John Doe - Keeping the flame alive

I came to visit John Doe on his roadside camp in Dorset on a cold and showery spring day earlier this year. Whilst we were talking our Travellers’ Times photographer Eszter Halasi started mooching about and taking photos – some of which you can see here.

I asked John Doe how many Travellers still live horse-drawn and he tells me that he knew of a few. Many Traveller families who live in houses or on sites, he explained, also own wagons and horses, which they take to horse fairs like Appleby.

Henry Sherwood, who is “now in the houses” in Dorset, often goes to visit John when he is camped nearby, and he was there when we arrived.

Henry was brought up in horse-drawn wagons until his family had to give up the nomadic life, like many Traveller families, in the 1960s and 1970s. Henry told me that seeing John made him feel happy, and that he missed the old life.

“It's how I've been brought up,” says John Doe. “It's bred in your bones, it’s in your blood. I can trace my family back, as travellers and gypsies, into the 16th, 17th century. That's all the Doe family all the way back. We've got the Coopers, Pikes, in the bloodline of Doe.

The horse I've got here now, I call her a horse when she's upset with me. But, no, she's what we call a standard cob; a heavy cob. What you have to appreciate is that my wagon runs into quite a few grand. Every mortal thing I own on this planet is in that wagon. So, my cob has got to be bomb proof.

Last night I was here soaked through. Went out and got a bit of wood. Lit my wood burner and was laying in bed listening to that rain. By that time, I was snug as a bug in a rug. That's my pride. That's why I'm proud of what I have. I get my stuff without answering to anyone else or without relying on anyone else. If I don't go out and get the wood to get nice and warm, like I was last night, I stay cold.

You can see the hawthorn coming out and what a lovely, lovely, fresh green it is? That puts a smile on my face to see Mother Nature on the way.

I don't have to work nine to five and have to pay rent or bills, but you do have to earn a bit of a living. I still have to go out and work. I like buying and selling a few horses. I'm pretty big into my scrap metal and bits and pieces, and that's enough just to put the food on the table, pay for the outgoings of my truck and the upkeep of my horses and all the rest of it.

Throughout the centuries there's been many, many laws passed to stop Romany people from traveling, from the death penalty, down to imprisonment and on to the new law that's just come through, where it makes you a criminal just to be on the side of the road.

I am proud of my background, and I think it's important for the Romani people to keep their culture, like I'm trying to keep it going. My culture has been in Britain for hundreds of years. They've brought in so many different laws to outlaw us, and we're still here.”

Interviewed by Mike Doherty

(All photographs by Eszter Halasi)