performance of “The streets of London” brought Louie and Minty back into the trailer and when the song was finished Fred took the guitar and started to sing. The trailer became crowded as Minty, Louis, Fred, and (R) were joined by Rita, Pearly, Nancy and Johnny.²²

The singers included Minty’s daughter-in-law Louie, Louie’s son Fred, and others whose relationship is not specified. Of the 30 songs – or fragments of songs – performed in the trailer, the majority were sung by Fred. Minty sang seven, while others were contributed by Louie, Rita, Pearly, Nancy and Johnny. One of the purposes of Denise Stanley’s research was to document what contemporary Gypsies were actually singing, without privileging traditional songs and ballads, as earlier collectors had done. The material on this occasion ranged from solidly traditional songs such as ‘Barbara Allen’, through parlour songs like ‘A group of young fellows’, to country numbers (‘Your cheatin’ heart’, ‘Honky Tonk Angels’) and pop songs (‘Beautiful dreamer’).

Denise Stanley’s PhD thesis records a great deal of contextual information about the singing session – for instance, the social interactions between the singers present – and she describes their physical actions while singing. For example, when singing ‘I’ve left my mother’ Minty, sitting directly opposite Stanley, “leaned forward and stared directly in front of her as she sang”; during her animated singing of ‘Still I love him’ and ‘Bread and Marmalade’ “She sat on the edge of her seat as she sang and throughout the second song she slapped her thighs on certain words”.

Echoing Mike Yates’ comment in 1977 that “Now she is very shy about performing, and doesn’t consider herself a singer at all”, Stanley notes that

Minty, at one point, stated that she was not, now, a Singer… “don’t laugh at me… because I can’t sing” and declared after three songs that wouldn’t sing anymore [sic]

– although actually she contributed a further four songs to the session, and clearly still fulfilled the role of, using Stanley’s categorisation, a “Specialist Singer”.

In 2025 the short film ‘A Basket Full of Eggs’ showed Minty’s great granddaughter Liza Mortimer exploring the archives of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library to uncover her family’s musical legacy – “Through conversations with collectors and singers, she discovers how her great-grandmother Minty Smith and other Romani people played an important role in preserving England’s traditional folk songs”. The film can be viewed at https://youtu.be/9RSxcDe2Zto

Minty’s death was recorded at Sutton in Surrey in the third quarter of 2000. Photographs of Minty, for instance on the cover of the Musical Traditions CD Here’s Luck to a Man, show that she was a very striking woman – as the Sevenoaks Chronicle reporter wrote “She is… pure Romany and looks it”. In Old ways, new days Minty’s granddaughter Rosie Smith wrote:

Me granny Minty and sisters were said to be some of the most beautiful Gypsy women that ever were born. Me granny had three sisters Amy, Rachel and Emily, and except aunt Emily they were all as dark as night with coal black hair that was so long and thick that when let down, it hung down their backs like a blanket.

Me granny always was a beautiful women [sic]. When she died at the age of 89 you could still see the beauty in her. Aunt Amy even now at the age of 95 is a truly beautiful old woman.²³

Minty – Songs

Recorded by John Brune, 1962:

• Me Brother’s ‘Orse (Roud 2161)

Recorded by Mike Yates, 1974-1976:

• Are you married or are you free (Roud 17037)
• The Basket of Eggs (Roud 377)
• The Cuckoo is a Merry Bird (Roud 413)
• Derby Derby (Roud 17027)
• The Jew’s Garden (Roud 73)

Recorded by Denise Stanley, 1981:

• Are we to part like this dear (Roud 17700)
• Bread and Marmalade (Roud 47483)
• I’ve left my mother (Roud 1049)
• Buttercup Jo (Roud 1635)
• A Group of young fellows (Roud 1783)
• She was a dear little dicky bird (Roud 12183)
• She’s an old fashioned lady (Roud 23644)
• Sure if I had the wings of a Swallow (Roud 13214)

Levi Smith, 1918–?

Levi (or Levy) was Derby and Eliza Smith’s third child, and their first son. His birth was registered at Epsom in Surrey in the third quarter of 1918, and in 1921, when the census enumerator found the Smiths camped on Epsom Downs, he was three years old, still the youngest child in the family.

Writing in 1977, Mike Yates recorded that

Levy has travelled round Kent and Surrey for most of his life. He only gave up his horsedrawn wagon because he thought he would stand more chance of getting on to a site, but he has still not managed to find one. He kept a couple of horses to pull his cart for totting, scrap collecting and transporting his grinding barrow. A friendly farmer at Westerham let him keep the horses in his wood, so Levy lived on the adjoining grassy lay-by for many years, until the local Council summonsed him for ‘obstructing the highway’, and dumped rubbish on his vegetable patch to encourage him to move on. In the end Jasper came and towed him to Epsom where he continues his knife-grinding trade and other jobs that come along.²⁴

Not unexpectedly, Levi’s name appears fairly frequently in the local press in reports on court proceedings. In December 1947 he appeared alongside two other travellers at Kingston County Court:

THEFT OF LOGS

CLAYGATE DEALER ROBBED BY CARAVAN DWELLERS

An impudent theft of logs by three caravan dwellers was described at Kingston county magistrates’ court on Monday. when Levi Smith (27), Frank Shepherd (22), described as rag and bone merchants, and Ephraim King (24), a clothes peg maker, all of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to a charge of being concerned together in stealing on Saturday from woods adjacent to Fairoak-lane, Oxshott, a quantity of logs valued together at £4, the property of Mr. C. W. Brown, a dealer, of 136, Coverts-road, Claygate.

P.s. Caveli said that acting on information received he was on duty in a police wireless car on Saturday morning when he saw the three men driving on the road in horsed vans, laden with logs, near the woods, which were owned by the Crown. Upon being stopped and questioned all admitted that the logs had been taken by them from the woods.

P.c. Bates stated that the cut wood had been purchased by Mr. Brown, and that overnight defendants had sawn it up into logs and were pulled up the next morning by the previous witness as they were driving away with the logs in their vans, one of which bore a notice in chalk “logs 1s. a hundred.” The vans were each laden with about 250 logs.

Smith, in pleading guilty, said that seeing the wood in heaps he took some  because he could get no coal rations, and the other two defendants pleaded that they did not think that they were robbing anyone in getting firewood.

P.c. Bates, in reply to the Bench, said that both King and Smith were married men with families, with no previous convictions, but Shepherd was recently released from prison after a conviction at Maidstone for horse stealing.²⁵

The three defendants were each fined £5, and advised by the chairman of the court to leave the district.

Subsequent court appearances almost invariably concerned prosecutions for obstruction, i.e. camping by the roadside, and often highlight the difficulties that Gypsies faced in finding anywhere legal to stay. For instance:

Kent & Sussex Courier, 1^st June 1956

Jack Smith, caravan dweller [probably Levi’s brother-in-law], was fined 10s. by Sevenoaks Magistrates on Friday for camping on Hosey Common on April 20, and a further 10s for camping on the highway at Riverhead on May 10. Levi Smith, another caravan dweller, was similarly fined tor camping on the highway on May 10.

Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 28^th July 1967

Levi Smith, aged 50, summonsed for seven cases of obstructing the free passage of the highway, told Sevenoaks court on Tuesday that he had nowhere to go. He is at present living in a caravan on the Croydon Road, Westerham.

When a police officer spoke to him about the offences at his caravan, he told him: “If you find me a place where I could stay all the time you wouldn’t have any trouble.

He was fined 2s. 6d. on each offence.

In February 1967 Levi was represented in court by Stephen Sedley, who was able to get supporting statements from not one but two clergymen:

Vicar speaks in gipsies’ defence

The Vicar of Riverhead, the Rev. G. K. St. John Potter, appeared as a defence witness at Sevenoaks on Tuesday when three gipsies were found guilty of a total 80 obstruction offences.

In court were 23-year-old George Ripley, Tom Smith, 28, and Levi Smith, 50, who pleaded not guilty to the charges.

P-c. Harris told the court he had seen two caravans parked on the grass verge at Croydon Road, Westerham, on November 29. He spoke to one of the owners, Levi Smith, who refused to move when asked.

On a subsequent visit he interviewed another caravan owner, Tom Smith, who was also parked on the verge. Smith told the constable: “If I had somewhere to go, I would.”

Later P-c. Harris saw the third man, George Ripley, who said: “There is nowhere we can go. We have come from Dartford and it’s dangerous there.”

At a further interview with the caravan owners, Tom Smith commented: “They ought to get a gun and shoot us all.”

NO ALTERNATIVE

Questioned by defence counsel, Mr. Stephen Sedley, Mr. Potter said he knew Levi Smith and in his opinion he had broken the law because he had no alternative.

