irish traveller graves

• Researching Irish Traveller Ancestors

Tracing Irish Traveller family history can be extra challenging due to the lack of written records. However, there are clues to be found that can point to Irish Traveller ancestry, and a number of resources to help people discover more.

​ This resource is a work in progress; please feel free to add recommendations and suggestions to this message board thread .

An Lucht Siúil  ( Traveling Folk  lit. the Walking People) or Travellers can refer to a variety of people who lived life on the road. Irish Travellers aka Mincéir aka Pavee are a distinct Irish ethnic group with their own customs, language and traditions. Many live in the UK for all or part of the year. They are a recognised ethnic minority group.

Irish Traveller culture and ancestry

Irish Travellers are a separate cultural group that started migrating to Britain in the early 19th century and can be traced back to 12th century Ireland. 

Population structure & History of Irish travellers

Genetic research found that Irish Travellers are of Irish origin and have significant genetic makeup compared to their settled community. An estimated 40,000 Travellers (less than 1% of the population) are living in Ireland today. Although sometimes called gypsies, they have no genetic relation to  Romani . 

Gene study reveals Irish Travellers' ancestry

The Celtic Travellers DNA project is for descendants and members and of  Irish Travellers , Highland Scottish Travellers, Lowland Scottish Travellers, Fairground Travellers and other  Non-Romani  travelling families. However, Roma or mixed Traveller heritage are also welcome to join.

Celtic Travellers DNA Project

Searching Census & Vital Records for clues

Clues that can suggest Traveller ancestry include:

Occupations: tinker, tinman, tinsmith, whitesmith, dealer, pedlar, horse dealer, basket maker,  peg maker , knife grinder/ sharpener, hawker , musician , and sometimes labourer.

Place of Birth : All the children in the family being born in different places is also a big clue. 

Residence : Unusual residences such as "tent on common"

Irish Gypsies and Irish Travellers are distinct ethnic groups often referred to in parish registers as 'Pavees' or 'Minceir'. 

Irish Traveller Genealogy Resources

Here is a list of useful resources to help you trace Irish Traveller or Mincéir ancestors:

TravellerHeritage.ie

https://www.paveepoint.ie/ PaveePoint.ie

The Romany & Traveller Family History Society

Travellers Times

RomaHeritage.co.uk  |  GypsyWagons.co.uk  |  Gypsy Genealogy

Special Collections:  Liverpool  |  Leeds  |  Reading  |  Surrey  |  Sussex 

IrelandXO Message Board

The IrelandXO message board can be a great resource for finding out more about Irish Traveller family histories and connecting with other descendants. Click on the links to read some interesting message board threads:

Need Information on "Tinkers", "Travelers"

McDonough/McDonagh family from Killedan

O'Brien/O'Leary

Doran in Galway

IrelandXO Traveller Timelines

• Traveling Folk in the 1930s

Irish Traveller Buildings & Places

• St Nicholas of Myra, Francis St, DUBLIN
• Long Mile Road WALKINSTOWN

Irish Traveller Photo Collections

UCD Digital Collection

Common Irish Traveller Family Names

Berry, Brown, Cash , Carmody, Carthy, Casey, Cassidy, Cawley , Clark, Collins, Connors , Conroy, Corcoran, Cunningham, Delaney, Doherty , Donoghue/ O’Donoghue, Donovan , Doran, Dunne , Flynn, Furey , Gallagher, Green, Hanafin/ Hannifin , Hand, Hanley, Hanrahan, Harper, Hennessey, Joyce , Keating, Keenan, Kerrigan, Kiely, Lawrence, Lee, Lynch, Maguire, Malone, Maloney, Maughan , Mongan, Moorehouse McCarthy , MacDonald, McDonagh , MacDonnell, MacAleer, McCann, McDonnell, McGinley, McInerney, MacLoughlin, McRea, Nevin, Nolan, O’Donnell, O’Reilly / Reilly, Power, Purcell, Price, Quinn, Stokes , Sweeney, Ward , Wall, Windrum.

​Famous Irish Traveller Ancestors 

Sean Connery's ancestor: James Connery born circa 1840

Margaret Barry born 1917

The Duchás Folklore Collection

Between 1937 and 1939, primary school pupils across the Republic of Ireland interviewed the elderly in their neighborhood to collect and record local stories and folklore from the 19th century. "The Schools Collection" as it became known is held by the Dúchas Folklore Collection in UCD and is and has been digitized online at duchas.ie. One of the topics schoolchildren were asked to write about were "Travelling Folk" or An Lucht Siúil. Click here  to read a selection of what "settled" children wrote about travelers in the late 1930s.

Are you descended from Irish Travellers? Add their story to the IrelandXO website and connect with other descendants living all around the world. 

Additional Advice from our IrelandXO Community

My great-grandmother was from Galway Travellers, it took me years to put together the best family history I could manage.  If you are not sure the name you are looking for is a Traveling People name you might go to the Pavee Point site and search other sites under Traveller History, names, etc.   There are different groups of people who seem to come under the category of "Traveller", Irish, English,  UK, Scotland & Wales),  Roma, Romania & South Eastern European, Carnival & Show Travelers, and I'm sure others. Families often marry within particular other families, I saw an online list of which families marry into which other name families and first names are repeated thru generations like the Irish naming pattern used to be, these lists are usually individual observations and quite old.  In addition to the name on UK census records you might find the address listed as "in Tents",  "in Lanes", etc.  The occupation might be listed, such as it was for my great grandfather, as Tinman , as the Traveling people used to do pot mending and such things as they moved from place to place.  Location can be difficult because of moving from place to place,  often within a particular area, such as only Munster,  or Scotland to Ireland, I spent years finding a family member who had gone to Wales.  Then of course someone you are searching may have gotten Transportation to Australia or be in prison in England, sometimes waiting several years there before transportation. This might be a bit of luck for you as records for prison and transportation are online.   Of course you can always search the parish registers in a particular area you are interested in, as Traveling People are likely to be Roman Catholic and very likely to have their children baptized which would be recorded along with other church sacramental records, marriage etc.  Also consider that many people with Irish Travelling people heritage were settled and maybe had not been going from place to place for years, if not generations.   As far as DNA sites I recommend My Heritage , this site has more Irish, UK, English than any other I have seen.  If your DNA is on another site you probably can transfer it to My Heritage for free, its very worthwhile.  Make good use of your higher number DNA matches by checking the shared matches for repeat names. 

Elaine Walsh

** originally published in 2022

We hope you have found the information we have shared helpful. While you are here, we have a small favour to ask. Ireland Reaching Out is a non-profit organisation that relies on public funding and donations to ensure a completely free family history advisory service to anyone of Irish heritage who needs help connecting with their Irish place of origin. If you would like to support our mission, please click on the donate button and make a contribution. Any amount, big or small, is appreciated and makes a difference. 

