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Children Stolen By Travelling Folk (Gypsies, Carnies, Nomads): UL?

Yes, there are. Some years ago, I drove down the A1198 and I went past a small Romany encampment on the grass verge. It looked like something from an earlier time - painted up traditional caravan, horses, camp fire, the works.

could also have been people on a "Romany Holiday" :D
 
I read very recently that in one of the more well-known Australian abduction cases - I think that of the Beaumont children - that it was rumoured by some that one of the country's fringe religious sects had taken them.

This seems to fit the general theme, but with a new protagonist. I wondered at the time if it was a speculation associated only with this case, or if it might be a bit of a meme in Australian culture.
 
Is there any argument that the Travellers are an ethnic group that arrived from elsewhere?
 
I seriously doubt any travelling group would abduct kids nowadays, and it may have been very rare historically, if it happened at all. Today, there are expensive, high profile manhunts for missing children, it wouldn't be worth it. It sounds a little like fairy abductions as mentioned above. It also sates the need for bored fuckwits to project fears of the worst crimes on a readily identifiable out group.
 
The whole business of industrial-scale* child-snatching has been in recession since kids stopped being regarded as productive units.

Those pesky Education Acts had some impact on that. The clothes-peg stock-market crash added to the problem.

Romani were being offered several palms' crossworth of silver to take unwanted sprogs away; they preferred to deliver invisible tarmac instead.

"My mother said I never should,
"Play with the Gypsies in the wood . . . "

Chance would have been a bloody fine thing! :p

edit: *The freelance pervert, or Abductor Art-is-anal, as he styles himself these days, attracts a lot of attention but can never hope to match the levels of kidnapping attributed to mythological Gypsies. For that, may we be truly grateful.
 
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There’s a spot by the road near Thirsk where we’ve often seen Romani or at least their horses.

Years ago we drove past and my idiot kids saw a group of Romanis on that verge. And did what they always did - waved madly. There was the archetypal toothless crone literally like in every book you’ve seen, huddled by a fire smoking a pipe. You’d have thought she was a time slip only she was surrounded by others all in contemporary clothing. She grinned and waved happily back at the kids.

I thought my kids’ stupid waving was about to start An Incident...
 
I thought my kids’ stupid waving was about to start An Incident...

Why? don't people just wave back at kids? We always do if we come up behind a school bus and they wave at us.

Of course, if they do other gestures I take a photo of the number plate and firm and contact the school. :sdevil:
 
Why? don't people just wave back at kids? We always do if we come up behind a school bus and they wave at us.

Of course, if they do other gestures I take a photo of the number plate and firm and contact the school. :sdevil:
Oh heck, no. I mean when I say "wave" I may mean that word loosley. At the time we had an ancient Volvo estate with the back two seats facing out the back window. So they may not have been entirely "waving"...
 
Oh heck, no. I mean when I say "wave" I may mean that word loosley. At the time we had an ancient Volvo estate with the back two seats facing out the back window. So they may not have been entirely "waving"...

bwhahahahahahaha! :rollingw:
 
Oh heck, no. I mean when I say "wave" I may mean that word loosley. At the time we had an ancient Volvo estate with the back two seats facing out the back window. So they may not have been entirely "waving"...
So when you say she waved back....?:wink2:
 
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