“I am quite sure he would be willing to accept an alternative if one was available,” he said.

A Free Church minister from Goudhurst, Mr. Charles Lywood, told the court he knew all three men. “It is only through necessity that they are there. I am sure they would be prepared to pay rent if a proper site was available to them.”

Asked by acting chairman Mr. K. Ritchie if this was witness’s own opinion or an impression given by the defendants, Mr. Lywood said: “My work takes me into contact with caravan dwellers of every kind.

Ripley was fined £13 on 26 charges, Tom Smith and Levi Smith were each fined £13 10s. of 27 charges.²⁶

According to Sedley’s own recollection, he bitterly regretted calling Pastor Lywood to the witness box, since Lywood “launched into a sermon about the flames of torment that awaited magistrates who oppressed the poor. Neither the chairman nor I could stop him or distract him. The fines were colossal”.

In fact, according to the Sevenoaks Chronicle, 24^th March, the Gypsies’ fines were subsequently reduced on appeal:

COURT CUTS GIPSIES’ FINES

The plight of caravan dwellers was spotlighted at the Kent Quarter Sessions at Canterbury on Thursday of last week when three of them, George Ridley (22), Frank (or Tom) Smith (23) and Levi Smith (51), appealed against the sentences of fines of 10s. per case imposed upon them by the Sevenoaks magistrates for obstructing the free passage of the highway at Croydon Road, Westerham, on various dates between November 29 and January.

Ripley’s fines for 26 offences totalled £26 and the other two had had totals of £13 10s. for 27 offences each.

For the magistrates, Mr. Michael Parker said it was a fairly wide road and there was a fairly wide grass verge behind some temporary fencing as the highway authority intended to re-grass the verge and cultivate trees.

On November 29 P.c. Harris went to the spot and saw two caravans parked there. He spoke to Levi Smith and pointed out that he could not settle down there or he would be committing an offence. He told him to move the caravans and he refused.

By the evening, Ripley’s caravan was also there. Tom Smith said: “If I had somewhere to go, I would. They ought to get a gun and shoot us all.” No doubt there was some degree of bitterness. Observation was kept on the caravans on various dates. On January 1, Tom Smith said he did not know what to do about it and Ripley said he would try to get somewhere else to go. Levi Smith said, “Whatever they fine me, they’ll have to give me time to pay.”

ON GRASS VERGE

The deputy chairman, Mr. John Streeter, asked how appellants could be obstructing the free passage of the highway when their caravans were parked on the grass verge behind a fence.

Mr. Parker replied that the verge had been held to be part or the highway and although a fence had been put up, the verge was still part of the highway. The fence did not prevent pedestrians from walking along the grass, which they had a right to do.

The deputy chairman said the court was just as well aware of the problem as anybody else and the court could not provide a solution, but as far as they were concerned, they were really only dealing with the appeal against sentence. Those fines of 10s. a day were likely to go on and on. The court was bound to agree that the obstruction in the case was negligible and was a technical matter. The sentence would be varied by reducing the fines to one shilling a day.

On 21^st April 1967 the Sevenoaks Chronicle printed a letter from Levi Smith:

NOWHERE TO GO

I had the story in your paper about the Croydon Road read to me.

I have got nowhere else to go, I wish you could find me a house to go into or just find me somewhere else to stay.

I can’t stand responsibility for the motors that have been dumped alongside of the road, because I can’t drive a motor, only a horse and cart with a grinding barrow. I am trying to get somebody to take the motors away, because they are dumped alongside of the road, and it looks bad on me.

When I first pulled on here, I cleared six loads of rubbish that the others had left, and took it away with my pony and cart. I have witnesses who saw me do it.

Please leave me alone until I can find a place to settle down. I shall be more than pleased when I am settled down for good.

LEVI SMITH
Croydon Road,
Westerham.

The prosecutions did not stop, however. Just one month later, on 12^th May, the paper printed the following account:

WHEN IS CARAVAN DWELLER A GIPSY?

The problem of roadside caravan dwellers confronted Sevenoaks magistrates on Tuesday, when Levi Smith, aged 50, of no fixed address, contended that just because he had nowhere to go he was not a gipsy.

He had pleaded not guilty to 12 offences of being a gipsy and encamping on the highway. Levi Smith appeared with 24-year-old Frank Smith, who pleaded guilty to nine similar offences.

P.c. John Harris said that on 12 occasions between March 7 and April 5 he had seen Levi Smith’s caravan parked on the grass verge at Croydon Road, Westerham, and that on nine occasions he had seen Frank Smith’s caravan parked near it.

When he spoke to Levi Smith about the offences he told the officer: “How can I move it. We are prepared to pay for somewhere to go.” He added that he was a local man, and that there were people from over the “water” occupying the Edenbridge site.

Insp. Peter Finn told the court that the legal definition of a gipsy had recently been decided, and meant a person leading a nomadic life with no fixed address or no fixed employment.

Both Levi and Frank Smith were fined 2s. 6d on each offence.

Levi was proud of his Romany Gypsy heritage. The fact that he attempted to argue here that he wasn’t a gypsy was most likely because clause 127 of the Highways Act of 1959 specifically targeted gypsies and made it an offence for them to encamp on the highway. In June 1966 Stephen Sedley had managed to win an acquittal for Abe Cooper by putting the onus on the prosecution to prove that his client was a Gypsy.

Sedley was once again representing Levi in court in July – and once again he made use of a supportive local vicar (but notably not the evangelical Pastor Lywood!) to provide evidence of good character:

VICAR SPEAKS FOR GIPSIES

Two families of gipsies, living on the roadside of Croydon Road, Westerham were said at Sevenoaks Court on Tuesday to be “model families, honest hard-working with children who were polite and a credit to them.”

Before the magistrates were Levi and Frank Smith, both living in caravans with their families. Levi with six children and his wife. Frank with seven children and a wife.

Both were charged with unlawfully encamping on the highway. Both were fined 25s. Each.

Mr. Stephen Sedley told the magistrates that the two men both had horse-drawn vehicles up to three years ago, when a man approached them and said if they got rid of the horse drawn caravans for the modern horseless type, they would be eligible for a site.

They did this and now they had caravans which could not be moved by a pony.

WELL BEHAVED

Mr. Sedley said: “These are honest, hard working people, whose only wrong is living by the side of the roadside.”

The G. K. Potter, vicar of St. Mary’s, Riverhead had written to the magistrates on behalf of the two families.

“They are very well behaved, not in the category of scrap dealers who ride rough shod over a district leaving litter everywhere they go—but decent living people who should be accorded protection in living as well as any other citizen.”

Chairman Capt. R. F. M. Goad said: “This is difficult for everyone concerned.”

P.c. Harris added that he had known the families for 10 years, and they were very satisfactory.²⁷

With no solution offered as to where they should live, Levi and Jack were, unsurprisingly, back in court in August. The Sevenoaks Chronicle for 18^th August reported that

GIPSIES CAUSED OBSTRUCTION

Jack Smith, a gipsy, camping on the grass verge at New Cut, Chevening, between July 4 and 13, was fined a total of £1 4s. 6d. at Sevenoaks Court on Friday for obstructing the highway.

Levi Smith, charged with the same offence for a period between June 15 and July 13, was fined a total of £2 9s. Both were fined at the rate of 3s. 6d. a day.

29^th September 1967 the Sevenoaks Chronicle reported that Jack and Levi Smith “both of Fig Street, Sevenoaks” were each fined £5 for not having a vehicle excise licence for a two-ton open-back lorry. “Pleading guilty on their behalf, Mr. A. Liston said that they were unable to attend court as they were at a gipsy funeral”.

Then on 27^th October we’re back on familiar ground with Levi fined for being encamped by the roadside, despite being supported once again by the Reverend St. John Potter:

The vicar of Riverhead, Rev. G. K. St. John Potter, gave a good report on the character of gipsy Levi Smith who appeared before Sevenoaks magistrates on Friday charged with seven offences of obstructing the highway.

Pleading guilty to the offences, which arose when his two caravans were parked on the verge in Croydon Road, Westerham, between September 4 and 13, Smith was fined a total of 17s. 6d.

Mr. Potter told the court that he had known Smith over the past five years during which he had been a frequent visitor to the vicarage.

LIKE TO SETTLE

“He and his family are extremely honest, clean and well-behaved,” said the vicar adding that their offences had not been committed at their own will.

“Where is he and his family to go?” asked Mr. Potter, explaining that the county council had been unable to meet the need for sites in full.

Smith has stated that he would like to settle into a house and the community and give his children the proper education.

“He is not one of these people who litters the countryside with his filthy debris,” said Mr. Potter.