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Welcome to Meath Travellers Workshops

Parish records of surnames, surnames and locations from parish newsletter.

This research was made possible by a generous grant from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Virtually all Irish Travellers are Catholics and virtually all of them mark the great turning-points of life (birth, marriage, death…) with church ceremonies. Their mobility may keep them outside standard parish-based structures, in which they may also feel unwelcome or misunderstood. Territorially-defined parishes are complemented by The Parish of the Travelling People, a Dublin-based outreach service. It issues a newsletter which, in addition to its coverage of spiritual themes and Parish-organised events such as pilgrimages, also carries death and marriage notices, and includes many photographs of weddings, first communions and confirmations, all of which may or may not have been handled by the Parish. I have examined as many issues as I could access, spanning 1991-2006, noting surnames and locations as well as which surnames are paired in marriage (covered separately as “Who marries who”).

In the newsletter, locations are sometimes given in minute detail, as an individual estate, site or even street (all of these are in the greater Dublin area). I felt that putting that much detail on the worldwide web would invade people’s privacy, so the compromise has been to divide Dublin into City Centre, Northside, Southside and Dublin West (“Dublin east” is the Bay). Under each of these area headings I note the placenames that have cropped up in it, then surnames in alphabetical order followed by a number indicating how many different places within the area each was mentioned in – but not which ones. Note that how many different places a name crops up in doesn’t tell you how often it crops up.

At the other end of the scale, placenames are sometimes vague (“England”) – I pass them on for what they’re worth. Where no location was mentioned, I have not included the surname.

Thanks to Father Stephen, Geraldine, Kyron and everyone else in the Parish office who helped me class obscure Dublin locations. They also identified some unusual surnames as nonTraveller (e.g. the summer 2002 issue covers the funeral of DTEDG/Pavee Point founder John O’Connell, attended by many people from both communities) and these have not been included. Where I am not certain whether an unusual surname refers to a Traveller, I include it followed by a (?). Some of these may be typographical errors: for example I was surprised to see neighbours listed as “Mochan” when the whole family spells their name “Maughan”.

Please bear in mind that this information comes from as far back as 1991, and only includes people who had christenings, weddings etc. during this period, that came to the attention of the Parish. The list is neither up-to-date nor exhaustive, but it is interesting.

DUBLIN CITY CENTRE

CORK STREET, GRAND CANAL/BASIN LANE, PHIBSBORO, QUEEN STREET, RINGSEND

MacDonald 1

DUBLIN NORTHSIDE

AVILA PARK BALBRIGGAN BALDOYLE BALLYMUN BELCAMP BLANCHARDSTOWN CABRA CAPPAGH CARA PARK COOLOCK DARNDALE

DRIMNAGH DUNSINK FINGLAS GROVE/LANE LADYSWELL MALAHIDE MORGAN PLACE/NAVAN ROAD MULHUDDERT/CRUISERATH PRIORSWOOD SWORDS

Cunningham 1

Gallagher 1

Hennessey (?) 1

McDonnell 3

O’Donnell 4

Windrum [sic] (?) 1

DUBLIN WEST

BALLYFERMOT BALLYOWEN BAWNOGUE BROOKFIELD CLONDALKIN INCHICORE LABRE PARKLUCAN/BALGADDY LYNCH’S LANE NAAS ROAD NEWCASTLE OLIVER’S PARK RATHCOOLE TALLAGHT

Carey (? – probably a misprint for Casey]) 1

Gorgon [sic] (Goggins?) 1

Moorehouse 1

MacDonnell 1

McInerney 1

MacLoughlin (?) 1

O’Donnell 1

O’/Donoghue 2

O’/ Reilly 4

SOUTH DUBLIN

BALLYOGAN CABINTEELY CARRICKMINES KIMMAGE LEOPARDSTOWN/ BURTON HALL MONKSTOWN RATHFARNHAM SALLYNOGGIN SANDYFORD

Cranny (?) 1

O’Brien 1

O’Leary 1

O’Rourke 1

"DUBLIN" (NO AREA GIVEN)

*************

Note: where no town name is given it is reasonable to assume that what is meant is the town with the same name as the county – Carlow, Galway, Longford etc.

CO. KILDARE

O’Brien

CO. LONGFORD

Traynor (?)

CO. WESTMEATH

CO. WEXFORD

Enniscorthy

CO. WICKLOW

(O’)Brien

O’Driscoll

O’Sullivan

CO TIPPERARY

CO. WATERFORD

O’Reilly

CO. LEITRIM

CO. ROSCOMMON

“ENGLAND”

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‘A clash of cultures’: Irish opinion split over Travellers’ elaborate headstones

Community representatives say a ‘good sendoff’ is a religious necessity, but others say it introduces a competitive element

T he latest addition to Ballyhaunis cemetery in Ireland’s County Mayo towers over neighbouring headstones in a blaze of white marble and ornamentation. Rose-wreathed pillars frame a tableau of statues showing Jesus, angels, cherubim and biblical scenes, including an engraving of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

Marble tablets express bereavement in gold letters, a photo of the deceased gazes from a carved stone bench and lanterns with diamond-shaped bulbs and electric sensors flank the central slab.

It is the headstone of a beloved wife and mother – and the latest flashpoint in a dispute over aesthetics, culture and tolerance that has split public opinion in Ireland .

Members of the Traveller community have in recent years erected large, elaborate headstones that, depending on perspective, are moving testaments to grief and loss or garish spectacles of one-upmanship.

Some sprout flags and have fake jukeboxes, others have marble depictions of vehicles, football jerseys, pets, beer bottles, boxing gloves and dartboards.

Such displays were expressions of love from a marginalised community with shockingly high mortality rates, said Martin Collins, a co-director of Pavee Point , which represents Travellers and Roma. “They are remembering the person who has just passed. It really is important that Travellers are seen to be given a good sendoff. It’s not a materialistic thing, it’s a very religious, holy thing.”

The monument in Ballyhaunis has set a precedent of sorts by becoming a tourist attraction. “We heard about it in the pub and couldn’t leave without seeing it,” said Paul Walsh, 34, who braved icy winds to visit the cemetery last week. “I was in the Vatican recently and this is giving me a Vatican vibe.”

His friend Niall Prenty, 34, said it was impressive. “Certainly more extravagant than I had expected. It’s over the top and there’s something outrageous about it but it doesn’t bother me. Fair play to them.”

Detractors, however, say extra-large headstones violate planning rules, overshadow other graves and introduce an element of competition.

