The history is a tad convoluted but way back when the wealthy landowners in Britain turned to sheep and turned out the people from the land they'd been planting as tenants for centuries.
The action is considered one of the great crimes of history, and it's why you have so terribly many Americans who are still POd at nobles and England's landed gentry.
Fortunately for SOME, but not all, the folks who were literally tossed out of their cottages into the roads ran into several groups of REAL GYPSIES from Europe who'd just arrived.
The UK peasantry proved as clever as the Gypsies and adopted the complete Romnachal Culture, but they didn't adopt Romany ~ nor did they all become Catholics.
In later years the UK crowd began to think of it as tacky that some people should be allowed to live on the roads. They prevailed on the government to suppress this incessant wandering ~ take away their wagons, destroy their camps, force modern ways on these folks.
The luckiest Travelers got to America in early times. They proved invaluable in navigating the raw frontier and took hundreds of thousands of immigrants to new homes all over the continent. Obviously there were some Roma also involved ~ but they were better suited to more technologically advanced and wealthier neighborhoods ~ they came to dominant the repair of pots and pans (another poster noted "tinkers" who are more correctly itinerate repairmen ~ the pots and pans guys ~ Calderon ~ were also into inexpensive handmade jewelry.).
Except for a few modern Travelers finding America more welcoming, the old timers assimilated to the degree that their descendants have no idea what it was they were up to. Bill Clinton is such a person.
Wow. Thanks for the history and the info.
There were bands of “gypsies” that roamed California in the 1940s and 1950s. These were NOT Mexican migrant workers, athough they followed the crops. I remember a girl was registered at my elementary school. She was dark complected and had long, dark hair. She didn’t stay long.
Then, when I was in college and working at JC Penney, the fabric deartment got a shipment of many bolts of silk chiffon at $1 a yard. This would have been in 1956, or 1957, cotton broadcloth was 39 cents a yard, and fine wool could be purchased for less than $2 per yard.