tinkers

tinkers, a vagrant population, also known as ‘itinerants’ or, euphemistically, as ‘travellers’. Irish tinkers, unlike European gypsies, are genetically indistinguishable from the settled population. They are nevertheless defined by some observers as a separate ethnic group, characterized by a high degree of endogamy and preserving a distinctive way of life across generations. The Poor Inquiry of the 1830s distinguished between tinkers and other types of vagrant. Their longer‐term origin remains unclear, despite fanciful attempts to link them to a specialized caste of wandering metal‐workers in early medieval times. ‘Shelta’, sometimes described as the distinctive language of tinkers, is better classified as a cant or argot, composed mainly of distorted versions of Irish words and not necessarily of antique origin. Nineteenth‐century tinkers combined the manufacture and repair of tin implements with chimney sweeping, peddling, and occasional agricultural work. Their modern descendants deal mainly in scrap metal and used cars. Earnings from these sources have throughout been supplemented by begging on the part of wives and children. Initially travelling on foot and living in tents, tinkers adopted horsedrawn covered wagons early in the 20th century, increasingly replaced from the 1960s by motor‐drawn caravans. In 1974 there were 9,000 tinkers in the Irish republic.