“They’re getting bigger and bigger,” said Michael McCullagh, 84, who has objected to Galway county council over headstones in Creagh cemetery outside Ballinasloe, about an hour’s drive from Ballyhaunis. “The Ballinasloe graveyard is not an exhibition centre. It’s a serene place, a sacred place for our ancestors. Once we’re under the ground, we’re all equal.”

McCullagh’s daughter, parents and grandparents are buried at Creagh and he has a plot earmarked for himself and his wife. “Is the suggestion of that edifice,” he said, indicating a black marble headstone with swirling pillars, “that they have more love for their dead than we do?” The auctioneer said he had no animus against Travellers but that some headstones verged on “monstrous”.

Some recent monuments were reputedly installed with cranes at night. Galway county council said it received 11 complaints about one at Creagh and wished to question the contractor.

Controversy has extended to Sheffield in England where the city council is under pressure to remove a 37-tonne mausoleum erected in Shiregreen cemetery in 2022 to honour Willy Collins, an Irish Traveller “king” and bareknuckle boxing champion who died in 2020 at the age of 49.

His widow, Kathleen, told reporters: “There have been vicious comments on social media from those who hate the Traveller community and they have left the whole family feeling very hurt and angry. People are threatening to pull the monument down or damage it, while the council is saying we may have to change it, but if that happens there’s going to be war.”

Martin Collins, the Traveller representative, said Traveller families should respect planning rules but urged the settled community to show tolerance and understanding. “What’s happening here is a clash of cultures and cultural values. There has to be some accommodation to respect everyone’s traditions.”

He said prehistoric burial sites such as the famous Newgrange monument and tombs of illustrious figures at Dublin’s Glasnevin cemetery dwarfed Traveller headstones.

At Ballyhaunis graveyard, one woman said she had no objection to big monuments as long as they did not come too close to her son’s grave. Fahed Kezze, 39, who was visiting the Muslim section, said families should be able to erect large monuments, though that was not his family’s preference. “My mother is in a simple grave but we built two wells in India that are named after her,” he said.

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Just Call Us Kin-cinnati: The Travelers Who Visit Spring Grove Cemetery

Illustration by Zachary Ghaderi

S ince the late 1800s, local law enforcement and media warned of the springtime “invasion” of nomadic peddlers, fortune tellers, and tinsmiths from all over the nation. Curious in customs, speech, and dress, the visitors rode into town in barrel-shaped horse-drawn wagons; camped along the Mill Creek in Northside, Carthage, and Lockland; and cooked on open fires.

They came to swindle residents, said the warnings, divide up territory for organized crime, and possibly steal children. (They needed the babies, you see, to breed into their gene pool, which was perverted by intermarriage.) As railroads were built, they began shipping their dead here for burials.

What sounds like a crackpot fable has a few surprising kernels of truth and astonishing staying power. You may have heard of the “Gypsy funerals” in Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum over Memorial Day weekend, or even seen for yourself the oversized floral displays laid at the foot of red granite gravestones. Maybe you remember the Cincinnati Business Courier , from 2009 through 2016, using the relative modesty or copiousness of what the paper called “gaudy” floral displays as bellwethers indicating the general economy’s direction.

Photograph provided by The Necro Tourist

Perhaps you are unaware of the tradition, as many locals are. Either way, it’s a thing. A misunderstood thing.

About 400 of these nomads come through Cincinnati annually, according to past police figures. (Cincinnati Police officials did not respond to requests for updated information.) Prior to World War II, their presence was more visible. In clothing more starkly different from ours than it is today, they would draw water from public pumps and bring it back to campsites observable from the road. They were called Gypsies then, and often still are today.

The first thing to know about these “Gypsies” is that they aren’t gypsies in the traditional sense. The second thing to know is that gypsy is a pejorative word, offensive to those more accurately known as Travelers (who are mainly indigenous to the British Isles) or Rom, Roma, or Romany (originating two millennia ago in India). The third thing: Whatever you’ve heard about Travelers in Cincinnati is second-hand information, including this article. Because, importantly, fourth: Travelers do not talk to outsiders.

In the U.S., many Travelers, whose numbers are unknown, maintain customs such as making large purchases with cash and working as psychics or mobile repairmen. It’s not a monolithic culture, of course. Many descendants of Travelers are indistinguishable from the average Joe. Others are more quietly Old World, similar in many ways to the more traditional Roma.

Cincinnati has its share of Rom residents and visitors, but Travelers are more numerous here. To split a hair, the Scottish and Irish Travelers who circle through Cincinnati are for the most part not Rom or have little Rom blood from intermarriage. But they’ll often have lifestyle likenesses with Roma, the result of a similar itinerant life.

Most Travelers in the U.S. are Christian. Like fundamentalists or cult members, though, quite a lot of them cleave to practices that keep them intentionally separate from “gadje,” or non-Roma: intermarriage, restrictive cleansing rituals, a marked difference in gender roles, a disinclination to send children to high school, and a belief that outsiders are “unclean.”

By definition, Travelers move—though less so in the U.S. than elsewhere. They’re more under-the-radar here, especially compared to their more impoverished and persecuted European counterparts. As the diaspora continues to span the globe, Cincinnati stands as an unexpected yet important locus for those based in the U.S. It isn’t just a regular stop in their journeys—it’s the national headquarters for many.

“You could say Cincinnati is a temporary capital,” says podcast host Sam Biagetti. The most popular of the 140 episodes of his Historiansplaining show is about Travelers.

Baby-stealers or colorful bohemians? There’s an idealized view of itinerant people. They are exoticized as flamenco dancers and music-makers, carefree ramblers living off the grid. They eschew “homogenous Netflix culture,” as Biagetti puts it. They are not losers who can’t afford homes, but modern hunter-gatherers whose closeness to extended family provides a connectedness that gadje sorely yearn for. They inspired the #vanlife and #gypset brands of on-the-go chic.

Reality is somewhere in between. “They’re different,” Robert Winter says of the Travelers who have patronized St. Joseph New Cemetery in Price Hill since 1872. The Gorman and Hamilton surnames reign, with some 350 plots between them. “They always pay in cash. Two or three guys will come in and pull out rolls of $100 bills,” says Winter, who, as general manager of the Catholic cemetery, has served Travelers for more than 40 years. “They try to outdo each other with monuments. There’s a black faceted one with gold lettering, and so last year a 10-foot slab went up.”

One grave was recently festooned with floral sculptures depicting a Chicago Cubs logo and a pair of white horses. At the cemetery entrance on Rapid Run Road is a 6-foot disc, evoking a wagon wheel, inscribed “Gorman’s.” The apostrophe may be a grammatical error, but it could also be seen as intentional; the extended family occupies a good chunk of real estate here, more than 500 plots.