Levi was still parked on the Croydon Road at Westerham in November, and was fined once more for doing so – a total of £1 16s. for nine offences of parking and obstructing the highway between 7^th and 20^th November. Similar cases brought against nine other caravan dwellers were adjourned, as they failed to show up in court.²⁸

And then, as reported in the newspaper on 26^th January 1968:

Caravan dwellers charged with 160 offences

SEVENOAKS magistrates on Friday were faced with a list of 160 offences against 12 caravan dwellers for unlawfully obstructing the highway at Croydon Road, Westerham.

Only five of the dwellers came to court and these were fined 3s. 6d. on each offence. The other cases were adjourned.

Mary King (30), Jim Smith (25), Mercy Ridley (40) and Levi Smith (50) were all fined a total of 35s., and Phoebe Smith (25), with 20 offences recorded against her, a total of 70s.

It was agreed that they should pay the fines at the rate of 5s. a week.²⁹

Insp. Brian Fowler told the court that Mr. R. J. Mitchell, the divisionl [sic] surveyor, is responsible for the Croydon Road area.

Maintenance work on the roadside verges, such as grass cutting, is hampered by the presence of caravans and the footpath is blocked.

As a result of complaints, P-c. Childs went to the encampment at the beginning of November and spoke to the caravan owners.

SOMEWHERE TO GO

Mary King said: “It’s a question of finding somewhere to go.”

“If they want to move me they will have to hitch up the caravan and move it,” said Mercy Ridley.

On behalf of Levi Smith, the Vicar of Riverhead, the Rev. G. K. St. John Potter, sent a letter to say that he had known him for five years, in which time he had been a constant visitor to the vicarage.

Mr. Potter described Smith as “honest, hard working and courteous.”

“He is an unfortunate victim of the law,” said Mr. Potter, adding: “A man and his family have the right to live somewhere.”

It was pointed out that Smith was not a car-breaker littering the countryside.

It seems likely that this was the same letter that the vicar had written in support of Levi prior to his October court appearance. Indeed it may well have been the same letter which Stephen Sedley had made use of when defending Levi Smith back in July 1967.

It is hardly surprising that the continuous rounds of prosecutions and fines, with no reasonable alternative accommodation being offered, took their toll on Levi. On 31^st May 1968 the Sevenoaks Chronicle included a short article headed “’I’M SICK OF LIVING’ GIPSY TELLS COURT”:

A 50-year-old gipsy, Levi Smith, who is living in a caravan at the Croydon Road, Westerham, told Sevenoaks court on Tuesday that he was “sick of living” because he had nowhere to go.

He had pleaded guilty to 30 offences of obstructing Croydon Road with his three caravans.

The vehicles could not be towed away, he said, because all he had was one horse.

“If you could find me a house to live in I would pay rent,” Levi told the court. “I was born and bred here, and I haven’t done anyone any harm.”

“It is an extremely difficult problem,” said the chairman of the bench, Capt. R. Goad. Smith was fined 5s. on each offence.

Eight other gipsies were also fined 5s. Each for committing similar offences on Croydon Road. They are Isaac Ridley, 12 offences, Jim Smith, 20 offences, Billy Smith, 20 offences, Valentine Smith, 20 offences, Amos Smith, 20 offences, Henry Smith, 20 offences and Aaron Duvall, 20 offences.

Both Minty and Levi Smith featured in the two-page feature on Gypsies which the Sevenoaks Chronicle ran on 5^th July 1968. The article about Levi focused on the distinction which he drew between the “pure Romany” and other travellers:

Levi condemns ‘spike runners’

LEVI SMITH at Croydon Road, Westerham, is a snob and makes no bones about it. “The pure Romanie are good types, the others are all layabouts on National Assistance” he said. Levi Smith, brother of Rachel Smith at Brasted, is, needles [sic] to say, a pure Romany and has never drawn National Assistance.

“My mother died when she was 35 and I brought up seven brothers and sisters when I was 13 years old,” he said.

His parents and grandparents were all Romanies, touring the country.

Levi, 53, and father of five children, makes no effort to hide the fact that he does not think a lot of people should be on the road at all. At any rate, not mixing with respectable Romanies.

“The pure Romany keeps himself clean,” he said. “When we go out on a Saturday or Sunday we put a tie on and nobody would know we are gipsies. We never have any trouble.”

Levi Smith threw a glance down the mile of Croydon Road towards Westerham that separates him from the nearest caravan dwellers.

“Spike-runners is what I call them. They leave all this mess all over the place. I don’t like any mess around my place.”

KNIFE GRINDER

He would like to live in a house “but I have got to have a place for my pony and trolley.” He is a knife grinder by trade and does not want to go to the Edenbridge camp.

Like his brother-in-law, Jack Smith at Brasted, he likes to be on his own with his family. He summed it up with another glance down the road. “The proper Romany likes to keep to himself.”

There are four caravans accommodating 12 people, including three families up at the far end of Croydon Road. They are all related. His mother-in-law, old Lily Lee who is nearly 90, sits round the camp fire watching the kettle most the time until somebody speaks to her. Then she looks up with a wave and a cheerful grin. “How are you, Mister, how are you?”

Levi Smith is a bit vague about his birth. “I was born somewhere around here. I couldn’t tell you where I was born, guvnor. I don’t know that. My uncle had some property at Lingfield but he is dead now.”

His wife, Emily, was born in Seal Chart. She is about 46 or 47.”

SICK OF IT

Levi Smith has had enough and wants to settle down. “It is a hard life and I am sick of it,” he said. “You don’t know if you are going to get pulled off the road or get summonses but I would not go in with that other crowd or the people at Edenbridge.”

Even with thoughts of house dwelling, Levi is still a Romany who would rather stay where he is if he could have a little security.

The newspaper emphasised the difference between Romanies and other travellers³⁰, picking up on comments by Levi, and other gypsies quoted in the piece, in particular Levi’s brother-in-law Jack Smith:

Caravans carry seeds of persecution because gipsies are different

EVEN the gipsies have a class-filled society but the grass verge aristocrats are more clearly defined than their Ascot counterparts.

The true Romany, born at the side of the road to a peripatetic way of life, scorns other caravan dwellers who have opted out of a society they have never known. They are two hundred years behind the times and wedded to a gentle anarchy that Leviathan cannot tolerate and society finds offensive.

They have been overtaken by civilisation and carry in their caravans the seeds of their own persecution because they are different.

They are proud of their difference. Very few of them would have it any other way. Jack Smith at Brasted who had petrol bombs thrown at his caravan a few weeks ago, was born in a tent. He is not sure where but within two miles of Westerham.

“I have never lived in a house, mister,” he said. “I’d be lost in a house, it would be like living in a prison.”

Jack Smith, christened 54 years ago in Westerham church, told his story over a glass of beer outside a public house. It had to be outside. He would not have been served at the bar. The nearest public house to serve gipsies is in Croydon [some 15 miles away].

Hard Life

“I like the life, mister. You have your freedom to go where you like. You are here some day and if you don’t like it you can go somewhere else which you can’t do if you have a house. It is just a question of freedom, see mister.”

[…]

“It’s some of those other chaps give us a bad name,” he said, He deals in scrap metal. “Some weeks are better than others but we get by.” The children playing around the caravan were well fed and warmly clothed.

The aristocrat shows when Jack talks about the non-Romany caravan dwellers. “There has been trouble in some places,” he said. “More than half these so-called gipsies are thieves and rogues. They make trouble in the pubs, that’s why we can’t go in.”

[…]

Like the other aristocracy, Jack wants his children to marry their own sort. His 19-year-old daughter, Rachel, married a man who allegedly deserted her. “He wasn’t a caravan dweller,” said Jack as if that explained everything. “He didn’t understand the life.”

[…]

A gentle man, Jack comes close to contempt when he talks of “the others”. According to him there are only two pure Romany families at Croydon Road, Westerham. “Most of the others were born in houses. One family comes from Sussex and another from Essex.”

Close ties

Pure Romanies stick together and help each other, he said, but there are not many left. He is proud of his wife’s Romany descent. He met her at Epsom Races. There was no benefit of clergy. They just set up together. “But true gipsy people stay together, you don’t often get a marriage busting up,” he said.

Family ties are close. Rachel has a brother, Levi Smith, at the Croydon Road site, a brother, Jasper Smith, who did seven years in the army, at the Edenbridge camp, and a sister, Minty Smith, also at the Edenbridge camp.

These newspaper articles do seem like an honest attempt to examine the “gipsy problem”, to understand the travellers and present them to the paper’s readership as real human beings. As well as the Romanies included in the feature, there was an interview with June and Frederick Jones, not gypsies but former house dwellers who took to life on the road – along with their five children, and other family members – as a result of overcrowding in the house where they had been living. “From being just another ordinary citizen, Mrs. Jones has suddenly found herself branded as a gipsy, and often refused service in shops where she buys food”. Like Levi they were illicitly encamped on the Croydon Road at Westerham, and as a result found themselves having to pay £3 10s. a week in court fines.

