Person:William Nowland (7)

Google Books, Original at Harvard University, Our Gipsies in City, Tent, and Van: Containing an Account of Their Origin and Strange Life, Fortune-telling Practices, &c, Specimens of Their Dialect, and Amusing Anecdotes of Gipsy Kings, Queens, and Other Gipsy Notabilities By Vernon S. Morwood, Published by S. Low, 1885 Page 181

THE KING OF THE ORKNEY GIPSIES. The following information appeared in the Daily Chronicle, March 14, 1884. " William Nowland, the king of the Orkney Gipsies, has just died, at the advanced age of 102 years, the record of his age being known from the fact that he was born in the island of Westray. The deceased was a remarkably strong man, retaining all his faculties to the end, and was notorious among various gipsy tribes for the many hard fights he had to go through for what he considered the honour of his family. His funeral, which took place in the parish churchyard of Stromness, was a peculiar one in many respects. The attendants were mostly relatives, prominent among whom was his widow, a gipsy over ninety years of age, and who, during the time the clergyman was offering up prayer over the grave of her departed husband, coolly smoked her pipe, which was passed round to the other female mourners. " A remarkable fact in connection with the Orkney gipsies is that a death amongst them is hardly ever known by the general public, it being apparently their habit to keep such events secret. This is only the second burial known to have taken place within the memory of the present generation."