Peter Jolly's Circus, Caer Sws, 1996.
It was not long ago that, due to the nomadic nature of their lives, circus performers could be charged as vagabonds and imprisoned. 'Lord' George Sanger in his book Seventy Years A Showman tells the story of this injustice being served upon his father: "The Mayor of Warminster, who was a man of very narrow opinions, looked upon show-people as little better than emissaries of the Evil One, and resolved to harass them accordingly. He had been told...that if the showmen drew into the town the night before the fair and slept in their caravans, as the latter were in no sense houses, they could be arrested for 'sleeping out'...The Mayor...had resolved to treat the prisoners as 'rogues and vagabonds' and they would be sentenced to twenty-one days hard labour each."
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