GIPSIES AND THE PLAGUE.
[To THE EDITOR 07 Till "SPECTATOR."] Srn,—I read with a certain shuddering interest the article in your issue of March 4th on the liability of gipsy camps becoming centres of plague infection in our midst. Two points, however, struck one as tending to reassurance of mind in face of the dreadful possibility. The first was that the writer's views as to the insanitary and degraded life of the nomad population are diametrically opposed to most reliable evidence given before the Royal Commission on the Moveable Dwellings Bill. The second consolatory consideration con- nects itself with the writer's view that as regards facilities for communication of disease a gipsy caravan is on a level with an insanitary cottage. Putting aside all consideration of drains as a factor in the case, it strikes one that to connect
the bifected rat-flea with the gipsy one has to get the rat into the caravan. Rats have an undeniable spirit of adventure, but they have also a strong instinct of self-preser- vation, and one can only conceive of a rat climbing up the steps into a well-populated caravan out of a spirit of pure bravado, to show that it can be done. I question whether the writer can adduce any instance of a rat visitant to a caravan either by day or night. The rat, when well up stairs, would find himself as liable to destruction and in as truly uncomfort- able a place as would the poor Romanichel, with a thousand years of wandering existence behind him, were the well- meaning philanthropist to succeed in driving him off the common that he loves into the mean street of an already overcrowded city that he hates.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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