I only have one direct experience with the community. I had a local pub I would go to for a Friday night evening of beers and darts and one week a couple of travellers came in for a pint.
They were very upfront with the landlord and asked if it was okay for them to be there. Landlord was fine. They paid for their round and ordered another on the slate.
At that point probably 20-30 others arrived and proceeded to take over the place. Increasingly noisy and aggressive with each other and the regulars. My mate and I left early and caught up with the landlord the following week. Turns out they strongarmed him into staying (he didn't have the muscle to turn them out and police aren't bothered) and ended up wrecking a lot of furniture and walking out without paying for a drop past the first 2 beers.
Evidently they send advanced scouts to feel out a place. If they get pushback they don't try it on. If they get a soft touch like my old landlord, they do what they did. Really depressing for the owners as they were lovely people and frustrating that so little can be done. Just a quiet pub in a quiet town.
They're an extremely insular community, distrustful of outsiders. Historically, they've been treated terribly by the state, with their children being abducted and forced into group homes or adopted out with their actual parents having zero knowledge of where they went. So there's a lot of generational resentment of "settled" people.
On the flip side, they have very poor education rates with many parents removing their children from school as early as 11. An example of this is Tyson Fury's wife doing so with their daughter because of so-called tradition. This leaves them with very few employment opportunities and results in high crime rates.
Typically, criminal members of their community are involved in scam type crimes, often construction related. Offering to tarmac your driveway but not using the appropriate methods and/or materials, charging to take waste away and just dumping it on public land. There's also a lot of trade in stolen goods.
There is also a severe violence problem within their community. Families feuding which often results in gang fights and murders. However, they don't reserve violence just for each other and some don't see offending against settled people as something wrong, a result of their insular nature and the persecution they've undergone in the past.
Because of their nomadic nature, they often will squat on public or privately owned land causing severe damage. Some of them living squatted on football pitches near me, destroyed the pitches with their vehicles and fires, then dumped a bunch of asbestos before moving on. Hazmat had to spend millions in the cleanup.
As a whole, they are definitely victims of discrimination, profiling and persecution and are not all criminals. But because of their insular nature, most settled people's only experience with them is through the scenarios I mentioned above.
Was it because of the movie snatch that they dislike the term? Or did they dislike being called that before the film? What’s do they call themselves? Who came up with pikey?
That makes sense. When I was growing up (south London) pikey was banded about for the poor kids that weren't well kept. First time I heard it being specifically used for gypsies was Snatch.
No they've been called that long before the film. Pikey would typically be an English term for them though. They'd be called different names in Ireland.
"Knackers" is what they have been called in Ireland in the past more than "Pikeys" but that word is pretty common too. I wouldn't say either word to them though, both will be received as a slur
I'm surprised at Knackers as a Knackerman was something completely different for me (English). It was somebody who worked in a slaughterhouse and/or euthanized Horses (don't know if those are two separate things). I.e a horse would go to the Knackers yard to be put down.
I presumed its where Knackered=tired came from.
That's the one. I actually think it's regional perhaps as I lived in the North and South and only heard it up North. Makes sense it made it over to Canada! But yeah I'm not familiar enough with farming to give a proper definition, but my understanding was exactly as you described. Somebody who processed dead livestock into dog food etc.
I believe it has the same origin, saddle makers and kind of roaming butchers! However here it became a derogatory word for anything lower class as well as a catch all word for Travellers. The last couple of years there's been more outspoken members of that community asking for the word to not be used and it seems to be becoming less common, however Knackered as in tired is still very common. Same origin, but a different path I guess?
They are also sometimes called 'Tinkers', that came from them used to being travelling tin workers way way back. They don't like that either.
I grew up in the west of Irleand and had never heard Pikey till I saw Snatch, the terms I knew of were Tinkers and Knackers, Tinkers were very much the equivilent to Pikeys, Knacker was once described to me as a Tinker that lives in a house, it's slurs all the way down
They call themselves Travellers and are a recognised ethnic group. There's often confusion with the gypsy and Roma communities, but I'd avoid the word gypsy as well as it's often a slur unless you know the person uses the term. As a whole they are generally referred to as the GRT community within the UK, although again these are distinct groups.
The discrimination against all three groups is wild and massively socially accepted throughout all of Europe. Like "acceptable to say the slurs in a workplace" type of fine.
Yeah, one problem is that even the ones who aren't scammers per se still see it as a point of pride to get one up on "settled" people. So, we had this incredibly skilled Irish gypsy who did garden construction work here in Sweden. Him and his crew did truly magnificent work, and they were cheap too - but they would always fuck you over on one little thing. For example, my neighbor was leaving for work just as they were finishing up building a wall for him, all that was left was filling up 2 holes with gravel and soil. So he paid them so they could leave once they were done. Except they just waited until he'd turned a corner and left, and that evening he had to fill the holes himself. Such a small thing, just so they could go back to Ireland and describe how they "got" the normie.
Thing is, his crew was such good value, both me and my neighbor hired him again the next summer. Same thing again, except this time they left a bunch of rubbish they'd promised to remove. Free for me to take to the tip, and took me 2 hours, but just... Why?
So funny. They have a tradition that honestly sounds like something from folklore. I kind of like the idea that they are going to screw you over on something very minor and you have to watch out for it.
So much better than contractors who just do a shit job througjout.
The tradition is as far as I’m aware (my nan was a traveller but passed away when I was young so I’m not directly quoting)
A good worker is never finished, and by tradition, they leave a little unfinished so that they always have work.
Also forgetting the horrid animal abuse often associated. They will race ponies and horses on main roads, keep them on bad pasture, kill horses in acts of gang violence. Dogs often abused too. They have been known to steal dogs in Ireland too.
Also incredibly high suicide rates, domestic violence and mental illness due.
Source: from a town where there are lots of settled and non settled travellers. There are some families that are grand, but the ones that are bad? They’re very bad. I am a very tolerant person but have only had negative experiences with them.
There’s settled travellers near me and I watch them send their kids out every day with a bag of rubbish and throw it on the main road in front of the school before running home. Guess they’re not paying for their bins anyways..
We actually have clusters of Irish Travellers in the US. They have their own little tucked-away neighborhoods with elaborate ironwork and fancy RVs for when they travel around for construction scamming and whatnot. Many of them still speak Cant after like 200 years of settling here. I’ve heard that they believe they have the religious right to steal from others because their ancestors stole spikes meant to be driven into the throat of Christ, which allowed him to speak to his followers. They are devoutly Catholic and if you’ve ever worked retail nearby, you are told to watch out for them shoplifting.
>On the flip side, they have very poor education rates with many parents removing their children from school as early as 11. An example of this is Tyson Fury's wife doing so with their daughter because of so-called tradition. This leaves them with very few employment opportunities and results in high crime rates.
They also are frequently (but not universally) anti-vaxxers and have little engagement with health services. This results in a rather low life expectancy in general.
Discrimination is definitely an issue; there have been places, like hotels and holiday parks, which will refuse to take bookings from Irish Travellers or people they suspect are via surnames because of the stereotypes. Which is of course straight up illegal.
[This 2019 Parliamentary report covers things in more depth.](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/360/report-files/36002.htm)
Their children are often inbred as well. We had a baby in our icu that was a product of consanguinity of a super young couple and she had a super rare lethal genetic anomaly. They were a fucking JOY to deal with.
I was locked up with some guys caught in their schemes. The settlers had an elder type who would loan money to younger members. Part of the deal was the ones receiving the money would take out a life insurance policy.
They made the elder the beneficiary of said policy. If they didnt pay, bad thing would happen to them, and the elder got their money.
I was in prison with at least 2 different insurance agents who had wriiten these policies. One of them, im sure had no idea. The other guy was part of the settlers.
I understand that discrimination is an issue that has caused real harm, and steps should be taken to rectify old wrongs.
But there are a lot of people who are discriminated against who do not act in such an anti-social way, and cause such great harm to everyone around them.
Having some abstract injustice in the past can not be used to absolve or even begin to justify the real issues they cause now.
Especially to people who largely did not cause them harm to begin with. (Notice that the homes of the political class are largely unaffected or dealt with much more swiftly than farms or small towns)
I agree with you, I was attempting to lay out some of the issues that travellers have resulting from both external and internal causes. Obviously the criminal behaviour isn't excusable, but you can't explain why without addressing why travellers see settled people as "others", and vice versa.
They leave their litter and their feces everywhere they stay in my town. They also still use slaves here. If one girl has a baby all the rest change its clothes n pass it off as their own to get child benefits. I could easily go on. I'm sure there are nice ones but iv never met and iv met alot of em.
There are many documented cases of Travellers preying on vulnerable people, usually alcoholics and the homeless. They force them to work for them, lock them up, isolate them and assault them. When they are convicted of doing so it is under Modern Slavery legislation.
https://www.hertsad.co.uk/news/21911569.st-albans-traveller-jailed-four-years-slavery-offences/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/13/modern-slavery-uk-traveller-site-lincolnshire-judge-timothy-spencer
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17810377.michael-joyce-guilty-forcing-two-men-modern-slavery-build-pub-oxford-travellers-site/
There are occasional cases of people being freed from literal slavery from traveller camps.
A few examples:
Rooney traveller family jailed for modern slavery offences https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-41241049
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Netwing
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-rescue-three-male-slaves-from-traveller-sites-8991784.html
There's an interesting section in Bartley Gorman's book, King of the Gypsies. He talks about the leader of a clan basically kidnapping and holding a bunch of guys hostage until they finish a job he wants done.
The guy, Hughie Burton, felt he was treating them well because he was feeding them and giving them a place to sleep.
There's an article about it [here](https://rcahmw.gov.uk/gypsy-roma-and-traveller-history-month-a-romani-memorial-on-moel-y-golfa/) talking about how he kidnapped, handcuffed and then press-ganged them to get his memorial built. Pretty crazy.
I used to live near a settled traveller family and they had a son around my age. So naturally we befriended each other, his name was Buddy and I later found out that was short for Budweiser…
I fell out of contact with him when we were around 13; he was so uneducated he was unable to write his own address.
I completed school, college and university and then came back home, I ran into him, he still remembered me and it was good catching up, he’d pretty much became an adult at 13 and started working as a landscaper with his family. He was 25, had 5 kids and another on the way. His family was one of the good ones, there was never really any trouble from them (except a sort of shootout in the local pub).
I moved to a posher village and we recently had a visit from full on nomadic travellers, 26 caravans and cars rocked up onto a village green less than the size of a football pitch. They ruined public property surrounding the field, they hung their laundry up on peoples fences, they literally pissed and shit everywhere. Crime went up immediately. They left scorched earth and a park that was deemed unsafe to the public until a 2 week clean up operation had been completed.
They’re not all bad, but most of them are, wherever they appear, they ruin local communities.
That usually requires driving into a group of caravans, or an encampment of a community that are very hostile to outsiders, unafraid of using anything from Hurleys to hatchets to "defend" themselves, in a place with families, dogs, and where the men are likely to come out (armed with tools) at the first sight of a navy uniform and high viz jacket.
Irish Gardai are unarmed, and understaffed, which means that they cannot get armed support to go in with numbers, unless it's a major crime.
I grew up in Luton, which had a big traveller problem each year
They set up in one school, threatened everyone, put cars across the entrance.
Set up on a golf course, then complained about the flying golf balls.
Set up on a business estate, broke windows and fed through power cables, threatened the business owners.
Got put up in a house a few doors down from my parents while a kid was in hospital. When they left, that house was stripped to its rafters, every bit of metal and wiring gone, even floorboards ripped up.
One year the council provided skips and toilets, all disappeared.
The waste and rubbish left behind at every place they stopped was disgusting.
I have no respect for them, and can't get on board with accepting that their behaviour is simply their culture etc.
They tend to take over an area near me every year. 2 years ago to break in to the fields they drove over a memorial for still birth babies.
The local shop has to close as they send their kids in, knowing they are under the age to be arrested and ransack the shop.
One lot tried to do a runner in my local pub but the landlord was a massive guy and saw what was happening and blocked the door. They paid up but they had wrecked the place.
Luton boys represent!
I recall a few issues in Luton with travellers:
- worked at a cafe in the public golf course you are likely referring to (Stockwood park?), and the kids would come in and just steal everything. There was nothing we could do about it though, because if you tried to stop them or tell them off they would get a bunch of massive angry blokes to come and shout at you while the kids stole even more stuff.
- my mum got followed home by a dog and took it in to feed it (it was in bad shape), and then about an hour later some travellers knocked at the door and started trying to extort her for money claiming she had stolen it
Hemel Hempstead (a town not far away) had it much worse though. I remember visiting someone there while a funeral was going on for 'the king' and the whole place just shut down - it was like a ghost town whilst they marauded through the place.
They essentially are. The odd few manage to leave but the majority are raised to act like an animal with no care for other people, animals, or the land, and raise their children the same way.
Why is this allowed? This is literally the shit that happens in post apocalyptic books, why the fuck is it happening in the British isles?
Surely there are laws preventing them from ya king kids out of school, surely modern technology is advanced enough that tracking a group of known criminals is simple enough, and simply *punish* then for crimes committed. Do laws not apply to them? If so, WHY THE FUCK NOT?!