“Bernie Hamilton is the person we deal with, their leader,” says Winter. “He’s a big, strong guy with meat-cleaver hands. One time about 25 years ago we were finishing business in the office and one of the younger boys came in and peeled a $100 bill off the pile, put it in his pocket and walked off. The next day, Bernie hauled the kid in by the ear and made him give it back. He told the kid, Apologize! These people have been good to us! ” (Hamilton, a 75-year-old roofing contractor in Oswego, Illinois, according to his Facebook profile, did not return phone calls. Messages to several other members of the Gorman family also went unanswered.)

Why poke into the lives of those who want to remain anonymous? I woke up in the middle of the night with this question, posed by a man who does business with Travelers but declined to go on the record. It’s an important part of Cincinnati history, I told him, a chapter that’s been told inaccurately. Another reason is that the Travelers’ quietness has left a void in the public sphere that gets filled by rumors and what scraps of information we do have. Most of the factual records are crime reports. What doesn’t get notated is the significant economic and societal benefit of their presence here.

The story I originally hoped for was not to be. The Travelers would not take the mic and speak for themselves. A single one allowed an interview on condition I not use his real name. I have instead relied on conversations with historians, law enforcement, and those who do business with Travelers supplemented with information from books, scholarly research, documentaries, message boards, and news reports.

W e know them best from their burials. The wayfarers return to Cincinnati faithfully, shipping bodies of loved ones across multiple states. Many in these dynasties have no other relationship to the city. And while many aspects of the Traveler lifestyle have changed over the decades—shifting from covered wagons to luxury cars, life on the road to settled existence, floor-length dresses to miniskirts—Cincinnati’s importance as the gathering place remains constant.

The Irish Travelers hold 15-minute graveside funerals instead of the church services of yore. They come throughout the year, not on one appointed holiday as the Scottish do. They don’t dress up for the occasion. “The men are in T-shirts and jeans, and the young women are often, um, inappropriately dressed,” Winter says. “There’s never a problem with them. But they do drink a lot. They drink before, after, and sometimes during the service. If it starts at 11, they’ll show up at the cemetery at 10 and will be here until 2 or 3 in the afternoon.” Fights have broken out, and once a family member stole the car of another. The Crow’s Nest bar, near the cemetery, often becomes the site of a days-long wake.

On the other side of town at Spring Grove Cemetery in Spring Grove Village, Scottish Travelers, who are mainly Protestant (and increasingly Pentecostal), bury and honor their loved ones each Memorial Day weekend. Julie Niesen, a Cincinnati writer and small business owner, makes a point of strolling through on that holiday to catch a glimpse. “What struck me was the children’s graves, where they still place kid-themed floral arrangements,” she says. “One kid had been gone 40 or 50 years, and there was a brand new Shrek-themed arrangement. That melted even my cold, cynical heart.”

Barbara Osterbrock Loukes, a florist, is another longtime observer of Scottish Travelers. She grew up riding her bike through Spring Grove. “I thought, Man, these people spend a lot on flowers! ” Now they’re her clients. At Osterbrock Florist in North College Hill, she arranges blooms in baskets and on easels and places them at Spring Grove, predominantly in section 17. The graves bear the surnames Johnston, Stewart, Halliday, Horne, Reid, Gregg, Keith, Williamson, Burns, and McDonald. (It’s important to note that not everyone interred at Spring Grove with those names is a Traveler.)

“We do a lot of placing by death year because there are 100 Virginia Stewarts,” says Loukes. “It’s very confusing.” (Travelers and Roma are known for repeating names within families, even giving multiple siblings the same name, and referring to kin by their nicknames.) Memorial Day, she says, “is like their Christmas. It’s their big holiday. They put out lawn chairs and visit with each other.”

Loukes knows it’s one of the clan on the phone when orders start up in the spring. “They all talk alike, no matter where they come from,” she says. “It’s a thick accent. I can’t describe it. They talk very fast and over you and over each other. They repeat themselves a lot, some of them.” Loukes’s associate, Heather McGuire, adds, “They’re very warm. When you finish a conversation, they’ll say, Love you! ”

Williamson is the best known Scottish Traveler name. The family was the inspiration for the 1997 movie Traveller , starring Bill Paxton and Mark Wahlberg as con men from a tribe that lives in a jumble of mobile homes in the woods. The frequency of the scams said to be operated by them—shoddy contracting, selling fake Irish lace—led to them being dubbed the “Terrible Williamsons” by Newsweek in 1956. The moniker stuck, repeated in publications as established as The Saturday Evening Post. The Newsweek article, a journalistic “patient zero,” seeded subsequent reports. Its exaggerations about the extent of the roving family’s purported crimes were debunked in the academic Journal of American Culture in 1997, but the words had been printed four decades prior, and they spread. It may have been correct, however, when the piece called Cincinnati the family’s “command post.”

“The Williamsons first arrived in Cincinnati in the 1800s,” says Dennis Marlock, a retired lieutenant detective from the Milwaukee Police Department. “Robert Williamson started luring other Travelers to the U.S. by saying, There’s a sea of gullible marks here .” In the 1990s, Marlock developed a seminar to teach cops how to combat crimes associated with Travelers and Roma. (Such profiling still takes place; a training session like Marlock’s was scheduled for this month in Kansas City until accusations of bias forced it to be cancelled.)

Marlock believes Roma and Travelers are “organized crime,” but he allows a caveat. “They were doing roofing and driveway scams, but sometimes they did good work,” he says. “They were capable of that.”

Is the rate of crime by Travelers any higher than that of the general public? It’s impossible to say, since Traveler identity isn’t captured by demographic studies or the U.S. Census. What isn’t questioned is that crimes by Travelers are, by a wide margin, nonviolent, and that police harassment of Travelers has been rife. It began with evicting them from campsites and escalated to barring them from living in certain cities or states—in essence, from existing.

Some of those laws have only recently been struck from the books. Cincinnati Police no longer videotape Travelers at funerals and follow them back to their hotels from the cemetery—something they boasted of doing in the 1980s—but last year the Mariemont Police issued a public warning about scams by “gypsies.” I called to ask when the last such complaint was reported. The answer: Eleven years ago.

Stan Davies knows from profiling and harassment. The 70-year-old is typical of Travelers living in Ohio. A descendant of English immigrants who settled in Dayton in 1855, he has Indian and Anatolian genes, traces of the peregrinations of his Rom ancestors. He grew up with some aspects of Rom culture but has always lived a settled life. He looks and sounds like any other middle-aged Buckeye. Like some Travelers, he still uses the G-word. (Stan Davies is not his real name; he requested anonymity to speak freely. “My friends and clients don’t know I’m a Gypsy,” he says. “I could lose business.”)

