In Victorian Britain and America, there were groups and pockets of folk who weren't part of the mainstream "Victorian" culture. Some of these were "traveling folk," a term applied to a wide variety of subcultures, from gypsies to itinerant tinkers and peddlars. Some lived most of their lives on boats and waterways. Some were ethnic minorities from other countries. Some were religious minorities, such as the Quakers. And some were "native" minorities - groups who retained their culture from earlier periods of history, such as the British cave-dwellers described below.

The Way Some Folks Live: The Wandering Tribes of Great Britain, by W. Maurice Adams (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1883)

How Some Folks Live: The Water Babies of Our Canals, by W. Maurice Adams (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1883)

Visiting the Gypsies, by Charles G. Leland (Century Magazine, 1883A)

📖 Also available in the April 2017 issue of Victorian Times.

A Gypsy Beauty, by Charles G. Leland (Century Magazine, 1886B)

Charlotte Cooper, also discussed in the article "Visiting the Gypsies," above.

Peddlers and Hawkers (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1887)

Some Curious Quaker Customs (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1887)

Through London on a Barge, by F.M. Holmes (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1893)

A look at canal barge life.

To Gypsyland, by Elizabeth Robins Pennell (Century Magazine, 1893A)

Inspired by a meeting with gypsies in Philadelphia, the author travels to Hungary to learn more about them.

A Bargeman's Village [in Essex], by E. Chapman (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1895)

English Cave-Dwellers of Today, by S. Baring-Gould (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1896)

"How little one knows of one's own country!" In the 1890's, there were still many villages living in caves and cave-dwellings throughout Britain.