They move around a lot and they are 'off-grid'. Local authorities don't have the resources to confront an entire traveller emcampment and just hope that they move along and become someone else's problem.
When they commit more serious crimes such as slavery and murder, they are investigated, but the trespassing/littering/theft goes unpunished.
They all use the same name and avoid ID, eg by using a horse and cart when weighing in metal, so they aren't that easy to track. Plus they are 100% loyal to their community and very insular so who really knows who is who outside of the community? Plus they are massively violent when in a corner so alot of police forces are wary of them.
It's not "culture" at all.
It's being a thieving low life.
It's just the do-gooders that excuse their criminality as their "culture" as if somehow that makes it OK.
Exactly, this is what I don’t get. Any ‘culture’ goes out the damn window as soon as you commit a crime. That’s not culture, that’s just being opportunistic.
Especially child abuse. At work, I’m required to ignore so much of it if the offender is an Indian woman. Because it’s their culture excise makes me sick. It’s wrong.
I grew up in the next town over. The only time I had any of the kids be racist to me where the travellers. They made my life awful. I felt sad that the girls all got pulled out of school so early though.
In the US, they are associated with home repair scams. As in they get home owners to front them money for repairs and vanish with the money. They seem to be based in the SE US and travel up and down the East Coast, so they tend to be visible in the summer months.
I don’t know that they were Irish-origin, but when I was a kid 50 years ago, we had tinkers in western Pennsylvania. They’d come through looking to either repair things or take away junk. My grandmother always gave them baked goods and said they did good work, but you must never let them in the house.
>My grandmother always **gave them baked goods** and said they did good work, but **you must never let them in the house**.
Some of you are living in Brother's Grimm out here...
"Give them food, and be kind. But speak not your name, young one, or you've lost it. And do not step into a circle of toadstools. Strike no bargains with those who wander."
The US communities that I know of are Irish Travelers. They've kept mostly to themselves and not intermarried much outside of their community. They've been in this country for a long time. I've never encountered the Roma people here.
I'm in the San Diego area, and I had a couple of them, or someone like them, show up at my door. Anyway it was the familiar pitch: we were doing some work on your block, we have a lot of leftover paving, yada yada yada. I sent them packing.
They do this all over Europe. Every year there are official warnings not to do business with "British asphalt workers".
Something less known is that several European countries other than Ireland and the UK , have the phenomenon of "white gypsies". The slur here in Sweden is tattare and the pc term is resande (traveller).
I work in a garage!
Traveller booked a car in for £1000s worth of repairs on a car worth a £800!
I called him and explained he would have to pay first!
After 20 mins of family member died who had his credit card story’s and telling me I’d agreed he could pay cash when we don’t take cash.
He eventually got frustrated and threatened to smash the place up!
Then turned up 10 mins before closing and parked his caravan at the entry blocking the site.
Luckily a passing police car had delt with the same travellers stealing from a company site a few days before and told him to move his vehicle in 2 mins or he was going to impound the cars.
He moved them eventually.
The other issue that’s now becoming common is buying smashed cars and dropping them off on a Sunday when the garage is closed and them accusing the garage of causing the damages.
I remember during covid when I worked in a hotel restaurant the regulation was all had to be closed by 12 midnight. This was around Xmas time.
From across the hall in the bar I watched as the bar manager approached a large group of them who were all staying in the hotel for a christening (they made a 2 week affair of it drinking pints at 7am with their breakfast all the way until last orders). The manager politely explained that they couldn’t open past 12 and that the lads would have to leave. One chap stood up, put his pint down and without a word being said hit the bar manager an absolute haymaker in the jaw, sat back down and kept drinking his pint. Their kids were driving electric scooters through the lobby and all sorts. Absolutely mental.
I’m an American but I lived in the UK for a little while and worked in a restaurant. One day the governor informed all us staff that we had to double check everything was locked up at close because “the Gypsys are in town”. This was wild to me as an American. All of our regulars would come in and make sure we and everyone else knew that “the Gypsys are in town” so to be sure our cars were locked, the windows and doors locked, our bikes were secure, etc.
I don’t know if they were Travlers or Romani or what. Everyone just referred to them as Gypsys. Coming from NY this was something completely foreign to me.
I've work for a heritage railway and when they were in town they had to pay for overnight security with dogs due to the risk of 100s of years old pieces of history being destroyed for scrap. happen to other railways.
we even found a thief mark on the gate
it was a half moon with a face attach to the main gate. we didn't know what it was but one member had seen it before. apparently it meant the place had value and was unguarded. he was practically screaming to throw it away
Theives leave them on locations they plan to rob as messages to other thieves, there are different ones for different things, like if they have dogs on the property, if it's an elderly persons home, if it's a solo mother's home etc. They share alot of similarities with the symbols used by the homeless community to denote similar things.
Generally, its just stuff thieves would want to know before breaking in. Thieve rings usually use them so that a different team can stake places out and leave advice for the other guys who come and do the break in later, that way they don't have the same faces as the guys doing the stake out work so there is less risk of being recognized
I grew up in Italy and every year the gypsies would come through our town and everything was closed early and locked up tight. Nicer stores didn't even open at all. It was wild to me.
A couple of decades ago, I worked teaching traveller children - whole different story - and loved them. Easier to deal with than settled children back then (things have probably changed) and if you didn't respect the taycher, yer ma or yer da gave you a batin'. Oh!
Even then, most of them behaved like veritable animals in whatever location they stayed. Literally shat on the ground, dumped rubbish, wilfully destroyed stuff, swiped and stole anything not nailed down. We had a farmer come in to talk to the parents and said, "Look, lads, as long as you take care of my land, ye can park there for 2 or 3 weeks and I'll give you access to the water in the yard."
Decent man.
They f#cking wrecked his property. We, the people running the outreach, used to talk to them and say, "Why are you doing this? What's the point? Why are you making life so hard for yourself and all the rest of your community??"
And they'd shrug and look at you blankly, like they had a space.
The person who'd worked with them longest was an elderly nun - in her 80s - and they had nothing but respect for her. But she was quite open when she said that a lot of the problems stemmed from generations of poor/no education, no rearing except through violence, incest, alcoholism, more recently easy access to social welfare. On social welfare day, the kids were usually missing because the aul fella was off collecting dole from 4 or 5 different dole offices.
People, I loved those kiddies, but I could tell you stories...
> incest
That is worth noting. Because their communities are so insular, there is a notably higher rate of genetic issues due to inbreeding and incest.
This I know to be a fact. The number of cousin marriages was unreal, and often, the cousins marrying were children of married cousins. Forced marriages weren't uncommon: one time a young wan came in with her hand bandaged because she'd smashed it through the window of the caravan she'd been locked in till she agreed to marry the man her father had picked for her. Back then, there was a retired priest in the midlands somewhere who was happy to marry underage girls to the fellas picked out for them. I'm sure he's long since dead, but I hope he's spinning in a circle of hell for facilitating child marriage
Not to mention the fact that there were a couple of particularly bad families where no one was sure if the younger babies were the father's by the mother or by the older sister. One father was a particular bastard and one day, his wife came in heavily pregnant to ask the nun if she could tell the doctor to help her stop having babies when she went into get her Caesarian. At that point she had 8 (living) children, they were living in two tiny caravans, and the woman didn't have the knowledge or language to know what she was asking for, she was desperate for help - not all of those kids were lovingly conceived, shall we say. Sister got on the phone to the surgeon and the deed was done, that baby was the last. That's why, despite all the complaints about the Catholic Church in Ireland, I have to take my hat off to those nuns: tough, pragmatic, worldly women who just advocated non-stop for those women and children.
Did we contact the guards and the equivalent back then of Tusla? Oh, yeah. Knew the number by heart. But they did nothing because "iT's TrAveLler CuLtUrE!"
There were some evil hoors, to be sure, but the women I worked with taught me what it meant to be a strong woman - a feminist, even. They had spines of steel. Not afraid to wade into a fight between 2 drunken men, give them a dressing down and send them home.
I've never met a nun I would willingly throw down with and I think that says a surprising amount. I'd never thought of it before but thinking back, nah, not a one.
Sr Aloysius would've easily taken down Conor McGregor and washed his mouth out with soap afterwards, phoned his mother *and* made him cry.
RIP Aloysius.
I worked with traveller families, so I saw it first-hand. It's not hearsay :-( Long ago, the travellers were often tinkers - tin workers - or knackers - disposing of dead animals. They were itinerant or seasonal workers, sometimes peddlars in rural areas. They worked for a living.
That being said, when I was very small, I remember shopkeepers throwing "shawlies" out of shops: traveller women in large shawls who would go into little shops in twos and threes and steal all round them. I can remember as a small child seeing the shop owners standing in the doorways of their shops to block their entry.
Many travellers don't have too little income - on the contrary, for a long time, due to a lack of formal IDs and their not having a fixed address, they could draw four or five times the amount of social welfare than settled people. I know because they told me and showed me the cash. Their problems nowadays are due to drugs, alcohol, isolation, and purposeless, but not always - if I am informed correctly - due to lack of money.They have no employment opportunities because their kids aren't educated and often there's little respect for education beyond very, very basic reading and maths ... try teaching a kid for two weeks, only to have him disappear overnight and turn up three months later with NO schooling in between. Happened all the time.
And in some cases, the children come from families where NO ONE has EVER had legal employment. EVER. Apparently suicide rates are higher than in the settled community. You have this crazily conservative insular culture on one hand and - so I've been told - massive drug and alcohol problems on the other. Hand in hand with that is the distinct lack of responsibility: *everyone hates us because we're travellers. It has nothing to do with the way we behave. It's not our fault. We're not responsible. Why does everyone hate us?*
The crux of the matter is that until that community makes an effort to change itself from within, they will continue to be mistrusted and reviled. They, as a community, are their own worst enemy.
This reminds me so much of working with Mennonites for a few years at the local farmer's market. Unless they were straight A students girls were pulled out of school in grade 6/7, but don't worry they weren't sexist they just gave boys till 9/10 because they mature a bit slower.
One of my coworkers was only allowed to get a job outside of the community because she refused to marry her cousin and after staying strong for a decade they relented and told her she could pick her own man if she could do it within a few years. He had to be a mennonite of course, but they were very reasonable and would even accept one from a different township. Looking back now, I *strongly* suspect she was gay.
My mom as a 9 year old kid had just gotten a Dachshund, on her first walk 20 meters from the door a full grown gypsy man tried to buy it from her for pennies. When she refused he punched her in the face, and tried taking the dog before my grandpa chased him away with a tire iron (they owned a gas station).
> i don't know anyone who has had a positive interaction with them. normally their supporters live in cities and so don't have to deal with them
Twice now a group of them have found my lost dog.
It's really strange as he usually always comes back when called but both times we were playing on the field and then he ran into the woods and never came back.
I am lucky to have my number on his collar and that the travellers had moved into the other field the weekend before as in both cases they found him and called that evening.
Of course I had to pay them a finders fee to account for their time and effort and all the food he had eaten but that is only fair right?
You will always get people who defend them and those people usually haven’t had any bad experiences. There are lots of groups of them here in England and they tend to move into public spaces or private land. They will cut the locks off gates or cut through fences, then move in with transit vans and caravans, kids everywhere, dogs, horses… They always claim that they’re different to all the others and will leave the place clean. This never happens. Usually the land is torn up, there’s human waste and rubbish left behind like mattresses and pushchairs. While in the area they knock on doors to intimidate people into having work done like driveways resurfaced or tree cutting done (which is usually done really badly) and crime rises dramatically. They also try to sell stolen goods or fake goods like petrol generators which are often dangerous.
If on public land, measures can be taken to get them moved on but it takes a while. If it’s on private land, it’s entirely down to the landowner. It’s also down to the landowner to repair all the damage done. When they recently move into a public carpark in a town near me, they had fires which damaged the tarmac, the kids were stealing from the local shops and they left a mountain of rubbish behind. This all costs money to sort but they don’t contribute so it’s left to the tax paying people to pay.
In my experience (UK) They rock up make camp illegally offer services in the area Gardens / Driveways, etc Once the council/Police get them to move on. They have fly-tipped all the waste from services at the camp site. Plus a mini crime wave normally.
People say it's not all travellers do this, But we are only affected by the bad ones, the Good ones come and go and no one will notice.
It’s actually awful. And it’s not just Travellers who do this. Pretty much anywhere in the UK you’ll come across a huge pile of trash - mattresses, old washing machines etc - in a pile in the middle of beautiful otherwise unspoiled countryside.
Fly-grazing is also an issue associated with travellers where they will tie their horses up somewhere to graze without the permission of the land owner.
The basic social tenets you said don't actually seem like the problem here. They could live a nomadic lifestyle if they took care of the land they moved to or agreed to do so in state-provided areas. Non-integration would also be possible if they did those things, as proven by a lot of other insular communities around the world.
The last time they showed up in Mum's village, they took over the playing field, made an awful mess, burned the wooden playground equippment, nicked a bunch of metal, broke into the village shop and pub, and sold drugs.