“We were always taught not to wash our hair or wash a baby in the kitchen sink,” says Davies. It’s a watered-down particular of Roma cleaning practices, which also involve laundering women’s clothing separately from men’s. His grandmother would make “gypsy” bread, which is pan-fried and unleavened, a vestige of campfire cooking. In a common Traveler tradition of communal family support, he learned home improvement trades and turned over his entire paycheck to his father well into his twenties. Davies bristles at the characterization of Travelers as rip-off artists. “I am a licensed painting contractor,” he says. “We have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.”

Still, the police seminars started by Dennis Marlock “would super-criminalize us,” he says. “The police would say, Be on the lookout for Gypsies . [Traveler] families who may have been there for years would be terrorized. People were encouraged not to pay Gypsies for legitimate work.”

T he first prominent traveler to call Cincinnati home was John Gorman, who emigrated from County Cavan, Ireland, in the mid-1800s. Living on Dirr Street, just steps from the Mill Creek in what’s now South Cumminsville, he was friends with Charles A. Miller, whose eponymous funeral home sat at the corner of Hamilton Avenue and Knowlton Street in Northside. They were both Civil War veterans and horse-traders. Gorman’s achievements—he ran a rodeo!—were documented in The Enquirer and The Penny Paper, precursor to The Cincinnati Post . His stature made him a beacon for family far and wide.

The origins of the Scottish Travelers here are less evident. There are more families, and they’re less cohesively related. How did they come to patronize Spring Grove? Oft told is the story that a Traveler child passing through Northside was killed by a horse carriage or a street car. The family could not afford a burial, but Miller offered to take care of it on credit (or for free; versions differ). The interment was at Spring Grove Cemetery, so the story goes. Word of the kindness spread in the wandering communities, and the gesture was repaid with more than a century’s worth of repeat business to both Miller and Spring Grove. (A Spring Grove representative said the cemetery does not comment on clients.)

It’s a heartwarming tale, so it’s too bad that it may not be true. It emerged in a 1990 essay by Paul Erwin, a late University of Cincinnati professor, who said he learned it from Pete Miller, the last relative of Charles A. Miller to be involved in the business. But Erwin’s telling of the story doesn’t include any benevolence on the part of Spring Grove; it was the funeral home that made the grand gesture.

Although there’s a slim possibility the tale is accurate, there is no corroboration of it anywhere and no mention of it in a century’s worth of pre-1990 media coverage of Travelers. Subsequent repetitions and looseness in the press of Erwin’s original words created a game of “telephone,” conflating the two establishments. (In fact, Erwin said the child’s name was Gorman, in which case he or she would have most likely been interred at St Joseph.)

The selection of Spring Grove is probably less due to the cinematic fate of an unlucky child and more to the cemetery’s proximity to the Mill Creek camping spots and the Northside offerings within walking distance: horse-trading, wagon-making, a water pump, and the undisputed home for Traveler funeral services, Charles A. Miller. Spring Grove was also nondenominational, something novel in the 1800s.

Widening the lens from Spring Grove to the city of Cincinnati, geographic centrality is the most logical reason this area became the home-away-from-home for Travelers. It made a convenient meeting point for people edging North in summer and South in winter. As Traveler families multiplied and dispersed across the nation, an agreed-upon time and place for reunions helped maintain customs and relationships. The wakes that anchor the gatherings are only one part of the events: They were (and are) an occasion to announce engagements, arrange marriages for the next generation (that still happens), and—as law enforcement has it—divide up territory for “business.”

Many Traveler women still tell fortunes, modernizing their profession’s name to “psychic reader” or “spiritual advisor.” As for the scams and swindles, yes, they’ve happened. The Cincinnati chapter of the Better Business Bureau, which decades ago regularly warned of Traveler visits, now says it has no records of recent reports. What is likely—but never mentioned—is that the Travelers have poured way more money into Cincinnati’s economy than they’ve ever pulled out. Monuments, cemetery plots, flowers, hotels, restaurants…it adds up.

Chances are great you have come in contact with a Traveler, done business with one, or are acquainted with one, who, like Stan Davies, never told you of their heritage. In this era of self-revelation, identity pride, and “connectedness,” why don’t we hear more about this subculture? “My grandfather said that if everybody knows your business, you don’t have any business,” says Davies. “Hold your cards close to your chest. Love all, trust few.”

Observers of the clans say it’s only a matter of time before its more extreme differences fizzle out. “There are changes in the wind,” says Dennis Marlock. “Because of the internet, it’s getting harder to keep the culture together. The kids can see life outside what they’ve been told their whole lives is the best life on the planet.”

Perhaps. But modern communication methods were said to be degrading the colorful culture more than a century ago. “They are getting used to the telegraph more and more everyday,” reports an 1897 newspaper article. “Poetically inclined persons may agree with the old-school Romany that this innovation is a regrettable one, but the convenience of the wire appeals to the young gypsy.” The Enquirer lamented in 1902 that “the romance of gypsy life is really fast disappearing” because of the automobile. The Post , in 1976, announced, “Gypsies are, shockingly, becoming homeowners.”

Death customs, though, have not changed. Both Robert Winter, at St. Joseph New Cemetery, and Barbara Osterbrock Loukes, who services clients at Spring Grove, say business is as brisk as ever. A culture that’s been dirt poor, undereducated, and persecuted for two millennia—yet continues to thrive and maintain a semblance of ancestral ways—isn’t easily obliterated by Facebook.

“They would have disappeared long ago if there was not a viable niche and demand for what they have to offer in society,” says historian Biagetti. “Travelers and the settled majority are not opposites that cannot reconcile. They are two sides of the same coin, all part of the same civilization. I don’t see them as a holdover from the past. I see them as part of modern society, just in a different role from others.”

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The Picture Show

Daily picture show, documenting the irish travellers: a nomadic culture of yore.

Lauren Rock

Throughout my life I have regularly traveled to my mother's home city of Dublin. During these trips I would regularly see groups of people living in caravans on the sides of the road, and I always wondered who they were and what their lives were like.

I later found out they belonged to a small ethnic minority called "Travellers" — nomads who spend most of their life, literally on the road. While their history has been hard to document — they have no written records — they are thought to have separated from the settled Irish community at least 1,000 years ago.

The Travellers (until recently also called "tinkers" or "gypsies") often live in ad hoc encampments, in direct contrast to "settled" people in Ireland. They are thought to be descended from a group of nomadic craftsman, with the name "tinker" a reference to the sound of a hammer hitting an anvil. (The reference is now considered derogatory.)

In 1965 Dublin-born photographer Alen MacWeeney stumbled across a Travellers' encampment and became fascinated with their way of life. He spent the next six years making photographs and recording their stories and music. Despite shooting the photos in the late '60s, it wasn't until 2007 that he found a publisher for his work.