One of the articles in this 1968 feature referred to the work of the Kent Gipsy Support Committee (originally the Sevenoaks Gipsy Resettlement Committee) in providing assistance to travellers. Mrs. Jean Hutchinson, a member of the Committee, spoke in support of Levi Smith at Sevenoaks court in July 1968. He pleaded not guilty to ten summonses for obstructing the highway at Croydon Road. Mrs Hutchinson said in court

that Smith was regarded to be within the district, a man of integrity. “I submit that his excuse is that he has nowhere to go,” she told the court.

His caravan was positioned behind some trees at Croydon Road. “This is not an ideal place to bring up children,” she said, “but Mr. Smith can’t do anything else.”

Moreover

Because of the progress of the new Gipsy Bill in Parliament³¹, she contended that the court should know that the gipsy situation was under close examination at present.

“If the Bill does go through then local authorities will be compelled to provide adequate accommodation for the gipsies in their area.”

Smith said that although he was guilty of stopping on the highway, he was not guilty of obstructing it.

The chairman of the bench, Capt. R. Goad said: “We appreciate you coming here.”

Nevertheless, he proceeded to fine Levi 10 shillings for each offence.³²

At a further court hearing Levi was fined at the rate of 15 shillings per offence. He appealed this decision, as reported in the Sevenoaks Chronicle on 25^th October:

CARAVAN DWELLER LOSES APPEAL

Westerham caravan dweller Levi Smith had his appeal against Sevenoaks magistrates’ sentence for obstructing the highway dismissed by Kent Sessions, West Mailing, on Friday.

Smith appealed on the grounds that the fine of 15s. On each of 26 summonses was excessive.

Outlining the facts Mr. B. Pryor, for the respondents, said that four caravans  belonging to Smith and his family were seen parked on the grass verge at Croydon Road, Westerham, by P-c. Miles on January 30.

The officer spoke to Smith and told him of the offence he was committing. He visited the site on 10 subsequent days and on the last occasion told Smith he would be reported.

Mr. Pryor added that P-c. Carter saw Smith on May 30 and told him he was committing an offence and saw him again on 15 days in June.

LOCAL PERSON

Insp. Brian Thomas said that Smith had 14 previous convictions for camping on the highway or causing an obstruction.

Mr. A. T. Glass, for Smith, said that he was a local person.

“If he could go to a site he would go there straightaway. It is no pleasure for him to live in that way and he would move as soon as possible,” he added.

He said that Smith, who earned his living fruit picking and knife sharpening, was on the local housing list.

In December that year, Levi was back in court, along with a Jasper Smith – possibly, but not necessarily his brother. As reported in the Sevenoaks Chronicle, 6^th December 1968:

GIPSIES FACE 58 CHARGES

Two gipsies, defended by counsel at a nominal fee from an anonymous person faced a total of 58 charges of obstructing the free passage of the highway when they appeared at Sevenoaks magistrates’ court on Friday.

They are Levi and Jasper Smith of no fixed abode, both living in caravans on Croydon Road near Westerham.

They pleaded not guilty but were found guilty on all charges and fined 15s. per charge, a total of £43 10s.

Levi Smith faced 48 charges, Jasper 10. Their counsel was Mr. Stephen Sedley.

At the conclusion of the case the magistrates, headed by Mr. E. Comer allowed a certificate of legal aid, and made no order as to costs.

Levi’s name seems to disappear from local newspaper reports through the 1970s – in Kent at least. There are reports of various court hearings involving a man named Levi Smith, accused of a range of crimes; but where an age for the defendant is given this is clearly a completely different, much younger person. Where no age is given, it still seems likely to be the younger man, especially when one takes into account the numerous references to Levi, from the vicar and various other local residents, being “honest, hard working and courteous”; as noted above, even one member of the constabulary was prepared to describe the Smith family as “very satisfactory”.

Levi – collectors and recordings

Ken Stubbs recorded Levi singing four songs at Edenbridge in 1965. These can be heard as part of the via the VWML Archive Catalogue: Ken Stubbs Field Collection, Tape 14, Track 1, at https://archives.vwml.org/records/KS/14/1.

Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger met Levi in 1971, and recorded at least two songs from him (‘Geordie’ and ‘All Fours’), transcriptions of which were included in their book Travellers’ Songs From England and Scotland (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977). They wrote of Levi:

Like most of the southern English Travellers he prefers to travel in a comparatively small area.  In his case, this is mainly Surrey and Kent.  When we recorded him, his caravan was parked on the grass verge of the Croydon-Westerham road.  Since that time he has been evicted and is now almost certainly constantly on the move. 

Mike Yates was actively collecting songs from gypsies in southern England during the period 1972-1975. His article ‘Some Gypsy Singers in South East England’, in English Dance & Song, Spring 1975 refers to a forthcoming Topic LP featuring some of the recordings which he had made (Songs of the Open Road, Topic 12T253). The album included songs from both Levi and Jasper, and Yates wrote that “Without doubt Levi’s version of Georgie, with its splendid tune, will be one of the album’s highlights”. ‘Georgie’ was one of two songs from Levi where a transcription was included in Mike Yates’ 1975 Folk Music Journal article ‘English Gypsy Songs’ (the other being ‘The Broomdasher’), while a subsequent Topic LP, The Travelling Songster (12TS304, 1977) featured recordings of Levi, Jasper and Minty.

Levi was also recorded by Denise Stanley in March 1981, as part of her PhD research. At that time he was living at the Powerscroft site, Foots-cray, (now in the London Borough of Bexley, although historically in Kent). Stanley included the lyrics of two songs –fragments of Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘Waiting for a train’ and the cowboy song ‘Strawberry Roan’ – in her PhD thesis.

Levi and Jasper Smith both attended the Croydon Folk Club a few times in the 1970s. Chris Roche remembers that they first came to the club, which ran at the Swan and Sugarloaf, South Croydon, on 25^th May 1973, and returned on several subsequent occasions³³. They had been camping in a field on a farm which belonged to the family of club member Liz Ryan. They saw her with a guitar and asked where she was going. She then brought them to the folk club. 

For around 6 weeks they came to the club that was mid 70s we bought their drinks as no gypsies was the order of the day back then, at the end of an evening they would go round the room and shake hands with all present it was wonderful. The pair were smartly dressed Jasper in a as I recall sports jacket and cravat his hair slicked back, Levi in a long flowing overcoat and trilby.³⁴

One night Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger were guests at the club. Ewan remarked “I know clubs that would move premises 20 miles to have singers such as these”.

I have not so far been able to trace a record of Levi Smith’s death, nor does his passing appear to have been recorded in the Folk Music Journal or other traditional music publications.

Levi – Songs

Recorded by Ken Stubbs, 1965:

• Common Deserter (Roud 25892) 
• The Game of Cards (Roud 232)
• Geordie (Roud 90)
• The Haymakers (Roud 153)

Recorded by Ewan MaColl and Peggy Seeger, 1971:

• All Fours (Roud 232) 
• Geordie (Roud 90) 

Recorded by Mike Yates, 1970-1976:

• Barnet Fair (Roud 24565) 
• The Broomdasher (Roud 1733) 
• For I come home one evening (Roud 4475) 
• The Game of Cards (Roud 232) 
• Georgie (Roud 90) 
• The Haymakers (Roud 153) 
• Home in Texas (Roud 9708) 
• The Irish Girl (Roud 308) 
• One Penny (Roud 393) 
• Smiling Through (Roud 24564) 
• Two Convicts (Roud 4475) 
• Wings of a Swallow (Old Rocky Road) (Roud 13214) 

Recorded by Denise Stanley, 1981:

• All around the Water Tank (Roud 699) 
• Two Convicts Deserters (Roud 4475) 
• I’m Nobody’s Child (Roud 10718) 

Jasper Derby Smith, 1921–2003

According to Cecily Taylor’s obituary of Jasper Smith, he was born in a wagon at the side of Walton Lane, Epsom. Indeed, when the 1921 census was taken on 19^th June, Derby and Eliza Smith and their three children were residing in a caravan on Epsom Downs, Walton on the Hill, Surrey.  Jasper was born on 25^th June 1921 – so just a few days too late to be included in that year’s 1921 census. His birth was registered in the Reigate district in the third quarter of that year.

Jasper spent seven years in the Army³⁵, and served overseas during World War 2.

Interviewed by John Brune in around 1965, Jasper said he and his wife had been together for 24 years. The family was mentioned in a feature in the Sevenoaks Chronicle,5^th July 1968:

Mrs. Priscilla Smith, Jasper’s 39-year-old wife, who was born in a caravan, said: “We have been travelling about the roads all our lives. Now we would rather live in a house.”

After Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the family consists of Jasper Smith junior, 23, Mrs. Margaret Smith, his wife, aged 23, Joey Smith, aged eight, Jasper Smith junior’s 10-month-old son, also Jasper Smith, and Mrs. Priscilla Smith’s five-week-old child, Lena Smith. They have been at the Edenbridge camp for about two years and pay £1 a week rent.

Assuming these ages are correct, it would mean that Priscilla was born around 1929, and her son Jasper (one assumes her eldest son) was born around 1942. The birth of a Jasper Smith, mother’s maiden name Smith, was registered in the Surrey Mid Eastern district in the second quarter of 1944, and this is probably Jasper and Priscilla’s son. However if Priscilla was born in 1929, that means she was only fifteen in 1944; and it certainly rules out her and Jasper having been married for 24 years in 1965, as she would not yet have been thirteen years old in 1941. Jasper told John Brune that a woman had to be “at least 18 or 19 before a Gypsy boy can take off with her”. The other oddity is that if Jasper junior was born in 1944, Jasper and Priscilla must have got married during the Second World War, when Jasper was, presumably, still in the Army. Obviously they could have married while he was on leave, but he makes no reference to having to return back to his regiment shortly after the marriage. It’s possible that Jasper’s memory was at fault, or the ages quoted in the newspaper are not quite right or, indeed, that Brune’s interview was actually conducted later than 1965. There’s no official registration of marriage to check – Jasper and Priscilla simply “bunked off” together and were thereafter considered husband and wife:

I’m not married to my wife. I mean, I’ve had my wife now for 24 years. And all as we did when I run off with my wife, I just says “I’ll meet you at Epsom pictures tonight”. She says “All right”, ‘cause we’d been courting. Her mother didn’t even know we were courting nor did her father, nor did my mum nor did my dad. So I said, “Meet you at Epsom pictures tonight”. We go to Epsom pictures, and… I says “Let’s bunk off. Let’s go off”. So she says, “Well. Do you think it’ll be all right?” I said “Yeah, they’ll have to put up with it”. I said “What can they do about it after it’s done?” So me and her, away we go. Then we finish this up about, oh, six months afterwards before we see our mums and dads, and… the same night as I taken her off, like, oh, we sent a message back with one of the other boys, to tell her mum and dad not to worry, that I’ve took her off so she’ll know where she is to stop the police searching for her. Because I know she’s old enough to take off. And then I take her off back. She’s gotta be 18, at least 18 or 19 before a Gypsy boy can take off with her. Otherwise they will put him inside. I mean, she’s got to be of age to get married. And then, when we come home.

When I came home to my father-in-law, he says, “Well, I see you’ve done it then, son”. I said “Yes”. I said, “Well, you done it once didn’t you?” He says “Yeah”. That’s, well, everybody gotta do it sometime or other. “Well,” he says, “now you’ve got to look after her,” he says, “and I hope you’ll turn out to be good to her”. I said “Well, I’ll do the best I can”. And of course, the girl already had the same words spoken to her, like, by my parents, and, we’ve been together ever since, and we’ve never left one another or, run away from one another. We don’t… the Gypsy marriage is the truest marriage in the world. We believe in having one another. We had a nice, when I came out to my father-in-law and and… mother-in-law, we had a nice drop o’ beer around the fire, a few crates o’ beer, and a few sing-songs and dance and those jigs and that, you know. And… sort of a party, and then… “I never had no money and… nor did me wife. I had about, might have had about 30 bob. Between us. And, of course, the next thing you know that my father and… her father was giving us so much each, and people was lending us ‘orse to pull the van along. We bought the van and then people was lending us so much… some were saying  “Here’s a couple of blankets for you”. Some were saying “Here’s a couple of plates”. You see gypsies all ‘elp one other… on things, you know. If one gypsy’s  in trouble, so they all ‘elp.

[…]

So that’s how… that’s what happens to the marriages. But the Gypsy marriages are a true marriage, because they never leave one another. They don’t believe in going with other women after they’ve got a wife and the wives don’t believe in going with other men after they got their husbands. Unless, that one of them die, then probably they could. But it’s up until that time.³⁶

Writing in 1999, Minty Smith’s granddaughter Rosie painted a similar picture:

Although it’s becoming more the way with Gypsies to have big church or register office weddings, still you don’t need to do either of these to be thought of as ‘married’ by other Gypsies. To us there is no ‘living together as boyfriend and girlfriend’, for as soon as you move in together, you are thought of as ‘married’. Gypsies call it ‘taking off’. A young boy and girl will decide they want to be married ‘the Gypsy way’, so will go off on the night and when they come back next morning everyone among the Gypsies will think of them as married. This can happen as young as fifteen, but the average age for a girl is seventeen and for a boy eighteen or nineteen. Girls as young as twenty-five will be thought of on the shelf. Although I have heard people say about ‘jumping sticks’ or ‘jumping the broomstick’, this is just a saying and what they really mean is that the girl and boy moved in together or went off like I just said and came back husband and wife… I’m not sure if Gypsies hundreds of years ago did ‘jump sticks’ or the ‘broomstick’ but if so, it has not been done in this country for years. One of the reasons I think why Gypsies see a girl and boy as married once they have spent the night together, is because it is our beliefs that a girl should only have sex with her husband and should be pure on her wedding night, so once a girl and boy have spent the night together they are thought of as married. Divorce is very rare among Gypsies with most marriages lasting a lifetime.³⁷

John Brune’s recordings of Jasper Smith are well worth listening to – they are available online, as part of the Ken Stubbs collection in the VWML Archive Catalogue, at https://archives.vwml.org/records/KS/20. As well as Gypsy marriages, Jasper talks about Gypsy clothes, music-making, horse-dealing (“a traveller, I reckon he was the best judge in the world of horse, the gypsy was. True bred Gypsy that ‘ad ‘orses he was… the best judge in the world of horses. Of good horses and bad horses”), life before the Second World War, and life in the 1960s.

Jasper Smith: Well… it’s a struggle, sir. I mean, the trouble is this, you see, I mean nine gypsies out of ten… I mean, I’m 45 year old. I can’t read nor write and there’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of us that can’t read nor write. You see, because we can’t read nor write, they won’t give us a job. They think… Well, I didn’t have to read and write to fire a rifle. Why should I have to read and write… to have a job? In a factory, or anything… I mean, long as the bloke show you the job and says, “Well, look, there’s the job, get on with it”. Well, all right, that’s good enough. Nine gypsies out of ten can do that. See. But I mean we got to live somehow.

JB: You do a bit of poaching of course.

JS: Well we do a bit of poaching and a bit of old car breaking in… the winter, and in the summer we work on farms. We go from… I’ll go from here up Wisbech, and Cambridge. Hoeing sugar beet and, fodder beet and that. Then we come back from there and go down Kent hop picking, cherry picking and apple picking and all that sort of work. And course, we have to try and pick up enough then, if we can, to try and put us as far as we can into the winter. But we don’t. We don’t never do it. I mean we, we can never get enough money to put us through. Don’t matter how much we work. Because I mean, you got all them months, all them winter months ‘head of you. And then we go to the labour and we says, well, we sign on for a job. They don’t want to give us £5 a week. They says, “Well, we can’t give you a job, but we give you £5 a week on assistance. See. So they give us £5 a week. For a wife, for a man. Woman and two children. Out of that you buy a bottle of gas, half hundredweight of coal. Pound for rent. You got about £2 five left out of it…

…they just can’t find a job, and wherever they do send you for a job, they send you to a factory, anywhere like that. They did my boy, a few months ago, they send him to the factory says “Well, you go down there, down that egg packing station. And after he’s gone down this station, they give him this green card. He took it into the manager and he says “I’ve been sent from the labour exchange down here for this job. Shows him the job, the card rather. And then he says, “Oh, where do you come from? Uh, oh, you’re a gypsy. Oh, I’m sorry, he says we’re full up”.

JB: So you really couldn’t live if you didn’t do any poaching…

JS: Well, if you didn’t, if you didn’t poach or anything like that you wouldn’t… you have to do something. What I do, I’ll go with my old dogs and kill a hare now and again and a few rabbits, the old ferrets and that. And try to make ends meet, you know, that way on.³⁸

Cecily Taylor’s obituary of Jasper Smith says that

Before the mechanisation of agriculture he, with all the members of his family, was employed in seasonal jobs on the farms of Surrey and Kent and mostly travelled the two counties.