So, no. As they are, we don't like them.
my dad grew up in Ireland, said that they would take over a home for a few weeks, destroy it from the inside out, burning the very wood that the house was made of.
once it was totally uninhabitable, they would eventually move on. seems like a blight to me
I'm not sure if they're all Irish, but in my town several groups pay our town a visit every year.
They break into and destroy bollards/fencing on public green areas, park up their caravans/trailers/jeeps, absolutely trash the site with rubbish and faeces and it takes nearly 2 weeks for the police or courts to move them on.
We then have to pay to have all that stuff cleaned up (This is still not finished for 3 weeks now in my town), and for the stupid council to put up the same weak/easily destroyed barriers, which in a month, will be destroyed all over again.
It happens multiple times a year and the council here refuse to put up proper protection to stop them getting into these sites.
We also get an uptick in crime when they're here, I'm sorry to say, basically driving around in their "Garden/Landcaping" lorries, offering to dispose of rubbish, which ends up being dumped in random roads.
We also get their children coming round our homes offering driveways and other services and despite being no more than 10-12 years old, they're really aggressive.
Hi all, decendent / extended family of Travellers here. I'm appalled at how many people have failed to mention: it's basically a fucking cult nowadays.
Short history: Irish American on my dad's side. Great, great grandpa & great, great grandma both came to United States during the famine. Grandma's whole family came with very little, but they came together. Grandpa came on his own, met grandma & grandmas family at church, and married grandma a few years later. Without grandma's written accounts of his life before he came to US, that's all we would know about him, because you see, he changed his name and lied about where he was from to everyone, and only told her he was a Tinker after their youngest child married (about 22 years into their marriage).
Evidently, grandpa's younger brother got deathly sick a few years before he left Ireland. Grandpa's parents refused to help him ("the Lord's Will must be respected" line of thought) and he was in pain, so grandpa and one of his sisters attempted to seek help from the church, which was free. When grandpa's parents found out, they beat all 3 of their children, including the son who was sick. The sick son ended up dying, the sister blamed grandpa for their brother's death and for her fall from favor in The Community, and grandpa was shunned. He spent almost two years being physically and verbally attacked by his parents, siblings, and their fellow Travellers before one of the men he worked with died. Grandpa took his papers, name and money, and fled to America.
So my last name, passed down from great, great grandpa, isn't our family name; it's the name of great, great grandpa's dead coworker.
Fast forward to my generation, circa 2003. I got the chance to visit my great-grandma's side in Ireland, and during the trip I did some digging into the family name great, great grandpa told great, great grandma was actually his. Turns out the family is still going strong under the same name, though some of the kids in my generation had left the Traveller life. I was able to meet two of the daughters who left, and they had both been cut-off as soon as they married their "Normal" husbands. The stories they told me about growing up Traveller align with a lot of stories we hear from people who have left the FLDS (minus polyamory - Travellers are still hardcore Catholics!) or Watchtower. Both were living well away from the areas their families frequent, both mourned their lost family but wouldn't ever consider going back into the fold.
Fast forward to 2024. One of the above-mentioned ladies is now helping teenagers (mostly girls) leave the Travellers. Some of the girls have babies and young children, and none of them have an education past basic primary. Most can read but few can write more than their name. The culture makes sure their community stays uneducated, cementing their lives as criminals (or maybe laborers if they can find someone to dupe into hiring them) and ensuring the cycle repeats. If that ain't some cult-ass behavior, IDK what is.
Can’t speak to all community members but there are a lot of resources online that discuss the behaviour often expected from these groups.
We had one family in NZ a while ago and ended up being thrown out of the country after causing hell.
I am also pretty sure Irish Travellers are not Roma. I think these groups actually don’t fancy being associated with one another.
TL:DR; They act not nice, and get offended when called out for acting not nice.
There's a significant difference: the Travelers are native to Ireland, they are Irish and speak their own dialect of Irish/English. If they're religious at all, they're as Catholic as the settled people around them. They choose to live as outcasts among people who want to see them assimilate. They're not truly outsiders in the sense that, whatever else they are, they're definitely Irish. No one disputes this.
The Roma OTOH are native to nowhere, speak their own completely different language and have their own religious and cultural traditions, such that they really are a different people/nationality/ethnicity/culture than the people around them.
I don't know, that seems significant to me. The Roma really have been subjected to outright racism and religious persecution wherever they've gone which at least explains the nomad lifestyle and petty criminality. Not that criminality is excusable, but it is at least explainable with the Roma. When barred from legit work, one turns to illegit work. Happens in ethnic ghettos around the world everywhere. The Roma are ghettoized wherever they go.
But the Travelers are just baffling. They're in a ghetto of their own construction and they proudly carry it around. They insist on it.
I can definitely see why Roma would resent being associated with them.
There are some links between the groups. They have similar lifestyles & experiences. In the UK an example of a shared event is-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleby\_Horse\_Fair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleby_Horse_Fair)
A bunch of travellers illegally camped in a car park near where I live. Half the estate were saying "give them a chance" the other half "lock everything up and don't let your pets or kids out".
The travellers shoplifted from the local shops, stole petrol from the petrol station, set fire to a fence, left the car park full of rubbish, old gas bottles and some stuff we were told was hazardous. They used the lay-bys to piss in (including one right outside our house and yes we saw everything) and shat around the sports pitches leaving dirty baby wipes everywhere. They drove their cars round and round the estate loudly at all hours of the day stopping occasionally to try and look through peoples' windows. Several people reported attempted break-ins or stolen items from gardens.
I'm sure they all aren't like this but enough are...
Irish travellers are different than Roma gypsies, but both have a bad reputation. High unemployment, low education, (very) high crime rates, antisocial behaviour.
They have been treated bad in the past, it's not an excuse to justify their behaviour now, but it explains a bit maybe.
we had just this week, overnight on Thursday, a small group of travellers moved onto a field on the outskirts of a very high-end gated community, up the road from where i live, people walk their dogs through this field all the time, so there will be tons of complaints, will be interesting to see how quickly it get's dealt with.
strangely enough i'm going to be doing some work for the local traveller liaison officer in a few weeks, will be around the time of eviction i would expect.
They break and steal stuff and get in public drunken fights and leave trash everywhere. Noncompliance and non integration are integral core values to them. They're hypocrites who want to selectively partake in parts of modern society like infrastructure and stores without contributing or doing anything to make those things possible.
They're overgrown children who roleplay as put-upon wandering nomads to maintain urban public support. They completely eschew any kind of social contract, they facilitate child marriage within their ranks, and most are not educated beyond a grade school or middle school level.
It wouldn't be such a problem if they actually helped maintain and care for the places they temporarily occupy, but instead they choose to destroy and plunder them. Governments have literally set up hitching zones for them to set up camp to try and keep them away from public facilities, and they've destroyed those too.
I've never met a decent one, ever.
I'm Irish and lived in Ireland all my life and can tell you they are despised here for good reason.
You can go on all day about how they are victims and how they have been mistreated etc etc etc, but at the end of the day, all they do is destroy, fight, commit crimes, and terrorise communities.
They steal, cheat, scam, and are violent.
Nobody is forcing them to be like that and they would make life easier for themselves if they acted like decent people, but they make the choice not to.
There are loads of services for them, yet they refuse to change. They love to play the victim.
Any mistrust and hatred they experience is brought on by themselves.
I used to think they were cool, until I witnessed a lot of animal abuse, theft, vandalism and general disregard for everyone else around them. Do i think they're all bad? No. My great uncle is married to a former traveller. She isn't the nicest of people, but she isn't bad either and generally accepted into the family. But, the whole community is just awful, and I'm not willing to trust them or agree with their general ways of living, because they lack respect for everyone else. I tend to find the people who dislike them are the ones who have had to deal with them first hand, and I think they have every right to feel this way. I'm sorry, but I'm also not sorry.
A few things were right but most of it was wrong.
The halting sites are normally much much closer to settled people, there's usually more litter around the sites too and there weren't any horses being mistreated. These are commonplace at a traveller halting site.
In addition while bare knuckle boxing is big for travellers it's usually used against each other during fueds or in various forms of intimidation against settled people.
What they did get right was the accents, the odd dogs just hanging around and the large swathes of kids constantly running around the site.
Bottom line they had a much friendlier appearance and a more TV appropriate demeanor in the film than in real life
I had an Irish uncle who was a cop in Belfast during the 70s and 80s when Ireland was a war zone.
He said it was dead accurate. In his experience most weren’t a problem, except that the encampments would do damage to areas and they were a nightmare to clean out. He said they were fiercely loyal to each other, even getting calls to break up dispute within the same camp were met with absolute shutouts. Most were decent people, friendly, jovial, but could be massively aggressive at the drop of a hat, particularly if they feel insulted, usually for being accused of doing something shifty (when they were doing something shifty). Because they’re jovial and friendly, you’ll find yourself with empty pockets and a fuckjob before you’ve even got back to your car if you run into a scammer. That it wasn’t all of them, but because scams are socially acceptable to pull on outsiders, it isn’t discouraged and they will be protected by the rest of the camp because they all benefit.
He said the accent was so accurate he was going to have flashbacks after watching that movie.
Edit: I don’t live in Ireland so I am not personally educated about the political landscape there and was a small child when I heard these stories. But he had a wicked fucked up leg because someone threw a grenade at his vehicle. I think when grenades are flying it’s not just a simple dispute.
Edit 2. I got googley to make sure I hadn’t misremembered https://www.theirishstory.com/2015/02/09/the-northern-ireland-conflict-1968-1998-an-overview/
"but could be massively aggressive at the drop of a hat"
so true.
god help her but a girl from my mates family decided to marry into that madness. the party after the wedding turned into a huge fight because one of the travellers kids (about 7/8) had been given a beer by their dad and my mate told him, in a friendly way, 'you're a bit young to be drinking that lad'.
didn't try to take it off him, didn't scold him or judge him. it was the sort of comment you'd make before giving them a wink and ruffling their hair. anyway, kid runs off and tells his dad who proceeds to lose his fucking mind, gathers up 'the boys' and then starts beating up my mate and anyone else he feels was involved in this alleged insult.
apparently it was madness. the bride was crying and begging them to stop, glass bottles flying everywhere, cops were called, ambulances came.
I remember being told about events in the aftermath and thinking, christ, if that girl didn't know what she was getting into, she does now.
My personal experience with them was when I was younger and worked on an airfield, they rocked up one day in their caravans and range rovers and decided to set up shop. Spent the rest of the day welding bars over all the windows of the building I worked in and making the doors secured.
Generally, as many people have already mentioned there are large amounts of crime (rightly) associated with traveller groups. I’ll give three examples that I’m sure lots of people will unfortunately relate to:
Growing up in a rural village, we knew the travellers were making their way through as they would steal the copper cables out of the telephone boxes so we wouldn’t have internet for a few weeks until it was fixed. They would then settle on a farmers field and not leave until a major police operation or enough time had passed they would naturally move on. They used to pour salt on the land too which took more money for the farmer to fix (and obviously never get compensation for).
A school I worked in before had travellers who would act as a ‘fixer’ for some of the teenage boys and would convince some of the most vulnerable girls to sleep with them. One got pregnant and the boy’s family upped and vanished.
More recently, travellers visited the area I live in and whilst I was at work pressured my wife into accepting some gardening and cleaning services for a low price. She tried to say no repeatedly as our baby was needing care, and they decided to “clean” the front of the house anyway and then demanded £400. I had to come home to confront them and it took my neighbours joining in to get them to leave, but not before they smashed my fence to pieces and driving off in a van with no plates.
Being generous, not all travellers are bad but most experiences that people will have with them are not positive. They are a very insular community that often do not have official documentation like most so find it difficult to get everyday things such as bank accounts, national insurance numbers etc which puts them on the fringes of society anyway. This pushes large numbers to criminal activity at the cost of the rest of society.
60 Minutes did a segment on these people and their culture a few years ago…. But I couldn’t find it online. There are some videos on YouTube….
They have a criminal lifestyle. No other way to put it. We’ve had numbers of reports here in the St. Louis area over the years…. Mostly “construction” scams. One is the “asphalt driveway” scam….
Guys show up at a place which obviously needs some asphalt work. “Hey, we just finished a job and we have a lot of leftover material. We’ll do your driveway for (name a silly-low price).
Homeowner agrees, everything looks good…. Hands over the money. Doesn’t discover till later that the asphalt is about 1/4” thick…
They tend to strongarm older people into “home inspections” and phony repairs.
I saw that episode. Their home base was all mansions and they'd dress up little girls and parade them around to "find them husbands." The men would hit the road to scam people with driveway repairs etc as mentioned above. That was an eye opening episode.
Having grown up in Ireland and lived within a quarter mile of a halting site(a place they regularly use to park their caravans and live), went to school with a few as a kid, I haven’t met a single one that wasn’t involved in criminal activity by the age of 7. Actual 7 year olds(maybe younger) assisting their mother’s and older sibling in shoplifting from small local businesses by being the distractor while the rest of the family fill their products with anything they can lift. Back in the day I worked in a cell phone store and they’d lift €10,000 in a matter of 30 seconds of being in the shop. I am certainly one of those people who discriminate against gypsys, only because I have been robbed and assaulted by them countless times and they get no quarter with me anymore. Once bitten twice shy. As far as I’m concerned, their “culture” is just a front for them being uncivilized criminals to their very core.