Bernie Ward, Cherry Orchard Courtesy of Alen MacWeeney hide caption

Bernie Ward, Cherry Orchard

In his book, Irish Travellers: Tinkers No More — which also comes with a CD of Traveller music recordings — MacWeeny shows us a gritty, intimate portrait of the people he eventually came to call friends. He compares the Travellers to the migrant farmers of the American Depression: "poor, white, and dispossessed."

"Theirs was a bigger way of life than mine, with its daily struggle for survival, compared to my struggle to find images symbolic and representative of that life," he said in his book.

MacWeeney got his start at age 20 as an assistant for Richard Avedon in Paris and has since made a career as a portrait and fashion photographer. But his images of the Travellers reveal a raw and intimate side to his work.

"Traveller families have always been very close-knit, held together in a tight unspoken knot, with lifelong bonds and sometimes varying a lifelong set of troubles," he said.

Today, however, the Traveller lifestyle has changed dramatically from even a few decades ago. Many have embraced modern culture and become "settled," no longer living apart from the mainstream. There is even a reality TV show, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding , which showcases Traveller girls and their theatrical, over-the-top weddings.

But MacWeeney believes that the Travellers are "reluctant as settled and envy the other life of travelling." His book stands as a document of an era, and a way of life that is slowly fading into the past.

• PHOTOGRAPHY

Life With the Irish Travellers Reveals a Bygone World

One photographer spent four years gaining unprecedented access to this close-knit community.

When Birte Kaufmann first encountered Irish Travellers, she was on a trip with friends in the Irish countryside and saw a girl and her little brother running toward a roadside camp. The caravans and horses reminded Kaufmannn, who is German, of the Romany camps she had seen elsewhere in Europe, but the people looked intriguingly different.

Who were they, she wondered, and how could she delve deeper into their culture?

"People said, You'll never get an insight into that community—forget about it," Kaufmann recalls of sharing with Irish friends her burgeoning plans to photograph the close-knit Travellers.

An ethnic minority in Ireland , the Travellers have lived on the margins of mainstream Irish society for centuries. Efforts have been made to incorporate the nomadic group into mainstream culture by settling them into government housing and enforcing school attendance. But even living among "settled people," they face ongoing discrimination.

Kaufmann describes theirs as a parallel world, where deeply-rooted gender roles and an itinerant lifestyle have kept them apart from the broader Irish community even as their freedom to roam has become increasingly curtailed.

To gain access to the community, Kaufmann first attempted to engage through human rights groups that work with them—to no avail. So she decided to do it "the hard way," she says. She had heard about a “halting site”—walled areas on the outskirts of large towns that contain houses as well as spaces for caravan parking—and on her next trip to Ireland, she simply showed up.

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She was met by barking dogs, one of which bit her. A young woman approached, speaking English with an accent so thick that Kaufmann had trouble comprehending. Undeterred, she decided to lay her cards on the table. "I was really honest. I told [her] I was coming from Germany , where we don't have our own traveling community, [that] I knew who they were and was interested in how [they live]," Kaufmann recalls.

The young woman "was totally surprised, but finally they invited me for a cup of tea. I was sitting in a caravan with her grandfather. I asked them if I could come back and stay with them." Kaufmann says they chortled, as if to say, Yeah, right.

When she next returned from Germany, it was with a camper van of her own, so that she could stay alongside the extended family clan that would become the focus of her project. "I knew it was a high risk," she says, “but I gave them some pictures I had taken in the caravan of the grandfather. And they said, 'Ok. Now you're here. We have the images. One cup of tea. Now go. We are busy.'"

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As a photographer, and especially as a woman, Kaufmann was something of a novelty given the strictly defined gender roles of the Traveller community—men tend to the horses and livestock, women to home and family. Girls marry young and only with the blessing of their parents. Men don’t typically speak to women in public.

She slowly gained their trust to the point that one of the family members—a young mother who took a particular shine to her and was perhaps even amused at her struggle to understand what they were saying—began teaching her Gammon, their unwritten language.

"She tried to teach me words to say if the guys are being rude," she says. "And then the father started telling me what I should say. [They] tried to make me feel more comfortable." Her knowledge of words selectively and seldom shared with outsiders demonstrated to other Travellers that one of their own had trusted her enough to share.

And in turn, understanding how they communicate with each other helped her get past the sense of feeling unwelcome and deepened her appreciation of their differences. "At first [the talk] sounds really rough," she says. "Then there was this point at which I realized it was their language. They don't really call anyone by name. It's 'the woman over there,' 'the man over there,' 'the child,'" she explains. "It's not personal, [but] at first it sounds very rude.”

Kaufmann made multiple visits to the family over the course of four years, eventually living with them. The men gradually accepted her and allowed her to photograph them hunting and trading horses at a fair. She was able to blend into the background and photograph them as an unobtrusive observer of their everyday lives—lives, she says, that are filled with a lot of idle time. As Ireland becomes less agrarian, the Travellers’ traditional work as horse traders, farm laborers, tinsmiths, and entertainers has become more scarce.

"The older generations can't read or write," Kaufmann says, "but they have their own intelligence. On the one hand life was so sad and boring because everything their lives were stemming from wasn't there anymore. On the other hand there was this freedom—they live their lives in their own way."

And then, she says, she found herself taking no photographs at all. "One of the boys who really didn't like to be photographed said, 'Do you know what's really strange with Birte now? She's here and she's not really photographing anymore.'"

And that's when she knew her project was done.

Birte Kaufmann's project on the Travellers is now available as a book . You may also see more of Birte Kaufmann's photographs on her website .

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‘A clash of cultures’: Irish opinion split over Travellers’ elaborate headstones

The latest addition to Ballyhaunis cemetery in Ireland’s County Mayo towers over neighbouring headstones in a blaze of white marble and ornamentation. Rose-wreathed pillars frame a tableau of statues showing Jesus, angels, cherubim and biblical scenes, including an engraving of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

Marble tablets express bereavement in gold letters, a photo of the deceased gazes from a carved stone bench and lanterns with diamond-shaped bulbs and electric sensors flank the central slab.

It is the headstone of a beloved wife and mother – and the latest flashpoint in a dispute over aesthetics, culture and tolerance that has split public opinion in Ireland .

Members of the Traveller community have in recent years erected large, elaborate headstones that, depending on perspective, are moving testaments to grief and loss or garish spectacles of one-upmanship.

Some sprout flags and have fake jukeboxes, others have marble depictions of vehicles, football jerseys, pets, beer bottles, boxing gloves and dartboards.

Such displays were expressions of love from a marginalised community with shockingly high mortality rates, said Martin Collins, a co-director of Pavee Point , which represents Travellers and Roma. “They are remembering the person who has just passed. It really is important that Travellers are seen to be given a good sendoff. It’s not a materialistic thing, it’s a very religious, holy thing.”