[…]

By the 1950s when the Gypsies were beginning to change from their horse-drawn wagons to modern caravans it was easier to travel further afield. After the traditional meeting up with relations and friends at Derby time, the family would additionally travel as far as ‘The Black Fens’ for work in the market gardens.³⁹

A court case reported in the Surrey Advertiser, 12^th November 1955 probably refers to the Jasper Smith under consideration here:

EFFINGHAM CHILDREN WERE AWAY HOP-PICKING

Jasper Smith, whose address was given as a caravan at Calvert Road, Effingham, admitted to Godalming County Magistrates yesterday that his sons, aged 9½ and 5½, failed to attend school between September 1st and 28th. He was fined a total of 10s.

Mr. C. V. Jenkins (divisional education officer) said the children had been with their father who was hop-picking in Kent.

“I’m sorry they were away longer than they should have been, but hop-picking is the only holiday I have,” said Smith. “They went back to school as soon I got back.”

Newspaper reports quoted earlier show that Minty and Levy Smith had both been camped in Darenth Woods before being evicted. It would appear that the same was true of Jasper – the Kent & Sussex Courier for 27^th April 1962 reported that:

Jasper Smith, a gipsy with a wife and four children, who was one of those evicted from Darenth Woods gipsy encampment in North Kent recently, was fined £3 at Tonbridge Court on Thursday last week for driving a lorry without an excise licence.

Smith, who now lives on an encampment on the A.2 at Stone, said he had only 10s. He was given 14 days to pay.

Subsequent reports were of a depressingly familiar nature, but with Jasper prominent in giving voice to the gypsies’ concerns. Tonbridge Free Press, 10^th January 1964:

GYPSIES ASK COURT ‘WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW?’

Twenty gipsies, including 10 members of the Smith family. were each fined £1 at a special sitting of Sevenoaks Court on Tuesday, for unlawfully placing caravans on Hosey Common, near Westerham.

The prosecutions were the first brought under the new Sevenoaks Rural by-laws governing Hosey Common and the gypsies faced five charges for parking caravans there on five consecutive dates from November 25th.

Similar charges against another gipsy, Emily Webb (27), were not heard, as the court was told she had not been served with a summons.

LATE ARRIVALS

There was over half-an-hour’s delay before court commenced as a number of the defendants were late in arriving. Their relatives said that they had “broken down at Bessels Green”.

Eight of the 20 failed to appear. Some were said to be ill and two others, Aaron and Valentine Smith, had sent letters apologising for their absence.

The wives of two missing defendants, Kenneth Rignall and Joe Cooper, wanted to appear for them but were informed that they could not do so.

In three separate groups the gipsies were called before the magistrates and all except one, Frank Smith (60), pleaded guilty to the first charge. After advice they pleaded not guilty to the remaining four.

PROHIBITION

Mr. Ben Edwards, Sevenoaks Rural Council Clerk, told the bench that the by-laws prohibiting, among other things, the parking of caravans on Hosey Common, came into operation on October 1st.

The gipsies been parked on the common for some time and there had been a number of complaints about their activities there. Chief Inspector H. Hosier stated.

P.C. John Harris of Westerham said that he saw 31 caravans on the site when he visited it on November 17th with another policeman.

He had interviewed the occupants and after being told that only two of them could read, had explained the contents of the posters displayed on the common giving the requirements of the by-law and had also told the gipsies that if they had not moved by November 25th they would be prosecuted.

[One of the] men, Job Chapman, had commented “We ought to take all our caravans and put them on the green at Westerham”.

Others had asked where they could move to and Bill Smith junior had said “Our kids are at school and we can’t move away”.

During the week, six caravans had moved away but the others were still on the site after the 25th, P.C. Harris stated.

His fellow officer, P.C. Alan Bateup, said that the general reaction to their interviews had been, “Where can we go? The council won’t find us a site. We won’t pay the fines. Prison isn’t too bad and the Government will have to look after our wives and children”.

Frank Smith, who had pleaded not guilty, based his plea on the fact that he had not been interviewed by police the first time they called.

He admitted that his caravan was there at the time and said that the police talked to him on another occasion.

Asked if he wished to question the R.D.C. clerk about the by-laws, Jasper Smith (40) opened his remarks by saying that he was a “little better educated than the others”

Claiming that they had been moved from the site by the council last year and that the council had promised to find them somewhere to park, Jasper Smith added “Supposing they make by-laws like this all over the country? We have kids to bring up and we have to live somewhere”.

After the Chairman of the bench, Mr. Alec Young had found Frank Smith guilty on the first charge and had dismissed the four charges to which each of the defendants had pleaded not guilty, Jasper Smith asked if he could make one further comment.

“We are paying these fines but what are we going to do now?” he asked.

“l am afraid that we cannot do anything about that” replied Mr. Young.

A similar report appeared in the Sevenoaks Chronicle for 10^th January. This clarified that the offences of which they were accused each carried a maximum fine of £2, but the Chairman of the bench dismissed four of the charges as unproven. The article also gave a list of all of the defendants:

Ernest Harber, 25, Jasper Smith, 40, Jobe Chapman, 35, Eileen Smith, 28, Bill Smith Snr., 65, Joe Smith, 35, Abraham Cooper, 40, Betsy Eastwood, 35, Frank Smith, 60, Jane Smith, 27, Frederick Eastwood, 30, Sam Jones, 35, Aaron Smith, 25 Amos Smith, 70, Valentine Smith, 25, Bill Smith Jnr, 38, Joe Cooper Jnr., 28, Joe Cooper Snr., 65, Kenneth Bignall, 32, and Tom Arnold, 45. All gave their address as Hosey Common, Westerham.

Elsewhere in the same newspaper it was reported that Sevenoaks Rural District Council Public Health Committee had accepted the recommendations of the council’s “special gipsy sub-committee” that Brasted Sandpits should be the location of a new Gypsy site. Needless to say, this proposal was met with dismay by many Brasted residents, and was formally condemned by Brasted Parish Council. Meanwhile, although on 24^th January the Sevenoaks Chronicle included the headline “HOSEY COMMON GIPSIES GET REPRIEVE” (pending a review of the situation by the Planning Committee), that did not prevent Nelson Best and Nelson Best, two residents of the Common, being fined at the end of the month.⁴⁰

It must have been around this time that Jasper Smith became involved with the Sevenoaks Gypsy Liaison Committee, campaigning for a local authority caravan site for travellers to be opened at Edenbridge. The Sevenoaks Chronicle, 20^th November 1964, reported the news that the Minister for Housing and Local Government had approved Sevenoaks R.D.C.’s proposal to open such a site, on what had previously been a council refuse dump, Hever Road, Edenbridge. Mind you, the Hosey Lane residents had an understandable scepticism:

NEWS GETS ICY HAND AT HOSEY

At Hosey Common this week, the news of the ministry’s approval met with an ice-cold reception from gipsy families.

“A permanent site at last? We’ll believe that when we see it, and even then it will be hard to accept,” said 28-year old Henry Smith, father of two.

Thirty-year-old Jobi Chapman, father of seven children whom he accommodates in two caravans, said that he had recently moved on to the Hosey Common site for the express purpose of getting “first pickings” on the new Edenbridge encampment.

Allowed to stay

“The police have already been up here but said we would be allowed to stay until the new site at Edenbridge was completed.”

Standing in mud up to his ankles, he added: “Not one of my children goes to school. They are not allowed to until they live on a permanent site. I could do with two council houses really.

“We have to make the best living we can. It’s a struggle to feed the kids let alone anything else,” he added.

On Tuesday there were 15 caravans on the common.

Clearly the new Edenbridge site, when it did open, did not meet the needs of all the travellers looking for a place to stay. In the Sevenoaks Chronicle article previously quoted, 5^th June 1968, the majority of Gypsies interviewed by the paper said they wouldn’t want to live in a house, but

An exception to the rule is Jasper Smith’s family at Edenbridge. They would rather live in a house if they could get one.

Mrs. Priscilla Smith, Jasper’s 39-year-old wife, who was born in a caravan, said: “We have been travelling about the roads all our lives. Now we would rather live in a house.”

There are various newspaper reports from December 1968 to 1973 where a Jasper Smith is fined for camping on / obstructing the highway in the Sevenoaks area. This may or may not be the same Jasper – in one case the age of the Jasper in question is given as 29, so is clearly a different person. In other cases, no age is given, so it’s not possible to say which of them is being referred to.