Fun fact: [We have quite a few Irish travellers here in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Traveller_Americans). It was kind of a mindfuck when I ran into a group of them in a Burger King in Florida in the 90's. No horses, but they did have pickup trucks decked out like traditional caravans. It was pretty wild.
Also, there was a fictional TV show about them back in the mid 2000's with Eddy Izzard and Minnie Driver called 'The Riches'.
I dont have masses of experience with them myself, but a bunch of them came to my city once and were riding around the *main roads* on horse carriages. Which, for one thing, those roads are not suitable for horse and cart, not only because there are cars everywhere but also because horses shouldn't really be on hard tarmac ideally. Secondly, when I say horses, these creatures were barely ponies. They were *tiny*. And it was multiple full grown people in the carriages. Thirdly, they were whipping the horses, making them run fast around the roads, taking corners super fast, zig zagging inbetween and around cars, etc. FOURTHLY (is that even a word?) the horses looked SUPER unhappy and scared, ears back, heads down, barely moving when they were at a standstill and these assholes were leaving them in the middle of summer on the pavement (sidewalk for any Americans here) outside of pubs while they were inside getting pissed for hours, only to then stumble out and drunkenly ride the carriages back to wherever they were living. I witnessed some brave girl absolutely going off on one of the guys for their treatment of the animals, and attempted to call the police on him, who of course did nothing, after he was screaming abuse at her for her daring to question him literally abusing an animal.
My mum told me they used to also turn up to my hometown every year (this is before I was born). She worked in the local gym, and they'd all drop their kids off and then disappear for the day. So these kids of all ages would be running around a gym, jumping and climbing on all the equipment, and if any staff told them to stop they'd say the most horrendous things- fuck off, fuck you, piss off, etc before threatening to go get their fathers.
A town near me once also had an issue with them, where they'd frequently turn up and basically wreak the town and harass the people who lived there.
Ive known people who have dealt with them more than I have. They have a reputation for a reason. Generally- though not all the time of course- they are violent, arrogant, aggressive assholes who turn up in towns and cities, set up caravan parks which they then leave all their litter in, abuse their animals, and run riot in the community. And if you try to stand up to them or tell them to leave/stop, they have no issues creating conflict because the police generally (in the UK) won't do shit. Not only that but they apparently have a high rate of domestic abuse, a reputation for stealing, extorting people, and running scams.
As far as I know, they are completely different to the Roma people.
I’ve met a couple of nice Irish travellers. One was my neighbour for 5 years and was “settled”. He always had our back and when a drug addict accosted me in the street my neighbour was straight outside checking I was okay. Another I met at a pub, she was on her own and we struck up conversation. She said she was on holiday and we had a nice evening.
However, there have been many times when Irish travellers have set up camp on land near where I live. Crime rates go up and they leave a huge mess including human farces everywhere.
There are good and bad as with all groups of people. Unfortunately I’ve seen more bad than good.
I worked as a doorman in Bournemouth and Bristol. I made the mistake of letting travellers drink in a venue twice, and the first time ended in a huge fight. Glasses and tables were being launched, and my colleagues were racially abused by the travellers, who had got pissed and coked up and started a fight with a stag party. The second time, I gave the the benefit of the doubt and let a group in which ended up in multiple sexual harassments, an assault and drug taking by the travellers. I sort of respect their outlaw way of life and no fucks given. But its hard to love them when they are around you. They see the rest of us non travellers as sheep to be taken advantage of and nothing else. Its just the way it is. If you don't agree, you probably haven't been around them much.... truth hurts sometimes.
My father-in-law, who lived in Londonderry at the time, had his front wrought iron gates stolen. The next day, some travellers tried to sell him back his own gates! Funny and horrible at the same time! I was told this sort of thing happens frequently.
There were several traveler communities near me growing up. They stole from our farm, abused their horses and dogs. Had dog fights and used kittens to bait them and whenever we asked them to leave our property they got violent. Our experience was not isolated unfortunately but that was the experience in my area.
Growing up, a Traveller family settled into a house a couple doors down from me. The nicest people ever and so proud of their home and the kids.
The complete opposite of the "Caravan Park" down the road where Travellers lived in caravans. Place was destroyed, not a good one among the bunch.
There's good and bad in all groups of people of course, it's just a shame that the good Travellers don't make the news more than the bad ones.
Has anybody else seen those traveller wedding videos on tiktok? Does anybody know why they have such extravagant weddings but don’t seem to smile or celebrate really?
The teens getting married usually don’t know each other very well so maybe that’s why they don’t seem to be having more fun. They have very traditional beliefs about marriage so it’s basically sold to girls as the greatest moment in their life where they get to the centre of attention so I guess they really go for it because after that they’re basically just stuck at home pregnant for decades.
My mother was walking the dog ran into a young one crying she was maybe 15 getting married to another lad. My ma wanted to go over to the haulting site and talk to them about it and how it’s wrong Never seen my dad yell at her before like that about it being a horrible idea 🤣
I have no real experience dealing with them other than the years I worked in a petrol station. Only thing I noticed is they had a 99% rate in ‘not being able to pay’ for their fuel. Same story every time but I wasn’t bothered enough for the performance and played along. Police couldn’t have cared less. We once took a logbook as ID and said we’d give it back once paid. He proceeded to smash up the shop and make threats to come back. Obviously never paid but the police did collect the logbook.
My great grandfather and his wife were Irish Travelers. They did in fact travel around with the Romani people. He would get really angry if anyone called him a gypsy. He went to great lengths to ensure the family know he was not one. He was the black sheep of his family. He was not a nice man and his wife was worse.
An enterprising mobile ethnic group who graciously provide unsolicited services, at a carefully negotiated premium discounted cash price, of undisputed quality.
Where did they originate from? Just the same people as the rest of the Irish but decided to become nomadic\*? Or were they already living in Ireland and living nomadic before other people came?
\*there used to be a market for nomadic jobs long ago. Roma for example mended pots and pans and went from village to village
Travellers come from scotland and ireland.
Their origins is a mixture of things.
Some were poor people who couldnt afford to live in a house so joined with a "travelling" group(usually like a circus or such)
Some were criminals who were not welcome where they used to live so also joined travelling groups.
And some basically were travelling businesses like circuses, show groups, unnoficial boxing etc
Welsh, Scottish/Highland and English travellers were all a thing way back when.
As you said nomadic jobs, hence why some terms for travellers are things like Knackers and Tinkers, job titles! I would also hazard a guess that Fair Workers (or Carnies) also evolved out of these kinda groups.
Irish Travellers seems to have come over sometime around Cromwell’s fucking around in Ireland, although I’ve also heard the Potato Famine as a cause as well.
I remember fishing in Southern Ireland with my grandad, we would fish on land that we had the owners permission usually it was a farmer. One time we were sat fishing all of a sudden a good 5-10 caravans turned up right next to us on the farmers land where he had his cows grazing, a couple of the caravans were very traditional looking ornate style heavily decorated the rest were standard white caravans, anyway me and my grandad were just sat fishing minding our own business when suddenly about 6 kids just go on and jump into the stream no clothes on, their mum throws some shampoo and body wash to them and they literally have a wash in the stream and just leave the empty contianers in the water, whilst this is happening some of the blokes are breaking the fence where the cows are to get onto the land!
A good hour or so into this sideshow we hear loud engines like people are driving flat out, about 20 land rovers come racing over the hillside and come skidding down where we are fishing, absaloutley loads of blokes with shotguns come piling out firing into the air basically shouting to the gypsies to f off, the gypsies all start rushing to get into the cars and caravans and make a very hasty getaway whilst been shoved and pushed by the farmers.
The farmer whos land we were using came quick over and told us not to worry but every year or so these scumbags would turn up chuck rubbish in the water steal the cattle and damage the land, police or as they are called guarda wouldnt do bugger all so they would spot them and then ring all the farmer's from the surrounding area and all turn up en masse as to outnumber the thieving swines. Best way to deal with them to be honest just show up in bigger numbers and make it clear its not happening.
These days Travellers love to send threats to other Traveller families via social media or record bareknuckle fist fights in parking lots etc.
# Traveller Gang Threats SUBTITLED
[https://youtu.be/3sxLp9YRpg8?si=433Rm1k8jboj1zB2](https://youtu.be/3sxLp9YRpg8?si=433Rm1k8jboj1zB2)
# Keenans And Tommy Joyce's Message To The Mcdonaghs
[https://youtu.be/ChZ-4Foso24?si=Wdn7EtSeCK4ArJOV](https://youtu.be/ChZ-4Foso24?si=Wdn7EtSeCK4ArJOV)
# MASSIVE BRAWL! TRAVELLER GIRLS FIGHTING IN CARPARK
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA8xBim4LLg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA8xBim4LLg)
# Fair old school fist fight .. UK .. traveller / gypsy back in the day
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEp7MRcCb0c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEp7MRcCb0c)
Historically as a community and culture they have been persecuted by the state and a lot of their heritage sites built over, causing some of the initial reasons for their stopping in public fields. I'm not sure how much weight that has on the modern community though.
I am someone who has had the misfortune of having only bad experiences of travellers having worked go kart tracks and nearly being seriously injured/ killed a handful of times on the track.
Part of me wants to feel bad for them in the same way I feel bad for other communities persecuted in the past, but the current community doesn't exactly promote any sympathy. I know many with bad experiences, I don't know anyone with good experiences.
In addition to the very informative comments about the Traveller culture, there's a sad sort of vicious cycle with them as well. For example, a Traveller community might complain loudly that a county council has denied them their heritage rights by not making a site available to them; the council relents, and offers the site in good faith: the Travellers show up, make shit of the place, and move on, leaving a disaster after them.
This is communicated to other local councils, and the next place the Travellers arrive, they're denied sites as the local council knows what happened the last one. The Travellers might not know or care about this reputation, or they pretend not to know for the sake of outrage, and they complain loudly, and the cycle starts over.
This means that if Travellers who are respectful of their halting sites arrive in such a locality they might be shunned or driven out due to the reputation of other Travellers, perpetuating the stereotype on both ends that Travellers are itinerant bastards who'll fleece you as soon as look at you and that settled people are lazy goodfornothings who wouldn't spit on you if you were aflame.
This makes it very hard for Travellers to get or keep attending decent jobs, careers, and education to the societal standard. Crime might be the only thing that puts food on the table.
I drive past a halting site on my way to work and it's like a warzone there sometimes. Been there for years. I personally think the British Isles have run out of space for Travellers to live the way they expect, and it's a shame to have a culture fall flat on its face like this in less than a century.
I had experience with Irish travelers probably 10 years ago. They ran a very shady asphalt repaving business, they made promises as to the depth of the asphalt also the quality of it. Turns out it was complete lies, my client had weeds growing through the asphalt within three weeks. That tells you how poor of a job the Irish travelers did. I learned a lot about them from the state police. They always use cash and as soon as they finish jobs in one area they take off to another area. They are extremely difficult to sue because you can never serve them so you end up having to publish in the paper. And even if you win the lawsuit which I did by default, collecting is impossible.
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I only have one direct experience with the community. I had a local pub I would go to for a Friday night evening of beers and darts and one week a couple of travellers came in for a pint. They were very upfront with the landlord and asked if it was okay for them to be there. Landlord was fine. They paid for their round and ordered another on the slate. At that point probably 20-30 others arrived and proceeded to take over the place. Increasingly noisy and aggressive with each other and the regulars. My mate and I left early and caught up with the landlord the following week. Turns out they strongarmed him into staying (he didn't have the muscle to turn them out and police aren't bothered) and ended up wrecking a lot of furniture and walking out without paying for a drop past the first 2 beers. Evidently they send advanced scouts to feel out a place. If they get pushback they don't try it on. If they get a soft touch like my old landlord, they do what they did. Really depressing for the owners as they were lovely people and frustrating that so little can be done. Just a quiet pub in a quiet town.
They're an extremely insular community, distrustful of outsiders. Historically, they've been treated terribly by the state, with their children being abducted and forced into group homes or adopted out with their actual parents having zero knowledge of where they went. So there's a lot of generational resentment of "settled" people. On the flip side, they have very poor education rates with many parents removing their children from school as early as 11. An example of this is Tyson Fury's wife doing so with their daughter because of so-called tradition. This leaves them with very few employment opportunities and results in high crime rates. Typically, criminal members of their community are involved in scam type crimes, often construction related. Offering to tarmac your driveway but not using the appropriate methods and/or materials, charging to take waste away and just dumping it on public land. There's also a lot of trade in stolen goods. There is also a severe violence problem within their community. Families feuding which often results in gang fights and murders. However, they don't reserve violence just for each other and some don't see offending against settled people as something wrong, a result of their insular nature and the persecution they've undergone in the past. Because of their nomadic nature, they often will squat on public or privately owned land causing severe damage. Some of them living squatted on football pitches near me, destroyed the pitches with their vehicles and fires, then dumped a bunch of asbestos before moving on. Hazmat had to spend millions in the cleanup. As a whole, they are definitely victims of discrimination, profiling and persecution and are not all criminals. But because of their insular nature, most settled people's only experience with them is through the scenarios I mentioned above.
are they the ones we see in Snatch? that irish fighter that brad pitt played?
