Open Writing

My early years were spent in the Doncaster area and on the various gypsy campsites in different parts of the country.

My dad, who sometimes went by the name of Danny Cook or Danny Wilson, came from Romany Gypsy Roots. He was a filthy untidy man, not the usual Romany but a very hard-working man.

He was obsessed with money. He told us over and over again, “If you haven’t got money you are a nobody.” He would do things both legally and illegally to obtain it.

He did the usual things gypsies did, horse trading or scrap metal dealing along with a bit of poaching, general thieving, a lot of the times taking us with him to teach us how to survive. Even with his ability to earn money we still lived in total filth and squalor as the money he earned went on his favourite
pastimes - drinking, gambling, and other women.

When he couldn’t earn money in his usual ways he would resort to bare knuckle prize fighting. He was a strong, violent man but had a flaw; he had an explosive temper that usually meant he would burn out far too quick. That in turn caused defeat. He used to end up getting some really bad beatings
and make large financial losses, but to him it was a gamble, a way to make money. When he lost a fight he would generally take it out on the ones that were close to him - us.

His other ways to earn money were to commit robberies, commercial and domestic burglaries. He really didn’t care where the money came from or who was on the receiving end
of his antics or how they affected the people concerned, so long as he had his money to carry out his favourite pastimes.

My mum on the other hand was the complete opposite. She was from a staunch socialist working class background, a proud mining family. She was always a smartly dressed woman, strikingly good looking, a very warm and loving, devoted woman.

How she got involved with my dad we will never know. I like to think that she was seduced by stories she had read or heard about the so-called romanticism of gypsy life - the violins while everyone sat around log fires singing and dancing.

Dad was none of this. He was a drunk with a fiery, unpredictable temper. He would go crazy for the slightest reason and as he was drunk most of the time we never knew what to expect. Mum used to get the brunt of the beatings. When we started to cry, he used to set about us shouting and screaming, "No child of mine is going to be a cry-baby."

He was the atypical man - that if we were in a fight at school or on the estate or campsite and ended up with a black eye, he would give us another one. If we were beaten up, he would teach us a lesson by beating us.

My mother suffered at his hands for many years. The violence got worse; the physical and mental torture finally broke her. Which I feel is understandable as each time we settled my dad
would come and snatch us and take us away.

I recall on one occasion we were taken to Gainsborough to my then so-called grandparents that insisted that we were not allowed into their house, and we had to sleep in the back of a van. Originally my dad and his parents lived in a place called Arklow in county Wicklow, which is in southern Ireland.

Things really came to a head after my dad took Vincent and myself from school. On that day Mum had gone to the courts for a divorce and custody hearing.

Whilst she was on her way home he drove to the school and I suppose you could say kidnapped us. I think that was the final stroke. She became withdrawn, started to drink heavily, which led to her becoming untidy and unkempt.

Eventually she cracked and became a victim of chronic depression and literally gave up on life. Inevitably she ended
up in Middlewood Psychiatric Hospital in Sheffield for a number of years. It must have been difficult for her to explain how she came to be in that situation, as I don’t think many people would have understood it, but I do know we didn‘t see her for a number of years.

I feel it best if I try to explain. Mum came from a proud family. However she became pregnant with my brother Frank out of wedlock to my dad, a Romany, which had brought shame on her along with her parents who weren’t so understanding. So unfortunately she ran off to be with my dad who I feel put up with her out of a sense of guilt, or
perhaps he did love her in the beginning.

She would have been treated as you wouldn't have treated a
dog, probably spat at or ignored and definitely not given any support when she needed it, as she was not a gypsy.

When we were born it made matters a lot worse as we were only half gypsies. We couldn’t go to Romany sites, as we were unclean (not pure), so other full gypsies would make life
difficult for us, including my dad. We couldn’t go to an ordinary gypsy/traveller site either. As for being able to fit into conventional society, it seemed to be worse as my mother now carried the stigma of being a traveller with three half-breed children.

So in actual fact we were not Romanys, Gypsies or conventional Joe Public. In fact we were nobodies with no one or nowhere to turn to, so my mum tried to make the best of a bad situation.

It does, however, prove one thing to me and that was of
her fear of Dad and how strong her love and devotion was for my brothers and me. She did, however, manage on occasions to escape from the clutches of my dad and try to regain some sense of respectability by getting council premises. But they
always seemed to be at the rough end, near-derelict or in a poor condition, but then we were classed as filth and not deserving of better.