The monument in Ballyhaunis has set a precedent of sorts by becoming a tourist attraction. “We heard about it in the pub and couldn’t leave without seeing it,” said Paul Walsh, 34, who braved icy winds to visit the cemetery last week. “I was in the Vatican recently and this is giving me a Vatican vibe.”

His friend Niall Prenty, 34, said it was impressive. “Certainly more extravagant than I had expected. It’s over the top and there’s something outrageous about it but it doesn’t bother me. Fair play to them.”

Detractors, however, say extra-large headstones violate planning rules, overshadow other graves and introduce an element of competition.

“They’re getting bigger and bigger,” said Michael McCullagh, 84, who has objected to Galway county council over headstones in Creagh cemetery outside Ballinasloe, about an hour’s drive from Ballyhaunis. “The Ballinasloe graveyard is not an exhibition centre. It’s a serene place, a sacred place for our ancestors. Once we’re under the ground, we’re all equal.”

McCullagh’s daughter, parents and grandparents are buried at Creagh and he has a plot earmarked for himself and his wife. “Is the suggestion of that edifice,” he said, indicating a black marble headstone with swirling pillars, “that they have more love for their dead than we do?” The auctioneer said he had no animus against Travellers but that some headstones verged on “monstrous”.

Some recent monuments were reputedly installed with cranes at night. Galway county council said it received 11 complaints about one at Creagh and wished to question the contractor.

Controversy has extended to Sheffield in England where the city council is under pressure to remove a 37-tonne mausoleum erected in Shiregreen cemetery in 2022 to honour Willy Collins, an Irish Traveller “king” and bareknuckle boxing champion who died in 2020 at the age of 49.

His widow, Kathleen, told reporters: “There have been vicious comments on social media from those who hate the Traveller community and they have left the whole family feeling very hurt and angry. People are threatening to pull the monument down or damage it, while the council is saying we may have to change it, but if that happens there’s going to be war.”

Martin Collins, the Traveller representative, said Traveller families should respect planning rules but urged the settled community to show tolerance and understanding. “What’s happening here is a clash of cultures and cultural values. There has to be some accommodation to respect everyone’s traditions.”

He said prehistoric burial sites such as the famous Newgrange monument and tombs of illustrious figures at Dublin’s Glasnevin cemetery dwarfed Traveller headstones.

At Ballyhaunis graveyard, one woman said she had no objection to big monuments as long as they did not come too close to her son’s grave. Fahed Kezze, 39, who was visiting the Muslim section, said families should be able to erect large monuments, though that was not his family’s preference. “My mother is in a simple grave but we built two wells in India that are named after her,” he said.

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Grave concerns: Unauthorised memorials on the rise in rural cemeteries

Large monuments are being erected in graveyards, often by traveller families, in a show of love by grieving relatives. some complain the scale goes too far while others call for respect for cultural differences.

A large memorial in Creagh Cemetery in Ballinasloe, Co Galway: Galway County Council has confirmed 'a number of complaints' have been received about graves.

One night two weeks ago when the gates of Creagh cemetery in Ballinalsoe, Co Galway, were locked, a crane was said to have been used to lower building materials into the graveyard. By morning, a very large headstone had been erected over the resting place of a young man who died last year.

That same week, a crane was used in a cemetery an hour’s drive north in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, during the construction of an elaborate monument at a grave there. The structure featured several life-sized religious statues and a stone bench, and was described by one local as having “crossed a line”.

To some these structures are “monstrosities” which dwarf more traditional headstones, causing upset to other visitors to the cemeteries. To others they are a demonstration of love and respect by a grieving family for a loved one who has died.

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Almost a year ago, Ballinasloe native Michael McCullagh was outraged when a “monumental monument” – as he described it in a complaint to Galway County Council – was constructed on a grave in Creagh, featuring a fake jukebox and a number of statues of saints. At the time the council confirmed the headstone was “unauthorised”.

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“I went out to see it. It was grotesque to say the least. People are estimating that it could have cost from €90,000 to €100,000,″ said the 84 year old. He took particular exception to Galway flags flying from the monument at one point.

In a series of complaints to the council, the Ballinasloe-based estate agent said the cemetery was “a respectful place” and “not an exhibition centre” and asked whether in a “race to vulgarity” more such structures would be erected.

Mr McCullagh said: “I warned Galway County Council that the next one would be bigger. The first one set a precedent. There is a sort of competition going on now.”

Local concern was not anti-Traveller bias – the graves were erected by Traveller families – but some people with family members buried close by were upset because their graves had been overshadowed, he said. “I met one person there recently who was in tears at a graveside,” he said.

[  Majority ‘comfortable’ living next door to different nationalities and beliefs, but Travellers fare worse  ]

Galway County Council confirmed that “a number of complaints” had been received about the graves.

Martin Collins, co-director of Pavee Point, the representative organisation for the Traveller community, attributed the controversy to “a clash of cultural values”.

“Many, many Travellers – not all Travellers, but the majority – demonstrate their love and their grief and their loss by erecting large headstones. That has to be respected,” he said. “Once it is not an infringement on anybody’s rights, it should not be an issue.”

But another Ballinasloe native who asked not be named said: “We are not anti-Traveller but there is one law for them and another for us. If I built a house or an extension without planning permission, I would be made take it down.”

Martin Collins, co-director of Pavee Point: 'Many, many Travellers – not all Travellers, but the majority – demonstrate their love and their grief and their loss by erecting large headstones. That has to be respected.' Photograph: Barry Cronin

They claimed that council was “afraid” to act out of political correctness and fear of being “seen as going against a minority”.

People in Ballyhaunis are asking too if permission was sought for another recently erected large monument that dwarfs other headstones in their local cemetery.

“It caused a stir locally,” said one resident. “A crane was involved when it was being constructed. People felt a line was crossed as regards the magnitude, but they are reluctant to speak out for fear of being seen as anti-Traveller. Mayo County Council should say if there are regulations.”

The council said it only recently became aware of the “structure” and was “looking into it”.

[  ‘Ireland has always done death a little differently. We have a sense of the devastation it can bring to families and communities’  ]

Co Sligo-based undertaker David McGowan said it was up to local authorities to enforce rules around headstone dimensions but he believed most people did not know permission was required to erect a headstone.

A lack of dialogue and ignorance about the rules were often the root cause of friction caused by the construction of these monuments. “There are rules but nobody is adhering to them,” he said.

The funeral director said people grieved in different ways, depending on their culture and traditions.

“Everybody grieves differently and one of the ways the Traveller community deals with grief is when it comes to the final resting place,” he said.

“They believe that place is sacred. It is important to them that they have made a home for the person they have lost. Their final resting place, in their heads, is a home. Is it a vulgar display of wealth? I don’t think so. I think it is more to do with their culture.”