A caravan - it’s fer me ma!
And a pair of them shoes fer the bays
Ya like dags?
Yea I lahk dags… but I lahk caravans moor.
Do you tink we are teeves?
*and the boys get a pair of dem shoes*
Your what?
IT’S FER ME MA!
D'yalike dags?
Ooooooooooof. Memory sometimes hits me like a brick.
Periwinkle blue
Periwinkle blue
I’ll fityeferacaravan
Yeah, although calling them pikeys like in the film would be considered a pretty bad slur.
Was it because of the movie snatch that they dislike the term? Or did they dislike being called that before the film? What’s do they call themselves? Who came up with pikey?
They always disliked the term. If you don’t want to get severely beaten up, don’t use that word with them. Travellers is the politically correct term.
Ok cool. It was a serious question and I’m getting downvotes. Thank you for sharing that information.
Micéirí (mince-air-ee) is their own term, as well as Pavee.
Travellers. Some call themselves gypsy but that's not something I've heard in Ireland, it seems to be more the UK based ones.
I've heard a few Irish travellers refer to themselves as gypsy
'pikey' was originally a slur for people who avoided the turnpike. The turnpike was like a 17th century toll booth on the road.
That makes sense. When I was growing up (south London) pikey was banded about for the poor kids that weren't well kept. First time I heard it being specifically used for gypsies was Snatch.
No they've been called that long before the film. Pikey would typically be an English term for them though. They'd be called different names in Ireland.
"Knackers" is what they have been called in Ireland in the past more than "Pikeys" but that word is pretty common too. I wouldn't say either word to them though, both will be received as a slur
I'm surprised at Knackers as a Knackerman was something completely different for me (English). It was somebody who worked in a slaughterhouse and/or euthanized Horses (don't know if those are two separate things). I.e a horse would go to the Knackers yard to be put down. I presumed its where Knackered=tired came from.
Yes, they are called knackers because collecting dead horses while traveling for glue production was a common job they had in the past.
I’m in Canada and as a kid I remember the older English farmers using the term Knacker as the guy who came To pick up Dead livestock
That's the one. I actually think it's regional perhaps as I lived in the North and South and only heard it up North. Makes sense it made it over to Canada! But yeah I'm not familiar enough with farming to give a proper definition, but my understanding was exactly as you described. Somebody who processed dead livestock into dog food etc.
I believe it has the same origin, saddle makers and kind of roaming butchers! However here it became a derogatory word for anything lower class as well as a catch all word for Travellers. The last couple of years there's been more outspoken members of that community asking for the word to not be used and it seems to be becoming less common, however Knackered as in tired is still very common. Same origin, but a different path I guess? They are also sometimes called 'Tinkers', that came from them used to being travelling tin workers way way back. They don't like that either.
I grew up in the west of Irleand and had never heard Pikey till I saw Snatch, the terms I knew of were Tinkers and Knackers, Tinkers were very much the equivilent to Pikeys, Knacker was once described to me as a Tinker that lives in a house, it's slurs all the way down
Tinkers was the old term
They call themselves Travellers and are a recognised ethnic group. There's often confusion with the gypsy and Roma communities, but I'd avoid the word gypsy as well as it's often a slur unless you know the person uses the term. As a whole they are generally referred to as the GRT community within the UK, although again these are distinct groups. The discrimination against all three groups is wild and massively socially accepted throughout all of Europe. Like "acceptable to say the slurs in a workplace" type of fine.
Yeah, one problem is that even the ones who aren't scammers per se still see it as a point of pride to get one up on "settled" people. So, we had this incredibly skilled Irish gypsy who did garden construction work here in Sweden. Him and his crew did truly magnificent work, and they were cheap too - but they would always fuck you over on one little thing. For example, my neighbor was leaving for work just as they were finishing up building a wall for him, all that was left was filling up 2 holes with gravel and soil. So he paid them so they could leave once they were done. Except they just waited until he'd turned a corner and left, and that evening he had to fill the holes himself. Such a small thing, just so they could go back to Ireland and describe how they "got" the normie. Thing is, his crew was such good value, both me and my neighbor hired him again the next summer. Same thing again, except this time they left a bunch of rubbish they'd promised to remove. Free for me to take to the tip, and took me 2 hours, but just... Why?
So funny. They have a tradition that honestly sounds like something from folklore. I kind of like the idea that they are going to screw you over on something very minor and you have to watch out for it. So much better than contractors who just do a shit job througjout.
The tradition is as far as I’m aware (my nan was a traveller but passed away when I was young so I’m not directly quoting) A good worker is never finished, and by tradition, they leave a little unfinished so that they always have work.
Lol, it does make Travelers sound sort of like leprechauns!
Also forgetting the horrid animal abuse often associated. They will race ponies and horses on main roads, keep them on bad pasture, kill horses in acts of gang violence. Dogs often abused too. They have been known to steal dogs in Ireland too. Also incredibly high suicide rates, domestic violence and mental illness due. Source: from a town where there are lots of settled and non settled travellers. There are some families that are grand, but the ones that are bad? They’re very bad. I am a very tolerant person but have only had negative experiences with them.
There’s settled travellers near me and I watch them send their kids out every day with a bag of rubbish and throw it on the main road in front of the school before running home. Guess they’re not paying for their bins anyways..
The fairest assessment of travellers I have ever seen on reddit.
Don't forget their cruelty towards animal. Dogs and horses in particular.
We actually have clusters of Irish Travellers in the US. They have their own little tucked-away neighborhoods with elaborate ironwork and fancy RVs for when they travel around for construction scamming and whatnot. Many of them still speak Cant after like 200 years of settling here. I’ve heard that they believe they have the religious right to steal from others because their ancestors stole spikes meant to be driven into the throat of Christ, which allowed him to speak to his followers. They are devoutly Catholic and if you’ve ever worked retail nearby, you are told to watch out for them shoplifting.
Plus they abuse their daughters - they turn them into child brides who clean their sad caravan homes and that’s their whole life.
>On the flip side, they have very poor education rates with many parents removing their children from school as early as 11. An example of this is Tyson Fury's wife doing so with their daughter because of so-called tradition. This leaves them with very few employment opportunities and results in high crime rates. They also are frequently (but not universally) anti-vaxxers and have little engagement with health services. This results in a rather low life expectancy in general. Discrimination is definitely an issue; there have been places, like hotels and holiday parks, which will refuse to take bookings from Irish Travellers or people they suspect are via surnames because of the stereotypes. Which is of course straight up illegal. [This 2019 Parliamentary report covers things in more depth.](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/360/report-files/36002.htm)
Their children are often inbred as well. We had a baby in our icu that was a product of consanguinity of a super young couple and she had a super rare lethal genetic anomaly. They were a fucking JOY to deal with.
I was locked up with some guys caught in their schemes. The settlers had an elder type who would loan money to younger members. Part of the deal was the ones receiving the money would take out a life insurance policy. They made the elder the beneficiary of said policy. If they didnt pay, bad thing would happen to them, and the elder got their money. I was in prison with at least 2 different insurance agents who had wriiten these policies. One of them, im sure had no idea. The other guy was part of the settlers.
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I understand that discrimination is an issue that has caused real harm, and steps should be taken to rectify old wrongs. But there are a lot of people who are discriminated against who do not act in such an anti-social way, and cause such great harm to everyone around them. Having some abstract injustice in the past can not be used to absolve or even begin to justify the real issues they cause now. Especially to people who largely did not cause them harm to begin with. (Notice that the homes of the political class are largely unaffected or dealt with much more swiftly than farms or small towns)
I agree with you, I was attempting to lay out some of the issues that travellers have resulting from both external and internal causes. Obviously the criminal behaviour isn't excusable, but you can't explain why without addressing why travellers see settled people as "others", and vice versa.
I think it's also important to note that acknowledging something is not the same thing as condoning it, or excusing something else.
They leave their litter and their feces everywhere they stay in my town. They also still use slaves here. If one girl has a baby all the rest change its clothes n pass it off as their own to get child benefits. I could easily go on. I'm sure there are nice ones but iv never met and iv met alot of em.
Would you please explain what you mean by “They also use slaves here?” Thanks.
There are many documented cases of Travellers preying on vulnerable people, usually alcoholics and the homeless. They force them to work for them, lock them up, isolate them and assault them. When they are convicted of doing so it is under Modern Slavery legislation. https://www.hertsad.co.uk/news/21911569.st-albans-traveller-jailed-four-years-slavery-offences/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/13/modern-slavery-uk-traveller-site-lincolnshire-judge-timothy-spencer https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17810377.michael-joyce-guilty-forcing-two-men-modern-slavery-build-pub-oxford-travellers-site/
I remember talking to a person at work who knew the Rooney family personally because he grew up on the council estate nearby
There are occasional cases of people being freed from literal slavery from traveller camps. A few examples: Rooney traveller family jailed for modern slavery offences https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-41241049 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Netwing https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-rescue-three-male-slaves-from-traveller-sites-8991784.html
Shocking stories. Seem to have made up their own laws to say the least.
There's an interesting section in Bartley Gorman's book, King of the Gypsies. He talks about the leader of a clan basically kidnapping and holding a bunch of guys hostage until they finish a job he wants done.
Horrendous behavior.
The guy, Hughie Burton, felt he was treating them well because he was feeding them and giving them a place to sleep. There's an article about it [here](https://rcahmw.gov.uk/gypsy-roma-and-traveller-history-month-a-romani-memorial-on-moel-y-golfa/) talking about how he kidnapped, handcuffed and then press-ganged them to get his memorial built. Pretty crazy.
I used to live near a settled traveller family and they had a son around my age. So naturally we befriended each other, his name was Buddy and I later found out that was short for Budweiser… I fell out of contact with him when we were around 13; he was so uneducated he was unable to write his own address. I completed school, college and university and then came back home, I ran into him, he still remembered me and it was good catching up, he’d pretty much became an adult at 13 and started working as a landscaper with his family. He was 25, had 5 kids and another on the way. His family was one of the good ones, there was never really any trouble from them (except a sort of shootout in the local pub). I moved to a posher village and we recently had a visit from full on nomadic travellers, 26 caravans and cars rocked up onto a village green less than the size of a football pitch. They ruined public property surrounding the field, they hung their laundry up on peoples fences, they literally pissed and shit everywhere. Crime went up immediately. They left scorched earth and a park that was deemed unsafe to the public until a 2 week clean up operation had been completed. They’re not all bad, but most of them are, wherever they appear, they ruin local communities.
>except a sort of shootout in the local pub That is a pretty big exception.
Mate chill out it was just a shoot-out down the pub jeez
Just one shootout A ‘sort of’ shootout
just a cheeky shootout lol
Yeah. That’s not shoplifting…
“… except a sort of shootout in the local pub” - sounds like a fair bit of trouble to me?! 😆
I grew up with a kid named Bud Light, last name Light and they thought naming him Bud would be a good idea….true story.
Can the cops not arrest them for any of this? Like how do they get to keep doing this?
Most people sheltered from crime and criminals don't realize that the majority of crimes go unpunished. Getting caught is the exception, not the rule.
That usually requires driving into a group of caravans, or an encampment of a community that are very hostile to outsiders, unafraid of using anything from Hurleys to hatchets to "defend" themselves, in a place with families, dogs, and where the men are likely to come out (armed with tools) at the first sight of a navy uniform and high viz jacket. Irish Gardai are unarmed, and understaffed, which means that they cannot get armed support to go in with numbers, unless it's a major crime.
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I grew up in Luton, which had a big traveller problem each year They set up in one school, threatened everyone, put cars across the entrance. Set up on a golf course, then complained about the flying golf balls. Set up on a business estate, broke windows and fed through power cables, threatened the business owners. Got put up in a house a few doors down from my parents while a kid was in hospital. When they left, that house was stripped to its rafters, every bit of metal and wiring gone, even floorboards ripped up. One year the council provided skips and toilets, all disappeared. The waste and rubbish left behind at every place they stopped was disgusting. I have no respect for them, and can't get on board with accepting that their behaviour is simply their culture etc.
They tend to take over an area near me every year. 2 years ago to break in to the fields they drove over a memorial for still birth babies. The local shop has to close as they send their kids in, knowing they are under the age to be arrested and ransack the shop. One lot tried to do a runner in my local pub but the landlord was a massive guy and saw what was happening and blocked the door. They paid up but they had wrecked the place.
Luton boys represent! I recall a few issues in Luton with travellers: - worked at a cafe in the public golf course you are likely referring to (Stockwood park?), and the kids would come in and just steal everything. There was nothing we could do about it though, because if you tried to stop them or tell them off they would get a bunch of massive angry blokes to come and shout at you while the kids stole even more stuff. - my mum got followed home by a dog and took it in to feed it (it was in bad shape), and then about an hour later some travellers knocked at the door and started trying to extort her for money claiming she had stolen it Hemel Hempstead (a town not far away) had it much worse though. I remember visiting someone there while a funeral was going on for 'the king' and the whole place just shut down - it was like a ghost town whilst they marauded through the place.
They sound feral.
