The Gipsies; Being a Brief Account of Their History,origin, Capabilities, Manners and Customs with Suggestions for the Reformation and Conversion of the English Gipsies

London: W. Lister, 1865. First Edition. Small Octavo. ix, 178 pp. (2)pp. ads. . While the aristocrats looked down upon the Gipsies for their habits, sloviness and their frequent theft of money or property, Henry Woodcock was among the leading ministers in England who felt they should be viewed as needing the same Gospel that was aimed at all people. They devised scams of every sort such as stealing a horse and selling it to the owner's wife telling her this was an even more noble horse of the same pedigree (costing the owner 10 pounds in the process). Details their devotion to fortune-telling, instead of using banks to invest they would take their valuable acquisitions and deposit them with pawn brokers giving them security just in case inquiring officers inspected their wagons or huts. While the point of Rev. Woodcock's work was to encourage evangelizing the Gipsies, the effect for us today is to enter a glimpse into how a population of an estimated 50 to 60,000 of these outcasts lived and were viewed in Victorian England. Bound in publisher's burgundy floral embossed cloth, spine gilt lettered and with a floral gilt design, pale yellow endpapers, light wear to corners and spine ends, front inner hinge just starting. A very good copy of this scarce work with some fading or staining to cloth.