Transportation

Gypsy Folk Tales, by Francis Hindes Groome, [1899], at sacred-texts.com

Transportation.

Banishment and transportation have been important factors in the dispersion of the Gypsies. They were banished from Germany in 1497, Spain in 1499, France in 1504, England in 1531, Denmark in 1536, Moravia in 1538, Scotland in 1541, Poland in 1557, Venetia in 1549, 1558, and 1588, etc.; to such banishment is probably due the fact that in 1564 we find in the Netherlands a Gypsy woman, Katarine Mosroesse, who had been born in Scotland. Besides the transportation, already noticed, of Scottish Gypsies to Jamaica, Barbadoes, and Virginia, of Portuguese Gypsies to Africa and Brazil, of Basque Gypsies to Africa, and of English Gypsies to Botany Bay, we know that some time prior to 1800 Gitanos were transported from Spain to Louisiana; whilst in 1544 we find one large band of Egyptians being sentenced at Huntingdon to be taken to Calais, the nearest English port on the Continent, and another being shipped at Boston in Lincolnshire and landed somewhere in Norway.