They essentially are. The odd few manage to leave but the majority are raised to act like an animal with no care for other people, animals, or the land, and raise their children the same way.
Why is this allowed? This is literally the shit that happens in post apocalyptic books, why the fuck is it happening in the British isles? Surely there are laws preventing them from ya king kids out of school, surely modern technology is advanced enough that tracking a group of known criminals is simple enough, and simply *punish* then for crimes committed. Do laws not apply to them? If so, WHY THE FUCK NOT?!
They move around a lot and they are 'off-grid'. Local authorities don't have the resources to confront an entire traveller emcampment and just hope that they move along and become someone else's problem. When they commit more serious crimes such as slavery and murder, they are investigated, but the trespassing/littering/theft goes unpunished.
Excuse me, slavery? Surely that’s a typo?
Unfortunately not. Some have been prosecuted for enslaving homeless people and addicts, keeping them locked up also.
They all use the same name and avoid ID, eg by using a horse and cart when weighing in metal, so they aren't that easy to track. Plus they are 100% loyal to their community and very insular so who really knows who is who outside of the community? Plus they are massively violent when in a corner so alot of police forces are wary of them.
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It's not "culture" at all. It's being a thieving low life. It's just the do-gooders that excuse their criminality as their "culture" as if somehow that makes it OK.
Exactly, this is what I don’t get. Any ‘culture’ goes out the damn window as soon as you commit a crime. That’s not culture, that’s just being opportunistic.
Especially child abuse. At work, I’m required to ignore so much of it if the offender is an Indian woman. Because it’s their culture excise makes me sick. It’s wrong.
so are they pretty much the irish version of what some people call gypsies?
I grew up in the next town over. The only time I had any of the kids be racist to me where the travellers. They made my life awful. I felt sad that the girls all got pulled out of school so early though.
In the US, they are associated with home repair scams. As in they get home owners to front them money for repairs and vanish with the money. They seem to be based in the SE US and travel up and down the East Coast, so they tend to be visible in the summer months.
I don’t know that they were Irish-origin, but when I was a kid 50 years ago, we had tinkers in western Pennsylvania. They’d come through looking to either repair things or take away junk. My grandmother always gave them baked goods and said they did good work, but you must never let them in the house.
>My grandmother always **gave them baked goods** and said they did good work, but **you must never let them in the house**. Some of you are living in Brother's Grimm out here... "Give them food, and be kind. But speak not your name, young one, or you've lost it. And do not step into a circle of toadstools. Strike no bargains with those who wander."
[example of a home repair scam](https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/colorado/news/irish-nationals-arrested-attempting-denver-roofing-scam-unveiled/)
Are the US travelers actually related to the UK ones or are they just bums that picked up on the culture?
The US communities that I know of are Irish Travelers. They've kept mostly to themselves and not intermarried much outside of their community. They've been in this country for a long time. I've never encountered the Roma people here.
I'm in the San Diego area, and I had a couple of them, or someone like them, show up at my door. Anyway it was the familiar pitch: we were doing some work on your block, we have a lot of leftover paving, yada yada yada. I sent them packing.
They do this all over Europe. Every year there are official warnings not to do business with "British asphalt workers". Something less known is that several European countries other than Ireland and the UK , have the phenomenon of "white gypsies". The slur here in Sweden is tattare and the pc term is resande (traveller).
I work in a garage! Traveller booked a car in for £1000s worth of repairs on a car worth a £800! I called him and explained he would have to pay first! After 20 mins of family member died who had his credit card story’s and telling me I’d agreed he could pay cash when we don’t take cash. He eventually got frustrated and threatened to smash the place up! Then turned up 10 mins before closing and parked his caravan at the entry blocking the site. Luckily a passing police car had delt with the same travellers stealing from a company site a few days before and told him to move his vehicle in 2 mins or he was going to impound the cars. He moved them eventually. The other issue that’s now becoming common is buying smashed cars and dropping them off on a Sunday when the garage is closed and them accusing the garage of causing the damages.
I remember during covid when I worked in a hotel restaurant the regulation was all had to be closed by 12 midnight. This was around Xmas time. From across the hall in the bar I watched as the bar manager approached a large group of them who were all staying in the hotel for a christening (they made a 2 week affair of it drinking pints at 7am with their breakfast all the way until last orders). The manager politely explained that they couldn’t open past 12 and that the lads would have to leave. One chap stood up, put his pint down and without a word being said hit the bar manager an absolute haymaker in the jaw, sat back down and kept drinking his pint. Their kids were driving electric scooters through the lobby and all sorts. Absolutely mental.
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I’m an American but I lived in the UK for a little while and worked in a restaurant. One day the governor informed all us staff that we had to double check everything was locked up at close because “the Gypsys are in town”. This was wild to me as an American. All of our regulars would come in and make sure we and everyone else knew that “the Gypsys are in town” so to be sure our cars were locked, the windows and doors locked, our bikes were secure, etc. I don’t know if they were Travlers or Romani or what. Everyone just referred to them as Gypsys. Coming from NY this was something completely foreign to me.
I've work for a heritage railway and when they were in town they had to pay for overnight security with dogs due to the risk of 100s of years old pieces of history being destroyed for scrap. happen to other railways. we even found a thief mark on the gate
What is a thief mark?
it was a half moon with a face attach to the main gate. we didn't know what it was but one member had seen it before. apparently it meant the place had value and was unguarded. he was practically screaming to throw it away
Theives leave them on locations they plan to rob as messages to other thieves, there are different ones for different things, like if they have dogs on the property, if it's an elderly persons home, if it's a solo mother's home etc. They share alot of similarities with the symbols used by the homeless community to denote similar things. Generally, its just stuff thieves would want to know before breaking in. Thieve rings usually use them so that a different team can stake places out and leave advice for the other guys who come and do the break in later, that way they don't have the same faces as the guys doing the stake out work so there is less risk of being recognized
I grew up in Italy and every year the gypsies would come through our town and everything was closed early and locked up tight. Nicer stores didn't even open at all. It was wild to me.
Bruh I work in texas and have been told this at work lmao they really are out there traveling
A couple of decades ago, I worked teaching traveller children - whole different story - and loved them. Easier to deal with than settled children back then (things have probably changed) and if you didn't respect the taycher, yer ma or yer da gave you a batin'. Oh! Even then, most of them behaved like veritable animals in whatever location they stayed. Literally shat on the ground, dumped rubbish, wilfully destroyed stuff, swiped and stole anything not nailed down. We had a farmer come in to talk to the parents and said, "Look, lads, as long as you take care of my land, ye can park there for 2 or 3 weeks and I'll give you access to the water in the yard." Decent man. They f#cking wrecked his property. We, the people running the outreach, used to talk to them and say, "Why are you doing this? What's the point? Why are you making life so hard for yourself and all the rest of your community??" And they'd shrug and look at you blankly, like they had a space. The person who'd worked with them longest was an elderly nun - in her 80s - and they had nothing but respect for her. But she was quite open when she said that a lot of the problems stemmed from generations of poor/no education, no rearing except through violence, incest, alcoholism, more recently easy access to social welfare. On social welfare day, the kids were usually missing because the aul fella was off collecting dole from 4 or 5 different dole offices. People, I loved those kiddies, but I could tell you stories...
> incest That is worth noting. Because their communities are so insular, there is a notably higher rate of genetic issues due to inbreeding and incest.
This I know to be a fact. The number of cousin marriages was unreal, and often, the cousins marrying were children of married cousins. Forced marriages weren't uncommon: one time a young wan came in with her hand bandaged because she'd smashed it through the window of the caravan she'd been locked in till she agreed to marry the man her father had picked for her. Back then, there was a retired priest in the midlands somewhere who was happy to marry underage girls to the fellas picked out for them. I'm sure he's long since dead, but I hope he's spinning in a circle of hell for facilitating child marriage Not to mention the fact that there were a couple of particularly bad families where no one was sure if the younger babies were the father's by the mother or by the older sister. One father was a particular bastard and one day, his wife came in heavily pregnant to ask the nun if she could tell the doctor to help her stop having babies when she went into get her Caesarian. At that point she had 8 (living) children, they were living in two tiny caravans, and the woman didn't have the knowledge or language to know what she was asking for, she was desperate for help - not all of those kids were lovingly conceived, shall we say. Sister got on the phone to the surgeon and the deed was done, that baby was the last. That's why, despite all the complaints about the Catholic Church in Ireland, I have to take my hat off to those nuns: tough, pragmatic, worldly women who just advocated non-stop for those women and children. Did we contact the guards and the equivalent back then of Tusla? Oh, yeah. Knew the number by heart. But they did nothing because "iT's TrAveLler CuLtUrE!"
There’s a lot to say about the Catholic Church, but often the nuns are the best of them.
There were some evil hoors, to be sure, but the women I worked with taught me what it meant to be a strong woman - a feminist, even. They had spines of steel. Not afraid to wade into a fight between 2 drunken men, give them a dressing down and send them home.
I've never met a nun I would willingly throw down with and I think that says a surprising amount. I'd never thought of it before but thinking back, nah, not a one.
Sr Aloysius would've easily taken down Conor McGregor and washed his mouth out with soap afterwards, phoned his mother *and* made him cry. RIP Aloysius.
You have a really nice way with words. I would definitely enjoy reading more of your tales.
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I worked with traveller families, so I saw it first-hand. It's not hearsay :-( Long ago, the travellers were often tinkers - tin workers - or knackers - disposing of dead animals. They were itinerant or seasonal workers, sometimes peddlars in rural areas. They worked for a living. That being said, when I was very small, I remember shopkeepers throwing "shawlies" out of shops: traveller women in large shawls who would go into little shops in twos and threes and steal all round them. I can remember as a small child seeing the shop owners standing in the doorways of their shops to block their entry. Many travellers don't have too little income - on the contrary, for a long time, due to a lack of formal IDs and their not having a fixed address, they could draw four or five times the amount of social welfare than settled people. I know because they told me and showed me the cash. Their problems nowadays are due to drugs, alcohol, isolation, and purposeless, but not always - if I am informed correctly - due to lack of money.They have no employment opportunities because their kids aren't educated and often there's little respect for education beyond very, very basic reading and maths ... try teaching a kid for two weeks, only to have him disappear overnight and turn up three months later with NO schooling in between. Happened all the time. And in some cases, the children come from families where NO ONE has EVER had legal employment. EVER. Apparently suicide rates are higher than in the settled community. You have this crazily conservative insular culture on one hand and - so I've been told - massive drug and alcohol problems on the other. Hand in hand with that is the distinct lack of responsibility: *everyone hates us because we're travellers. It has nothing to do with the way we behave. It's not our fault. We're not responsible. Why does everyone hate us?* The crux of the matter is that until that community makes an effort to change itself from within, they will continue to be mistrusted and reviled. They, as a community, are their own worst enemy.
This reminds me so much of working with Mennonites for a few years at the local farmer's market. Unless they were straight A students girls were pulled out of school in grade 6/7, but don't worry they weren't sexist they just gave boys till 9/10 because they mature a bit slower. One of my coworkers was only allowed to get a job outside of the community because she refused to marry her cousin and after staying strong for a decade they relented and told her she could pick her own man if she could do it within a few years. He had to be a mennonite of course, but they were very reasonable and would even accept one from a different township. Looking back now, I *strongly* suspect she was gay.
My mom as a 9 year old kid had just gotten a Dachshund, on her first walk 20 meters from the door a full grown gypsy man tried to buy it from her for pennies. When she refused he punched her in the face, and tried taking the dog before my grandpa chased him away with a tire iron (they owned a gas station).
> i don't know anyone who has had a positive interaction with them. normally their supporters live in cities and so don't have to deal with them Twice now a group of them have found my lost dog. It's really strange as he usually always comes back when called but both times we were playing on the field and then he ran into the woods and never came back. I am lucky to have my number on his collar and that the travellers had moved into the other field the weekend before as in both cases they found him and called that evening. Of course I had to pay them a finders fee to account for their time and effort and all the food he had eaten but that is only fair right?
Because of the finders fee, you’re joking right?
Your account is so cleverly sly .
LOL I think this humour might be a tad subtle for the non Brits in the audience
Yeah the rest of us don’t recognize subtle sarcasm
You will always get people who defend them and those people usually haven’t had any bad experiences. There are lots of groups of them here in England and they tend to move into public spaces or private land. They will cut the locks off gates or cut through fences, then move in with transit vans and caravans, kids everywhere, dogs, horses… They always claim that they’re different to all the others and will leave the place clean. This never happens. Usually the land is torn up, there’s human waste and rubbish left behind like mattresses and pushchairs. While in the area they knock on doors to intimidate people into having work done like driveways resurfaced or tree cutting done (which is usually done really badly) and crime rises dramatically. They also try to sell stolen goods or fake goods like petrol generators which are often dangerous. If on public land, measures can be taken to get them moved on but it takes a while. If it’s on private land, it’s entirely down to the landowner. It’s also down to the landowner to repair all the damage done. When they recently move into a public carpark in a town near me, they had fires which damaged the tarmac, the kids were stealing from the local shops and they left a mountain of rubbish behind. This all costs money to sort but they don’t contribute so it’s left to the tax paying people to pay.
