Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction: The Role of the Romanies: Images and Counter-Images
- Part I Romany Studies and its Parameters
- Part II Constructions and Concoctions of Romany Culture
- Part III Orientalism and Gender Issues in Literature
- Part IV Memory, Records and the Romany Experience
- Disproportional Representation: Romanies and European Art
- A Photographer and his ‘Victims’ 1934–1964: Reconstructing a Shared Experience of the Romani Holocaust
- Ritual of Memory in Constructing the Modern Identity of Eastern European Romanies
- ‘Severity has often enraged but never subdued a gypsy’: The History and Making of European Romani Stereotypes
- Index
‘Severity has often enraged but never subdued a gypsy’: The History and Making of European Romani Stereotypes
from Part IV - Memory, Records and the Romany Experience
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction: The Role of the Romanies: Images and Counter-Images
- Part I Romany Studies and its Parameters
- Part II Constructions and Concoctions of Romany Culture
- Part III Orientalism and Gender Issues in Literature
- Part IV Memory, Records and the Romany Experience
- Disproportional Representation: Romanies and European Art
- A Photographer and his ‘Victims’ 1934–1964: Reconstructing a Shared Experience of the Romani Holocaust
- Ritual of Memory in Constructing the Modern Identity of Eastern European Romanies
- ‘Severity has often enraged but never subdued a gypsy’: The History and Making of European Romani Stereotypes
- Index
Summary
The Context: Back in 1886…
Picture the scene. It is a ‘chilly English summer day’ in July 1886 and by a patch of waste ground near Liverpool Lime St. station there are some 100-plus ‘Greek Gypsies’ who have been abandoned by the London train. Their desired progress to New York via a steamer has been delayed; they are eventually moved to a less visible part of Liverpool, an area known as Walton where the Zoological Gardens are. The usual questions are being asked. How long are they to be here? What is to be done with them? It seems they are fixed to remain in the ‘garrets and caverns of Europe’ – so predicts our erstwhile reporter for the Chambers’ Journal, one David MacRitchie. He warily approaches the camp with a Greek gentleman there to represent a wealthy merchant of Liverpool, who has taken an interest in the situation of his compatriots. On his instructions, all begging is to stop – it may harm their chances of admission to the New World. MacRitchie, as he walks forward, observes the ‘distinct lack of qualities’ such as ‘cleanliness, industry or wealth’ around the encampment; he notes the ‘dingy’ 15 to 20 tents and the ‘swarthy’ and ‘tawny’ faces and complexions of the men, women and children who busy themselves around their temporary homes. Following a few sentences in Greek from his companion, our man in Liverpool has their attention:
As soon as the leading men of the band who were then present – the chief himself had gone into town with two of his followers – understood that one of their visitors was a fellow-countryman, representing their patron, they thronged around him with a hundred questions, gesticulating violently the while; and the burden of their complaint was: ‘How long must we remain here?’ ‘Why should we be detained when our journey is half over?’ ‘Why will the Americans not let us come?’ Their case was really a hard one. Three hundred napoleons had they spent on their journey from Greece – on the clear understanding that they were to obtain a passage across the Atlantic from Liverpool, the money for which they had in their possession.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Role of the RomaniesImages and Counter Images of 'Gypsies'/Romanies in European Cultures, pp. 226 - 246Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2004