Jasper’s local activism led to him becoming a founder member of the Gypsy Council, which met for the first time at the Bull Inn, St.Paul’s Cray, on December 11^th 1966. The Gypsy Council was established “to gain social justice, along with education, accommodation and civil rights for the Gypsy and Traveller community”.⁴¹

As a member of the Council he attended the first World Roma Congress, held in London, 8^th – 12^th April 1971:

Back at Cannock house, the Congress draws to a close. The final plenary session in the assembly hall is packed out. Gypsies from the local roadsides have come to participate. They had lost Corke’s Meadow and been towed out of Darenth Wood, stopping places used for generations. Now many were camped on the side of the A2, menaced by the heavy traffic, and frequently visited by the police. Jasper Smith was there and Abe Cooper, along with others who had joined the Gypsy Council. Women held infants in their arms. Children were soon kicking restlessly among the chairs.⁴²

Cecily Taylor relates that Jasper was among those who met and provided evidence to Sir John Cripps when he was compiling his 1977 report for the Department of the Environment, Accommodation for gypsies: a report on the working of the Caravan Sites Act 1968.

By 1973, Jasper had left Kent, moving back to Surrey:

From 1973 onwards he had been negotiating with Epsom to provide government funded sites for their Gypsies. Whan this eventually happened, Jasper became warden of the one in Cox Lane. From there, for many years he helped Surrey’s Gypsy Projects’ Manager, liaising when needed with the county’s Travellers.⁴³

Many of Mike Yates’ recordings of Jasper were made in Epsom, although for some the location is given as Biggin Hill. His views on living on a permanent site were captured in this article in the Surrey Herald, 24^th November 1988:

Jasper misses open road

Surrey gipsy Jasper Smith, 68, lives on an official site, but misses the open road.

“I was born in Surrey and have lived here all my life,” he said. “I used to travel, but I always came back to Surrey”.

In his days he has all over the country, up to Scotland, down to the coast, picking up work as he went.

“I used to go hop-picking, then it was the fruit and the strawberries, ” he said.

But mechanisation put an end to all that and today he is a site warden working for Surrey County Council and Epsom Council.

He has three daughters and three sons who have been to school

Mr Smith says Surrey’s target or 370 sites across the county should be increased to 500. He suggests the county puts compulsory purchase orders on suitable land to speed the process up.

He likes being on an official site in winter with a warm caravan and electricity and water, but still yearns for the old days.

“Some of us get used to it, others don’t,” he said. “It’s like putting a bird in a cage… it pines.”

Jasper – collectors and recordings

Ken Stubbs recorded Jasper singing around a dozen songs – traditional songs and more modern popular songs – and a recitation, at Epsom in 1965. These can be heard as part of the via the VWML Archive Catalogue: Ken Stubbs Field Collection, Tape 14, Track1, at https://archives.vwml.org/records/KS/14/1.

As previously noted, John Brune recorded Jasper at Edenbridge around the same time, and these recordings can also be accessed as part of the Ken Stubbs Field Collection in the VWML Archive Catalogue, at https://archives.vwml.org/records/KS/20. The recordings include Jasper talking, reciting a rhyme of his own composition, and singing songs. Again, there are a few traditional songs, but most are more modern songs, including Jasper’s rewrite of ‘It’s Later than You Think’ and George Formby’s ‘Trailing Around In A Trailer’.

Mike Yates’ recordings appeared of Jasper’s singing and mouth-organ playing appeared on the Topic LPs Songs of the Open Road (1975) and The Travelling Songster (1977), while the 1985 LP Travellers also included two of his stories, ‘Pepper and Salt’ and ‘Waxey Candles’. Jasper’s son Derby Smith appears on this album as well, singing ‘Will There Be Any Travellers In Heaven?’ (a rewrite of Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘Hobo’s Meditation’), accompanying himself on guitar. Yates’ recordings have subsequently appeared on CD releases on the Topic and Musical Traditions labels.

Both Jasper and Derby appeared as guests at the National Folk Festival at Loughborough circa 1979. This festival, which sadly stopped running over 20 years ago, brought together “traditional” and “revival” performers in a fairly intimate setting. It was one of the few places where performers and enthusiasts from the folk scene could get to see the “source singers” featured on albums of field recordings put out by the likes of Topic and Veteran.

Some obituaries of Jasper mention television appearances: he was apparently included in an ITV film called ‘Hopping Down in Kent’, and a Thames TV Schools Programme.

Jasper’s wife Priscilla died in 1998. He died in Epsom Hospital on 16^th April 2003. He had suffered a stroke the previous week. His funeral was held at Christ Church, Epsom Common on 30^th April. There was a funeral procession of a hundred vehicles, and the church was full of Romanies paying their respects to a man described in the Friends, Families & Travellers’ Newsletter as “This well respected, good natured Romany”.⁴⁴

The obituary which appeared on the Musical Traditions website included the following:

A splendid singer and story-teller, and a well-loved and much respected leader of the Romani community, Jasper Smith died in hospital in the early hours of Wednesday 16th April, aged 82.  He had been unwell for some time.

An early activist with the Sevenoaks Gypsy Liaison Committee, Jasper became a founder member of the Gypsy Council, when that body was inaugurated on 10 December 1966.  He attended the first World Romani Congress in 1971 and was proud to call himself a Gypsy Councillor right up until his 82nd year.

From the roadside, Jasper campaigned for the opening of the Edenbridge caravan site – one of the first provided by a local authority.  Later he moved with other members of his family to Cox’s Lane, Epsom.  While this site was under threat of closure, Jasper built his famous ‘rocket to the moon’.  This 25 foot high cardboard contraption was to carry them to a home in the sky, “As the council won’t leave us anywhere to live down here.”  He subsequently became the site warden there, advised Epsom Council in setting up its second Traveller site and assisted Surrey’s Gypsy Projects manager, who commented “Frankly, he is irreplaceable.”

I’m indebted to Chris Roche of Croydon for sending me a photocopy of The Post, dated 7th May, which contained an obit and account of the 100 vehicle funeral procession, including this picture of the Chair of Flowers, a Romani tradition, in which the traveller may ‘sit down for a while and rest in Heaven’.

Chris remembers Jasper and his brother Levi first coming to Croydon’s Swan and Sugarloaf folk club on 25th May, 1973, and on several subsequent occasions.  Despite the pub’s ban on serving Gypsies, Jasper and Levi sang – and the club members bought them drinks.  They would also shake hands with everyone in the room before leaving.  Jasper also sang at the club the night that Ewan MacColl was booked; Ewan said that he knew of clubs which would move their premises 20 miles to have singers such as Jasper among their regulars.⁴⁵

Cecily Taylor, who had first introduced Mike Yates to the Smith family, wrote a tribute for English Dance & Song, from which several quotations have already been taken. She also submitted an obituary of Jasper to The Times, and this was included in the newspaper’s ‘Lives In Brief’ section, 3^rd May 2003.

Jasper – Songs

Recorded by Ken Stubbs, 1965:

• The Coachman (Roud 862)
• Goodbye my darling (Roud 25868)
• Hartlake Bridge (Roud 1729)
• I’m making headway now (Roud 25860)
• One night it was raining and stormy (Roud 768)
• Pardner (Roud 25893)
• The River of no return (Roud 25861)
• Shooting Goschen’s Cocks Up (Roud 902)
• There’s a lovely blue-eyed blondie girl (Roud 25859)
• They say this War (Roud 10595)
• Thorneymoor Park (Roud 222)
• When the gamekeepers lay sleeping (Roud 363)
• William Taylor (Roud 851)

Recorded by John Brune, c1965:

• Blue-Eyed blonde next door (Roud 25859)
• Epsom Downs
• Farmer’s Boy (Roud 408)
• Goodbye my darling (Roud 25868)
• I’ll Be up your way next week (Roud 10694)
• It’s later than you think (Roud 25866)
• Just to boil my kettle with (Roud 25868)
• Much Binding in the Marsh (Roud 25869)
• She won’t make up her mind (Roud 25870)
• Trailing around in a trailer (Roud 25867)
• While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping (Roud 363)
• William Taylor (Roud 851)
• Yellow ‘Ankercher (Flash Company) (Roud 954)

Recorded by Mike Yates, 1970-1975:

• Barnet Fair (Roud 24565)
• Bird-Scaring Song (Roud 1730)
• Brickman (Patsy Flannagan) (Roud 16632)
• The Broomdasher (Roud 1733)
• Chav Chavies (Roud 21088)
• Christmas Rhymes (Roud 230)
• The Coachman (Roud 862)
• Dear old Erin’s Isle (Roud 31909)
• Died for love (Roud 18828)
• Died for love (Roud 60)
• Donnelly and Cooper (Roud 2147)
• Down in the meadow (Roud 18829)
• Father had a knife (Roud 850)
• Georgie (Roud 90)
• Hares in the old plantation (Roud 363)
• Hartlake Bridge (Roud 1729)
• I’ve got no time for the women (Roud 4104)
• The Jew’s Garden (Roud 73)
• Mccaffery (Roud 1148)
• The Moon shines bright (Roud 702)
• If I were a Grinder (Roud 17038)
• Lavatory cleaner (Roud 10232)
• On old Epsom Downs (Roud 27726)
• Shooting Spark’s Cocks Up (Roud 902)
• The Small Birds Whistle (Roud 199)
• The Squire and the Gipsy (Roud 229)
• Thornymoor Park (Roud 222)
• What’s going to become of old England (Roud 1779)
• The Walnut Girl (Roud 2520)
• You Subjects of England (Roud 851)