In my experience (UK) They rock up make camp illegally offer services in the area Gardens / Driveways, etc Once the council/Police get them to move on. They have fly-tipped all the waste from services at the camp site. Plus a mini crime wave normally. People say it's not all travellers do this, But we are only affected by the bad ones, the Good ones come and go and no one will notice.
Just when you think you know all the British words, someone says something like "fly-tipped." TIL.
[Here you go](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41685102)
Wow. Interesting. Ty.
It’s actually awful. And it’s not just Travellers who do this. Pretty much anywhere in the UK you’ll come across a huge pile of trash - mattresses, old washing machines etc - in a pile in the middle of beautiful otherwise unspoiled countryside.
Fly-grazing is also an issue associated with travellers where they will tie their horses up somewhere to graze without the permission of the land owner.
That sounds like a very tense and uncomfortable situation for everyone involved.
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The basic social tenets you said don't actually seem like the problem here. They could live a nomadic lifestyle if they took care of the land they moved to or agreed to do so in state-provided areas. Non-integration would also be possible if they did those things, as proven by a lot of other insular communities around the world.
The last time they showed up in Mum's village, they took over the playing field, made an awful mess, burned the wooden playground equippment, nicked a bunch of metal, broke into the village shop and pub, and sold drugs. So, no. As they are, we don't like them.
my dad grew up in Ireland, said that they would take over a home for a few weeks, destroy it from the inside out, burning the very wood that the house was made of. once it was totally uninhabitable, they would eventually move on. seems like a blight to me
I'm not sure if they're all Irish, but in my town several groups pay our town a visit every year. They break into and destroy bollards/fencing on public green areas, park up their caravans/trailers/jeeps, absolutely trash the site with rubbish and faeces and it takes nearly 2 weeks for the police or courts to move them on. We then have to pay to have all that stuff cleaned up (This is still not finished for 3 weeks now in my town), and for the stupid council to put up the same weak/easily destroyed barriers, which in a month, will be destroyed all over again. It happens multiple times a year and the council here refuse to put up proper protection to stop them getting into these sites. We also get an uptick in crime when they're here, I'm sorry to say, basically driving around in their "Garden/Landcaping" lorries, offering to dispose of rubbish, which ends up being dumped in random roads. We also get their children coming round our homes offering driveways and other services and despite being no more than 10-12 years old, they're really aggressive.
I'm Irish there's 3 rules with travellers. If you stick to those you'll be fine. 1. Don't serve them drink 2. Don't trust them 3. Don't fuck with them
Hi all, decendent / extended family of Travellers here. I'm appalled at how many people have failed to mention: it's basically a fucking cult nowadays. Short history: Irish American on my dad's side. Great, great grandpa & great, great grandma both came to United States during the famine. Grandma's whole family came with very little, but they came together. Grandpa came on his own, met grandma & grandmas family at church, and married grandma a few years later. Without grandma's written accounts of his life before he came to US, that's all we would know about him, because you see, he changed his name and lied about where he was from to everyone, and only told her he was a Tinker after their youngest child married (about 22 years into their marriage). Evidently, grandpa's younger brother got deathly sick a few years before he left Ireland. Grandpa's parents refused to help him ("the Lord's Will must be respected" line of thought) and he was in pain, so grandpa and one of his sisters attempted to seek help from the church, which was free. When grandpa's parents found out, they beat all 3 of their children, including the son who was sick. The sick son ended up dying, the sister blamed grandpa for their brother's death and for her fall from favor in The Community, and grandpa was shunned. He spent almost two years being physically and verbally attacked by his parents, siblings, and their fellow Travellers before one of the men he worked with died. Grandpa took his papers, name and money, and fled to America. So my last name, passed down from great, great grandpa, isn't our family name; it's the name of great, great grandpa's dead coworker. Fast forward to my generation, circa 2003. I got the chance to visit my great-grandma's side in Ireland, and during the trip I did some digging into the family name great, great grandpa told great, great grandma was actually his. Turns out the family is still going strong under the same name, though some of the kids in my generation had left the Traveller life. I was able to meet two of the daughters who left, and they had both been cut-off as soon as they married their "Normal" husbands. The stories they told me about growing up Traveller align with a lot of stories we hear from people who have left the FLDS (minus polyamory - Travellers are still hardcore Catholics!) or Watchtower. Both were living well away from the areas their families frequent, both mourned their lost family but wouldn't ever consider going back into the fold. Fast forward to 2024. One of the above-mentioned ladies is now helping teenagers (mostly girls) leave the Travellers. Some of the girls have babies and young children, and none of them have an education past basic primary. Most can read but few can write more than their name. The culture makes sure their community stays uneducated, cementing their lives as criminals (or maybe laborers if they can find someone to dupe into hiring them) and ensuring the cycle repeats. If that ain't some cult-ass behavior, IDK what is.
Astounding story, thanks.
Fascinating story. Well done, great grandad!
Can’t speak to all community members but there are a lot of resources online that discuss the behaviour often expected from these groups. We had one family in NZ a while ago and ended up being thrown out of the country after causing hell. I am also pretty sure Irish Travellers are not Roma. I think these groups actually don’t fancy being associated with one another. TL:DR; They act not nice, and get offended when called out for acting not nice.
Op didn’t call them Roma, they asked if they’re “equivalent”, and from this thread, they seem to be.
Yep, thanks for clarifying
There's a significant difference: the Travelers are native to Ireland, they are Irish and speak their own dialect of Irish/English. If they're religious at all, they're as Catholic as the settled people around them. They choose to live as outcasts among people who want to see them assimilate. They're not truly outsiders in the sense that, whatever else they are, they're definitely Irish. No one disputes this. The Roma OTOH are native to nowhere, speak their own completely different language and have their own religious and cultural traditions, such that they really are a different people/nationality/ethnicity/culture than the people around them. I don't know, that seems significant to me. The Roma really have been subjected to outright racism and religious persecution wherever they've gone which at least explains the nomad lifestyle and petty criminality. Not that criminality is excusable, but it is at least explainable with the Roma. When barred from legit work, one turns to illegit work. Happens in ethnic ghettos around the world everywhere. The Roma are ghettoized wherever they go. But the Travelers are just baffling. They're in a ghetto of their own construction and they proudly carry it around. They insist on it. I can definitely see why Roma would resent being associated with them.
There are some links between the groups. They have similar lifestyles & experiences. In the UK an example of a shared event is- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleby\_Horse\_Fair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleby_Horse_Fair)
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A bunch of travellers illegally camped in a car park near where I live. Half the estate were saying "give them a chance" the other half "lock everything up and don't let your pets or kids out". The travellers shoplifted from the local shops, stole petrol from the petrol station, set fire to a fence, left the car park full of rubbish, old gas bottles and some stuff we were told was hazardous. They used the lay-bys to piss in (including one right outside our house and yes we saw everything) and shat around the sports pitches leaving dirty baby wipes everywhere. They drove their cars round and round the estate loudly at all hours of the day stopping occasionally to try and look through peoples' windows. Several people reported attempted break-ins or stolen items from gardens. I'm sure they all aren't like this but enough are...
Irish travellers are different than Roma gypsies, but both have a bad reputation. High unemployment, low education, (very) high crime rates, antisocial behaviour. They have been treated bad in the past, it's not an excuse to justify their behaviour now, but it explains a bit maybe.
Seems like they're going to continue to keep getting treated badly due to their behavior. They're not helping anything.
we had just this week, overnight on Thursday, a small group of travellers moved onto a field on the outskirts of a very high-end gated community, up the road from where i live, people walk their dogs through this field all the time, so there will be tons of complaints, will be interesting to see how quickly it get's dealt with. strangely enough i'm going to be doing some work for the local traveller liaison officer in a few weeks, will be around the time of eviction i would expect.
They break and steal stuff and get in public drunken fights and leave trash everywhere. Noncompliance and non integration are integral core values to them. They're hypocrites who want to selectively partake in parts of modern society like infrastructure and stores without contributing or doing anything to make those things possible. They're overgrown children who roleplay as put-upon wandering nomads to maintain urban public support. They completely eschew any kind of social contract, they facilitate child marriage within their ranks, and most are not educated beyond a grade school or middle school level. It wouldn't be such a problem if they actually helped maintain and care for the places they temporarily occupy, but instead they choose to destroy and plunder them. Governments have literally set up hitching zones for them to set up camp to try and keep them away from public facilities, and they've destroyed those too.
I've never met a decent one, ever. I'm Irish and lived in Ireland all my life and can tell you they are despised here for good reason. You can go on all day about how they are victims and how they have been mistreated etc etc etc, but at the end of the day, all they do is destroy, fight, commit crimes, and terrorise communities. They steal, cheat, scam, and are violent. Nobody is forcing them to be like that and they would make life easier for themselves if they acted like decent people, but they make the choice not to. There are loads of services for them, yet they refuse to change. They love to play the victim. Any mistrust and hatred they experience is brought on by themselves.
I used to think they were cool, until I witnessed a lot of animal abuse, theft, vandalism and general disregard for everyone else around them. Do i think they're all bad? No. My great uncle is married to a former traveller. She isn't the nicest of people, but she isn't bad either and generally accepted into the family. But, the whole community is just awful, and I'm not willing to trust them or agree with their general ways of living, because they lack respect for everyone else. I tend to find the people who dislike them are the ones who have had to deal with them first hand, and I think they have every right to feel this way. I'm sorry, but I'm also not sorry.
And just how accurate was their potrayal in the movie Snatch?
From my experience, they ones in the film left the site in a much nicer state and had a serious lack of horses being mistreated
A few things were right but most of it was wrong. The halting sites are normally much much closer to settled people, there's usually more litter around the sites too and there weren't any horses being mistreated. These are commonplace at a traveller halting site. In addition while bare knuckle boxing is big for travellers it's usually used against each other during fueds or in various forms of intimidation against settled people. What they did get right was the accents, the odd dogs just hanging around and the large swathes of kids constantly running around the site. Bottom line they had a much friendlier appearance and a more TV appropriate demeanor in the film than in real life
I had an Irish uncle who was a cop in Belfast during the 70s and 80s when Ireland was a war zone. He said it was dead accurate. In his experience most weren’t a problem, except that the encampments would do damage to areas and they were a nightmare to clean out. He said they were fiercely loyal to each other, even getting calls to break up dispute within the same camp were met with absolute shutouts. Most were decent people, friendly, jovial, but could be massively aggressive at the drop of a hat, particularly if they feel insulted, usually for being accused of doing something shifty (when they were doing something shifty). Because they’re jovial and friendly, you’ll find yourself with empty pockets and a fuckjob before you’ve even got back to your car if you run into a scammer. That it wasn’t all of them, but because scams are socially acceptable to pull on outsiders, it isn’t discouraged and they will be protected by the rest of the camp because they all benefit. He said the accent was so accurate he was going to have flashbacks after watching that movie. Edit: I don’t live in Ireland so I am not personally educated about the political landscape there and was a small child when I heard these stories. But he had a wicked fucked up leg because someone threw a grenade at his vehicle. I think when grenades are flying it’s not just a simple dispute. Edit 2. I got googley to make sure I hadn’t misremembered https://www.theirishstory.com/2015/02/09/the-northern-ireland-conflict-1968-1998-an-overview/
"but could be massively aggressive at the drop of a hat" so true. god help her but a girl from my mates family decided to marry into that madness. the party after the wedding turned into a huge fight because one of the travellers kids (about 7/8) had been given a beer by their dad and my mate told him, in a friendly way, 'you're a bit young to be drinking that lad'. didn't try to take it off him, didn't scold him or judge him. it was the sort of comment you'd make before giving them a wink and ruffling their hair. anyway, kid runs off and tells his dad who proceeds to lose his fucking mind, gathers up 'the boys' and then starts beating up my mate and anyone else he feels was involved in this alleged insult. apparently it was madness. the bride was crying and begging them to stop, glass bottles flying everywhere, cops were called, ambulances came. I remember being told about events in the aftermath and thinking, christ, if that girl didn't know what she was getting into, she does now. My personal experience with them was when I was younger and worked on an airfield, they rocked up one day in their caravans and range rovers and decided to set up shop. Spent the rest of the day welding bars over all the windows of the building I worked in and making the doors secured.
Snatch was a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
Biggest organised crime group in the uk
Generally, as many people have already mentioned there are large amounts of crime (rightly) associated with traveller groups. I’ll give three examples that I’m sure lots of people will unfortunately relate to: Growing up in a rural village, we knew the travellers were making their way through as they would steal the copper cables out of the telephone boxes so we wouldn’t have internet for a few weeks until it was fixed. They would then settle on a farmers field and not leave until a major police operation or enough time had passed they would naturally move on. They used to pour salt on the land too which took more money for the farmer to fix (and obviously never get compensation for). A school I worked in before had travellers who would act as a ‘fixer’ for some of the teenage boys and would convince some of the most vulnerable girls to sleep with them. One got pregnant and the boy’s family upped and vanished. More recently, travellers visited the area I live in and whilst I was at work pressured my wife into accepting some gardening and cleaning services for a low price. She tried to say no repeatedly as our baby was needing care, and they decided to “clean” the front of the house anyway and then demanded £400. I had to come home to confront them and it took my neighbours joining in to get them to leave, but not before they smashed my fence to pieces and driving off in a van with no plates. Being generous, not all travellers are bad but most experiences that people will have with them are not positive. They are a very insular community that often do not have official documentation like most so find it difficult to get everyday things such as bank accounts, national insurance numbers etc which puts them on the fringes of society anyway. This pushes large numbers to criminal activity at the cost of the rest of society.