Collins said that in his 40 years of advocacy for the Traveller community complaints about large monuments have come up several times.

“The point I would have made 10 years ago, 20 years ago and 30 years ago was about respect for cultural diversity. Different ethnic groups have different cultures and values,” he said.

He criticised demand for “uniformity and conformity, and getting us all to look the same, think the same. That is not the reality.”

Galway County Council confirmed that permission had not been sought for the Ballinasloe headstone and said the town’s municipal council “intends to pursue enforcement in these cases where possible”.

Creagh Cemetery, Ballinasloe: When local authorities introduce bylaws about headstones, there is 'a cultural bias' developed and implemented around the values of settled people, says Martin Collins of Pavee Point.

The local authority said new burial grounds bylaws had been prepared and reviewed by its law department and that members of the public would have the opportunity to engage with the consultation process.

Collins encouraged Traveller organisations in Galway to engage and “to make sure the Travellers’ perspective is reflected in the bylaws”.

Normally when local authorities introduce bylaws about headstones, there was “a cultural bias taking place” as those rules are developed and implemented based around the values of settled people, he said

“They get to develop these bylaws based on their world view, their values and their belief system. Anything different is seen as a problem. There has to be some compromise and there has to be respect for cultural diversity,” he said.

[  Protest in Galway over councillor’s comments on ‘Traveller culture’  ]

McGowan, the undertaker, said it was important for “healthy grief” to allow people express grief according to the traditions of their community, but they should be mindful of families with graves “each side of them” when cranes and heavy machinery were required to construct large-scale monuments.

“I do have a problem if they want to erect Calvary and they go in and disturb other neighbouring graves or damage other graves,” he said. “Everybody’s grave is important to them. But if one community decides to put up a huge headstone, they cannot go roughshod over everybody around them.”

Collins said it was ironic that throughout Ireland’s history going back thousands of years there were examples of stunning burial sites such as Newgrange. “So at one stage it was also an Irish settled thing, not just Travellers,” he said. “If you go to Glasnevin there are monuments there as big as houses.”

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Marese McDonagh, a contributor to The Irish Times, reports from the northwest of Ireland

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Further twist in 37 tonne headstone row for Irish-born ‘Traveller King Big Willy Collins’

The 37 tonne headstone for Irish-born ‘Traveller king’, which is facing removal, broke planning permission rules according to Council Chiefs.

Built in honour of ‘Big Willy Collins’, the headstone is the biggest to ever be erected in the UK. Crafted from solid marble, it features a solar-powered jukebox and two life-sized statues of Willy.

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It was revealed the €240,000 tribute to Willy is facing removal after the Sheffield Council claimed the ‘memorial was built without permission’.

After previously stating ‘all plans for grave memorials should be submitted to the council and must receive approval from Bereavement Services before they are erected’, Sheffield Council have clarified that the Collins family did in fact receive planning permission.

However, in a statement released on Wednesday, the council said the headstone constructed failed to match the plans the Collins family submitted to them.

‘Sheffield City Council approved plans for a memorial; however, the plans which were submitted and approved differ from the memorial now in place. This was not fully appreciated until after the structure was fully unveiled,’ a Council spokesperson said.

The Council has ‘reached out’ to the Collins family to discuss what changes need to be made in order to follow the cemetery’s regulations.

‘We have reached out to the family and intend to discuss changes which need to be made in order to satisfy the cemetery rules and take into consideration other cemetery users.

‘It would not be appropriate to discuss the details further as this is a sensitive matter and we wish to speak with the family fully in the coming days,’ the spokesperson added.

Willy, a 6 foot 2 bare-knuckle boxer, died of a heart attack in July 2020 while on holiday in Majorca at the age of 49.

Born in Ireland, he moved to Sheffield in 1980. Willy was a deeply popular member of the community, with hundreds of mourners gathering in Sheffield for his final send off in August 2020. His body was transported by a horse-drawn carriage.

Willy’s family was deeply proud of their Irish heritage and the headstone is adorned with Irish flags. Willy left behind nine children and around 400 nieces and nephews.

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Irish Traveller community reeling as four teenagers commit suicide in a week

Four teenage suicides have rocked the traveller community of ireland in just one week..

Four teenage suicides have rocked the Traveller community of Ireland in just one week. Last Friday a 15-year-old girl killed herself. She was laid to rest on Tuesday in Limerick City . Her boyfriend, aged 17, then took his own life when he’d learned of his girlfriend’s death. There were also two other female teens who took their lives. The Limerick couple both had previously been personally affected by suicide. The girl’s brother had taken his own life and two men in the young man’s family had also died in this way, reports the Herald. The Irish Travellers are defined by Irish law as a “community of people who are commonly called Travellers and who are identified (both by themselves and others) as people with a shared history, culture and traditions including, historically, a nomadic way of life on the island of Ireland.” In 2010 the All Ireland Traveller Health Study identified a disproportionately high level of mental health issues among Travellers. The study showed a suicide rate six times the national average that accounts for 11 percent of Traveller deaths. Willie O’Dea, a Fianna Fáil politician representing Limerick, described the deaths as a “terrible tragedy” and expressed his sympathies to the families involved. Limerick Fine Gael politician Dan Neville, president of the Irish Association of Suicidology, expressed his condolences and pointed out that suicide rates were higher among young people, and among members of the Traveller community. Ronnie Fay, from Pavee Point, a center which supports human rights for Irish Travellers, told the Irish Times  that schools in Ireland need to do more to address bullying and racism. Although schools are on their summer break the young girls' teachers have been informed. A campaign to raise awareness of mental health in the Traveller community is being championed by Kelly Mongan, a singer known for her appearance on Ireland’s talent contest “The Voice”. She helped launch a DVD developed by Sligo Traveller Support Group and the Health Service Executive. Speaking about the four suicides this week Mongan told the Herald, “That is a really shocking figure. Nobody knows why they did it. "It could have been discrimination but it could also have been for many other reasons." She added, “A main contributor to the increased suicide figures is the high levels of prejudice, discrimination and racism experienced by the Traveller community in Ireland. “We are hoping to bring down the level of prejudice and discrimination and that people will start to see one another as individuals rather than as 'you are the Traveller and I'm settled'."

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Irish Travellers

Irish Travellers grave monuments involves a lot of grave accessories, parts and are usually quite huge, which also involves a lot of carving work. They are quite challenging and require excellent craftsmanship to create grave stones and monuments for Irish Travellers. They are often called Gypsy grave monuments because of their traditional nomadic way of life — we have created some of the finest grave monuments and have shipped to Ireland and Northern Ireland and United Kingdom where a lot of Irish Travellers reside.