Discography

Songs of the Open Road: Gypsies, Travellers & Country Singers, Topic Records 12T253 (LP, 1975), TSDL253 (digital download, 2009) – Jasper and Levi.
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/12/various-artists-songs-of-the-open-road-tsdl253/

The Travelling Songster: An Anthology From Gypsy Singers, Topic Records 12TS304 (LP, 1977), TSDL304 (digital download , 2013) – Minty, Levi and Jasper.
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2013/06/various-artists-the-travelling-songster-tsdl304/

Travellers: Songs, Stories and Tunes from English Gypsies, Topic Records 12TS395 (LP, 1985), TSDL395 (digital download, 2015) – Jasper and Derby
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2015/05/travellers-songs-stories-and-tunes-from-english-gypsies-tsdl395/

Voice of the People Vol. 8: A Story I’m Just About to Tell, Topic Records TSCD658 (CD, 1998)  – Jasper.
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/09/a-story-im-just-about-to-tell-local-events-national-issues-tscd658/

Voice of The People Vol. 11: My Father’s the King of the Gypsies, Topic Records TSCD661 (CD, 1998) – Minty, Levi and Jasper.
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/09/my-fathers-the-king-of-the-gypsies-music-of-english-welsh-travellers-gypsies-tscd661/

Voice of the People Vol. 14: Troubles They Are But Few, Topic Records TSCD664 (CD, 1998) – Minty and Jasper.
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/09/troubles-they-are-but-few-dance-tunes-ditties-tscd664/

Voice of the People Vol. 18: To Catch a Fine Buck was My Delight, Topic Records TSCD668 (CD, 1998) – Jasper.
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/09/to-catch-a-fine-buck-was-my-delight-songs-of-hunting-poaching-tscd668/

Here’s Luck to a Man: An Anthology of Gypsy Songs & Music from South-East England, Musical Traditions MTCD320 (CD-R, 2003) – Minty, Levi, Jasper and Derby.
Download from https://rodstrad.gumroad.com/l/LPkPX

---

1. Cecily Taylor, ‘Jasper Derby Smith’ (obituary), English Dance and Song, 65 no. 3 (Autumn 2003), p. 30. ↩︎
2. Rosie Smith & Lindsey Marsh, Old ways, new days: a family history of Gypsy life in South London and Kent, Francis Boutle Publishers, 2009. ↩︎
3. When Eliza was baptised, 21^st October 1890 at St Peter’s church, Walton on the Hill, Surrey, her father William’s occupation was recorded as “Sojourner” – in other words a temporary resident in the parish. ↩︎
4. Rosie Smith & Lindsey Marsh, Old ways, new days. ↩︎
5. “Tuning” is singing or diddling for step-dancing. See Gwilym Davies, ‘Step it Away’: Mouth Music for English Step-Dancing, Folk Music Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2022), pp. 6-22, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45407240 ↩︎
6. Ken Stubbs Field Collection, Tape 20 Track 2, Talk about Gipsy life before the war / Jasper Smith (rec. John Brune) https://archives.vwml.org/songs/VWMLDanceTuneIndex/DT6506 ↩︎
7. Ken Stubbs Field Collection, Tape 20 Track 1, Talk about playing music on Epsom Downs / Jasper Smith (rec. John Brune), https://archives.vwml.org/songs/VWMLDanceTuneIndex/DT6496 ↩︎
8. Ken Stubbs Field Collection, Tape 20 Track 3, Talk about Gipsies playing music / Jasper Smith (rec. John Brune), https://archives.vwml.org/songs/VWMLDanceTuneIndex/DT6503 ↩︎
9. England and Wales, Death Registration Index 1837-2007, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVC2-ZXJQ ↩︎
10. This appears to be a typo or a case of faulty memory on Mike Yates’ part. ↩︎
11. Mike Yates, notes to Here’s Luck to a Man…, Musical Traditions MTCD320, 2003, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/luck#sing ↩︎
12. Her paternal grandmother Charlotte Smith, born circa 1856. ↩︎
13. Rosie Smith & Lindsey Marsh, Old ways, new days, pp27-29 ↩︎
14. Rosie Smith & Lindsey Marsh, Old ways, new days, p51 ↩︎
15. Simon Evans, Stopping Places: A Gypsy History of South London and Kent, University Of Hertfordshire Press, 2004, p53 ↩︎
16. Quoted from Peter Kennedy, Folksongs of Britain & Ireland, Cassell, 1975, pp798-799 ↩︎
17. Ewan MacColl, Charles Parker & Peggy Seeger, Radio Ballad: The Travelling People, 1964. Quoted from Damian Le Bas, The Travelling People 50 years on, Travellers’ Times, 2014, https://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/sites/default/files/inline-files/Damian%20Article.pdf ↩︎
18. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 19 February 1965 ↩︎
19. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 19 February 1965 ↩︎
20. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 8 June 1974 ↩︎
21. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 13 August 1977 ↩︎
22. Denise Stanley, English Gypsy Singing (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City University London, 1989), pp123-125. Accessed from https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/7672/1/English_Gypsy_singing.pdf ↩︎
23. Rosie Smith & Lindsey Marsh, Old ways, new days, pp28-29 ↩︎
24. Mike Yates, notes to The Travelling Songster, Topic Records 12TS304, 1977 ↩︎
25. Esher News and Mail, 19 December 1947 ↩︎
26. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 24 February 1967 ↩︎
27. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 07 July 1967 ↩︎
28. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 22 December 1967 ↩︎
29. Presumably, since the families had nowhere else to go, they were expected to pay off these fines at 5 shillings a week whilst continuing to accrue further fines at the rate of 3 shillings and 6 pence per week, or maybe more. ↩︎
30. In the interests of balance, it is perhaps worth giving this alternative view from Simon Evans: “in common with the rest of humanity, there never have been any racially or culturally ‘pure’ Gypsies. All races of people have evolved over the centuries; cultures are a blend of nationalities and global influences, the product of invasion, immigration and colonisation, of trade, travel and communication. The English Gypsies are no different from anyone else in this respect: contemporary Traveller culture is the product of generations of influence and interaction” (from the Introduction to Stopping Places, p2). ↩︎
31. A reference to the Caravan Sites Act, 1968 – long title “An Act to restrict the eviction from caravan sites of occupiers of caravans and make other provision for the benefit of such occupiers; to secure the establishment of such sites by local authorities for the use of gipsies and other persons of nomadic habit, and control in certain areas the unauthorised occupation of land by such persons; to amend the definition of “caravan” in Part I of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid”. ↩︎
32. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 19 July 1968 ↩︎
33. ‘Jasper Smith dies’, Musical Traditions, 2003, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/news28.htm ↩︎
34. Email from Chris Roche, 4 May 2025 – many thanks to Chris for his help. ↩︎
35. Jasper’s brother-in-law Jack Smith, quoted in Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 05 July 1968. ↩︎
36. Ken Stubbs Field Collection, Tape 20 Track 6, Talk about Gipsies’ clothes and marriage / Jasper Smith (rec. John Brune) https://archives.vwml.org/songs/VWMLDanceTuneIndex/DT6504 ↩︎
37. Rosie Smith & Lindsey Marsh, Old ways, new days, p24 ↩︎
38. Ken Stubbs Field Collection, Tape 20 Track 2, Talk about Gipsy life nowadays / Jasper Smith (rec. John Brune) https://archives.vwml.org/songs/VWMLDanceTuneIndex/DT6507 ↩︎
39. Cecily Taylor, ‘Jasper Derby Smith’ (obituary), English Dance and Song, 65 no. 3 (Autumn 2003), p. 30. ↩︎
40. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 31 January 1964 ↩︎
41. Quoted from the Friends, Families and Travellers website, Services Directory, https://www.gypsy-traveller.org/services-directory/ ↩︎
42. Grattan Puxon, History of the World Roma Congress, World Roma Congress website, https://worldromacongress.org/index.php/archive/roma-congress-1971 ↩︎
43. Cecily Taylor, ‘Jasper Derby Smith’ (obituary), English Dance and Song, 65 no. 3 (Autumn 2003), p. 30. ↩︎
44. Obituary—Jasper Derby Smith, Friends, Families & Travellers’ Newsletter, Issue 5, https://www.gypsy-traveller.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/May_03.pdf ↩︎
45. ‘Jasper Smith dies’, Musical Traditions, 2003, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/news28.htm ↩︎