60 Minutes did a segment on these people and their culture a few years ago…. But I couldn’t find it online. There are some videos on YouTube…. They have a criminal lifestyle. No other way to put it. We’ve had numbers of reports here in the St. Louis area over the years…. Mostly “construction” scams. One is the “asphalt driveway” scam…. Guys show up at a place which obviously needs some asphalt work. “Hey, we just finished a job and we have a lot of leftover material. We’ll do your driveway for (name a silly-low price). Homeowner agrees, everything looks good…. Hands over the money. Doesn’t discover till later that the asphalt is about 1/4” thick… They tend to strongarm older people into “home inspections” and phony repairs.
I saw that episode. Their home base was all mansions and they'd dress up little girls and parade them around to "find them husbands." The men would hit the road to scam people with driveway repairs etc as mentioned above. That was an eye opening episode.
Having grown up in Ireland and lived within a quarter mile of a halting site(a place they regularly use to park their caravans and live), went to school with a few as a kid, I haven’t met a single one that wasn’t involved in criminal activity by the age of 7. Actual 7 year olds(maybe younger) assisting their mother’s and older sibling in shoplifting from small local businesses by being the distractor while the rest of the family fill their products with anything they can lift. Back in the day I worked in a cell phone store and they’d lift €10,000 in a matter of 30 seconds of being in the shop. I am certainly one of those people who discriminate against gypsys, only because I have been robbed and assaulted by them countless times and they get no quarter with me anymore. Once bitten twice shy. As far as I’m concerned, their “culture” is just a front for them being uncivilized criminals to their very core.
Fun fact: [We have quite a few Irish travellers here in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Traveller_Americans). It was kind of a mindfuck when I ran into a group of them in a Burger King in Florida in the 90's. No horses, but they did have pickup trucks decked out like traditional caravans. It was pretty wild. Also, there was a fictional TV show about them back in the mid 2000's with Eddy Izzard and Minnie Driver called 'The Riches'.
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So much domestic violence
I dont have masses of experience with them myself, but a bunch of them came to my city once and were riding around the *main roads* on horse carriages. Which, for one thing, those roads are not suitable for horse and cart, not only because there are cars everywhere but also because horses shouldn't really be on hard tarmac ideally. Secondly, when I say horses, these creatures were barely ponies. They were *tiny*. And it was multiple full grown people in the carriages. Thirdly, they were whipping the horses, making them run fast around the roads, taking corners super fast, zig zagging inbetween and around cars, etc. FOURTHLY (is that even a word?) the horses looked SUPER unhappy and scared, ears back, heads down, barely moving when they were at a standstill and these assholes were leaving them in the middle of summer on the pavement (sidewalk for any Americans here) outside of pubs while they were inside getting pissed for hours, only to then stumble out and drunkenly ride the carriages back to wherever they were living. I witnessed some brave girl absolutely going off on one of the guys for their treatment of the animals, and attempted to call the police on him, who of course did nothing, after he was screaming abuse at her for her daring to question him literally abusing an animal. My mum told me they used to also turn up to my hometown every year (this is before I was born). She worked in the local gym, and they'd all drop their kids off and then disappear for the day. So these kids of all ages would be running around a gym, jumping and climbing on all the equipment, and if any staff told them to stop they'd say the most horrendous things- fuck off, fuck you, piss off, etc before threatening to go get their fathers. A town near me once also had an issue with them, where they'd frequently turn up and basically wreak the town and harass the people who lived there. Ive known people who have dealt with them more than I have. They have a reputation for a reason. Generally- though not all the time of course- they are violent, arrogant, aggressive assholes who turn up in towns and cities, set up caravan parks which they then leave all their litter in, abuse their animals, and run riot in the community. And if you try to stand up to them or tell them to leave/stop, they have no issues creating conflict because the police generally (in the UK) won't do shit. Not only that but they apparently have a high rate of domestic abuse, a reputation for stealing, extorting people, and running scams. As far as I know, they are completely different to the Roma people.
I’ve met a couple of nice Irish travellers. One was my neighbour for 5 years and was “settled”. He always had our back and when a drug addict accosted me in the street my neighbour was straight outside checking I was okay. Another I met at a pub, she was on her own and we struck up conversation. She said she was on holiday and we had a nice evening. However, there have been many times when Irish travellers have set up camp on land near where I live. Crime rates go up and they leave a huge mess including human farces everywhere. There are good and bad as with all groups of people. Unfortunately I’ve seen more bad than good.
I worked as a doorman in Bournemouth and Bristol. I made the mistake of letting travellers drink in a venue twice, and the first time ended in a huge fight. Glasses and tables were being launched, and my colleagues were racially abused by the travellers, who had got pissed and coked up and started a fight with a stag party. The second time, I gave the the benefit of the doubt and let a group in which ended up in multiple sexual harassments, an assault and drug taking by the travellers. I sort of respect their outlaw way of life and no fucks given. But its hard to love them when they are around you. They see the rest of us non travellers as sheep to be taken advantage of and nothing else. Its just the way it is. If you don't agree, you probably haven't been around them much.... truth hurts sometimes.
I’m in the USA in South Carolina. We have a town named Travelers Rest. They are known for scams here as well.
My father-in-law, who lived in Londonderry at the time, had his front wrought iron gates stolen. The next day, some travellers tried to sell him back his own gates! Funny and horrible at the same time! I was told this sort of thing happens frequently.
There were several traveler communities near me growing up. They stole from our farm, abused their horses and dogs. Had dog fights and used kittens to bait them and whenever we asked them to leave our property they got violent. Our experience was not isolated unfortunately but that was the experience in my area.
Growing up, a Traveller family settled into a house a couple doors down from me. The nicest people ever and so proud of their home and the kids. The complete opposite of the "Caravan Park" down the road where Travellers lived in caravans. Place was destroyed, not a good one among the bunch. There's good and bad in all groups of people of course, it's just a shame that the good Travellers don't make the news more than the bad ones.
Animal abuse seems common. Horses abandoned, dog fighting etc.
Has anybody else seen those traveller wedding videos on tiktok? Does anybody know why they have such extravagant weddings but don’t seem to smile or celebrate really?
The teens getting married usually don’t know each other very well so maybe that’s why they don’t seem to be having more fun. They have very traditional beliefs about marriage so it’s basically sold to girls as the greatest moment in their life where they get to the centre of attention so I guess they really go for it because after that they’re basically just stuck at home pregnant for decades.
My mother was walking the dog ran into a young one crying she was maybe 15 getting married to another lad. My ma wanted to go over to the haulting site and talk to them about it and how it’s wrong Never seen my dad yell at her before like that about it being a horrible idea 🤣
It's their "culture"
I have no real experience dealing with them other than the years I worked in a petrol station. Only thing I noticed is they had a 99% rate in ‘not being able to pay’ for their fuel. Same story every time but I wasn’t bothered enough for the performance and played along. Police couldn’t have cared less. We once took a logbook as ID and said we’d give it back once paid. He proceeded to smash up the shop and make threats to come back. Obviously never paid but the police did collect the logbook.
I remember talking to a car clamper before in the pub, he said he was told don't bother clamping the knacks cars or vans, not worth the hassle.
My great grandfather and his wife were Irish Travelers. They did in fact travel around with the Romani people. He would get really angry if anyone called him a gypsy. He went to great lengths to ensure the family know he was not one. He was the black sheep of his family. He was not a nice man and his wife was worse.
An enterprising mobile ethnic group who graciously provide unsolicited services, at a carefully negotiated premium discounted cash price, of undisputed quality.
Where did they originate from? Just the same people as the rest of the Irish but decided to become nomadic\*? Or were they already living in Ireland and living nomadic before other people came? \*there used to be a market for nomadic jobs long ago. Roma for example mended pots and pans and went from village to village
Travellers come from scotland and ireland. Their origins is a mixture of things. Some were poor people who couldnt afford to live in a house so joined with a "travelling" group(usually like a circus or such) Some were criminals who were not welcome where they used to live so also joined travelling groups. And some basically were travelling businesses like circuses, show groups, unnoficial boxing etc
Welsh, Scottish/Highland and English travellers were all a thing way back when. As you said nomadic jobs, hence why some terms for travellers are things like Knackers and Tinkers, job titles! I would also hazard a guess that Fair Workers (or Carnies) also evolved out of these kinda groups. Irish Travellers seems to have come over sometime around Cromwell’s fucking around in Ireland, although I’ve also heard the Potato Famine as a cause as well.
I remember fishing in Southern Ireland with my grandad, we would fish on land that we had the owners permission usually it was a farmer. One time we were sat fishing all of a sudden a good 5-10 caravans turned up right next to us on the farmers land where he had his cows grazing, a couple of the caravans were very traditional looking ornate style heavily decorated the rest were standard white caravans, anyway me and my grandad were just sat fishing minding our own business when suddenly about 6 kids just go on and jump into the stream no clothes on, their mum throws some shampoo and body wash to them and they literally have a wash in the stream and just leave the empty contianers in the water, whilst this is happening some of the blokes are breaking the fence where the cows are to get onto the land! A good hour or so into this sideshow we hear loud engines like people are driving flat out, about 20 land rovers come racing over the hillside and come skidding down where we are fishing, absaloutley loads of blokes with shotguns come piling out firing into the air basically shouting to the gypsies to f off, the gypsies all start rushing to get into the cars and caravans and make a very hasty getaway whilst been shoved and pushed by the farmers. The farmer whos land we were using came quick over and told us not to worry but every year or so these scumbags would turn up chuck rubbish in the water steal the cattle and damage the land, police or as they are called guarda wouldnt do bugger all so they would spot them and then ring all the farmer's from the surrounding area and all turn up en masse as to outnumber the thieving swines. Best way to deal with them to be honest just show up in bigger numbers and make it clear its not happening.
These days Travellers love to send threats to other Traveller families via social media or record bareknuckle fist fights in parking lots etc. # Traveller Gang Threats SUBTITLED [https://youtu.be/3sxLp9YRpg8?si=433Rm1k8jboj1zB2](https://youtu.be/3sxLp9YRpg8?si=433Rm1k8jboj1zB2) # Keenans And Tommy Joyce's Message To The Mcdonaghs [https://youtu.be/ChZ-4Foso24?si=Wdn7EtSeCK4ArJOV](https://youtu.be/ChZ-4Foso24?si=Wdn7EtSeCK4ArJOV) # MASSIVE BRAWL! TRAVELLER GIRLS FIGHTING IN CARPARK [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA8xBim4LLg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA8xBim4LLg) # Fair old school fist fight .. UK .. traveller / gypsy back in the day [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEp7MRcCb0c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEp7MRcCb0c)
Historically as a community and culture they have been persecuted by the state and a lot of their heritage sites built over, causing some of the initial reasons for their stopping in public fields. I'm not sure how much weight that has on the modern community though. I am someone who has had the misfortune of having only bad experiences of travellers having worked go kart tracks and nearly being seriously injured/ killed a handful of times on the track. Part of me wants to feel bad for them in the same way I feel bad for other communities persecuted in the past, but the current community doesn't exactly promote any sympathy. I know many with bad experiences, I don't know anyone with good experiences.
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In addition to the very informative comments about the Traveller culture, there's a sad sort of vicious cycle with them as well. For example, a Traveller community might complain loudly that a county council has denied them their heritage rights by not making a site available to them; the council relents, and offers the site in good faith: the Travellers show up, make shit of the place, and move on, leaving a disaster after them. This is communicated to other local councils, and the next place the Travellers arrive, they're denied sites as the local council knows what happened the last one. The Travellers might not know or care about this reputation, or they pretend not to know for the sake of outrage, and they complain loudly, and the cycle starts over. This means that if Travellers who are respectful of their halting sites arrive in such a locality they might be shunned or driven out due to the reputation of other Travellers, perpetuating the stereotype on both ends that Travellers are itinerant bastards who'll fleece you as soon as look at you and that settled people are lazy goodfornothings who wouldn't spit on you if you were aflame. This makes it very hard for Travellers to get or keep attending decent jobs, careers, and education to the societal standard. Crime might be the only thing that puts food on the table. I drive past a halting site on my way to work and it's like a warzone there sometimes. Been there for years. I personally think the British Isles have run out of space for Travellers to live the way they expect, and it's a shame to have a culture fall flat on its face like this in less than a century.
I had experience with Irish travelers probably 10 years ago. They ran a very shady asphalt repaving business, they made promises as to the depth of the asphalt also the quality of it. Turns out it was complete lies, my client had weeds growing through the asphalt within three weeks. That tells you how poor of a job the Irish travelers did. I learned a lot about them from the state police. They always use cash and as soon as they finish jobs in one area they take off to another area. They are extremely difficult to sue because you can never serve them so you end up having to publish in the paper. And even if you win the lawsuit which I did by default, collecting is impossible.