Big Louie and Me | University of Hertfordshire Press Skip to content
search
menu
  • UH Press
  • About UH Press
  • Browse our catalogue
  • How to order
  • Join our mailing list
  • News
  • Events
  • Author biographies
  • Book proposals
  • Open Access
  • Follow us on social media
  • Contact us
  • Ebook options
University of Hertfordshire
University of Hertfordshire Press
  • UH Press
  • About UH Press
  • Browse our catalogue
  • How to order
  • Join our mailing list
  • News
  • Events
  • Author biographies
  • Book proposals
  • Open Access
  • Follow us on social media
  • Contact us
  • Ebook options
Home > Romani Studies > Big Louie and Me
Section menu

Big Louie and Me

Caravans, curses and cockfights

Author: George Locke

Price: See vendor


Ebook formats

About the book

In 1869 George's great grandmother Alice ran away with a Gypsy boy called Joe Locke, but he soon disappeared when he found out she was carrying a baby. Two years later, when she was sixteen, Alice married her cousin and bore many more children.

At the age of eleven, unable to stand his stepfather's cruelty any longer, George's grandfather set out to search for the birth father he had never met.

Passed from one community of Gypsies to another, after nine months he met a Gypsy woman who stared at him and said, 'You look exactly like my man'. When Joe heard the boy's story, he embraced him and told his wife, “Mercy, this is my eldest son and we're going to look after him”.

  • More about the book

    So begins George Locke's warm-hearted memoir of life in a very close-knit Gypsy community in the Black Country.

    George's relatives formed the tightest bonds around him, keeping the family safe from outsiders.

    His grandmother was known as Big Louie and a more formidable character you couldn't hope (or fear) to meet: four feet ten in every direction, Big Louie smoked a pipe from the age of three and had age-old knowledge of healing plants. No child could forget having Louie's cabbage syrup forced down their sore throat whilst she had them in a headlock with her fingers up their nose.

    George's father was the Sherengro or headman of the camp. A former bare-fist champion, he was a hard man but also kindness itself. The prejudice he suffered made him hate bullies and bigots. Nor would he tolerate any cruelty to animals. Yet as a boy George witnessed fighting between both men and animals and was also sometimes caught up in the shenanigans around these illegal fights, where large sums of money changed hands and bookies didn't always honour bets.

    From a lifetime teeming with incident, George picks out the best stories from the old days: escapades to curl your hair, run-ins with the gavvers (police), with gamekeepers, with Gypsy-haters. Yet at every turn there's great good humour and always a strong sense of right and wrong. Sadness, too, most poignantly in George's tragic love for Sylvy, a Gypsy girl born on the same day as himself and promised to him in marriage on that day.

    This is a book full of lore and quick wit and, above all, a rock-solid belief in family.

  • View the table of contents

    Contents


    1Big Louie1
    2The Camp15
    3Dad27
    4The Judge's Field43
    5Grandad53
    6The Cider House63
    7Reuben69
    8Cockfighting79
    9The Fight87
    10Uncle Del (Knock)97
    11Cousin Scarlet's Wedding105
    12The General111
    13Police117
    14Sylvy125
    15Change of Life177
    16Police Training - Royal Air Force Police195

  • About the Author/s:

    George Locke

    George Locke was born on the edge of the Black Country a few years before the start of the Second World War and lived there in a wooden wagon amongst his extended family.

    He was lucky as his Dad paid for teachers to visit the site and educate some of the children, and he finished off his education in the Royal Air Force. On his return from the Forces he left the Tribe to make his own way in the world.

ISBN: 978-1-907396-82-3 Format: Ebook, 240pp Published: Sep 2012

Other titles you may enjoy

The Roads of the Roma
The Roads of the Roma
All Change!
All Change!
Learn Romani
Learn Romani
Our Forgotten Years
Our Forgotten Years

Any questions

Contact us at UH Press if you have any queries or would like to find out more about this book.

Top of page
  • Assembling Enclosure
  • Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society
  • Farmers, Consumers, Innovators
  • Lady Anne Bacon
  • Wearmouth and Jarrow

Contact us

Switchboard

tel +44 (0) 1707 284000

Admissions Office

tel +44 (0) 1707 284800 fax +44 (0) 1707 284870

Email

ask@herts.ac.uk

Postal Address

University of Hertfordshire Hatfield Hertfordshire, UK AL10 9AB

Location by postcode

College Lane Campus: AL10 9AB de Havilland Campus: AL10 9EU Park and Ride: AL10 8HS

© 2025 University of Hertfordshire

  • HR Excellence in Research logo
  • QAA Quality Mark thumbnail
  • Stonewall logo
Top of page