He was born in a tent. Not a house, not a hospital — a bender tent pitched near Epping Forest in Essex, on 31 March 1860. His father was Cornelius Smith. His mother was Mary, called Polly. They were Romani Gypsies, and Rodney was their fourth child.
He would end up preaching to crowds of thousands on two continents. But it started in a field, and it very nearly ended there.
The lane at Baldock
When Rodney was about six, the family was travelling near Baldock in Hertfordshire. His oldest sister took smallpox. A doctor ordered the family to move over a mile away down a lane, away from everyone.
Polly nursed her sick children in that lane, caught it herself, and died shortly after giving birth to another baby. The baby lived a fortnight.
His sister Emily came to find him. Her words were four: “Rodney, mother’s dead.” He fell on his face in the lane.
The funeral was held at night. Cornelius walked behind the coffin as the only mourner.
What grief did to his father
Cornelius took his fiddle round the taverns of Baldock and played for coins while young Rodney danced. He drank more than he should have. Rodney pocketed some of the collection money.
That is where the family was. Not a promising start for a preacher.
A horse sold in Shepherd’s Bush
What turned it was not a sermon. It was Cornelius meeting his two brothers, Woodlock and Bartholomew, near Luton, and the three of them realising they were all looking for the same thing without having said so out loud.
They travelled together after that. Camped in Epping Forest, Cornelius dreamt of Jesus showing him the marks of the nails in His hands. It shook him.
Then in Shepherd’s Bush he did something no travelling man does lightly. He sold his horse — the thing that made him a traveller at all — and said he would not go home until he was converted.
At Latimer Road Mission Hall, while the congregation sang There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood, Cornelius went down on the floor in agony and got up shouting “I am converted!” Bartholomew was converted the same night. Woodlock followed soon after.
People began calling them The Three Converted Gypsies.
Arrested for it
On the way back to Baldock the three brothers were arrested outside Melbourne by four policemen, for breaking a local ordinance by preaching.
They spent the night in the cells singing and praying. By morning the jailer’s wife had been converted. Their fine of twenty-five shillings was paid anonymously by somebody who never gave their name.
Preaching to turnips
Rodney was sixteen when the weight of his own sin landed on him, guided by his father, who was no scholar but knew what he had found.
He had nowhere to practise. So he went out into the fields and preached to the turnips, and called them “a very attentive congregation.”
He earned his living selling clothespins door to door and singing hymns to families in their kitchens. They called him the singing gypsy boy.
At seventeen he preached in the open air for the first time, in his Sunday best — a beaver hat, a velvet jacket with pearl buttons, and corduroy trousers.
The frock coat and the train
On 25 June 1877 he spent his savings on a frock coat and striped trousers, packed everything he owned into one box, and got on a train at Forest Gate Station to go and be a preacher.
He had no schooling. He had taught himself to read from a Bible and a dictionary.
That Whit Monday he went to an all-day meeting at the Christian Mission in Whitechapel Road. William Booth — who would go on to found the Salvation Army — spotted the gypsy lad in the crowd and called him up to the platform to speak next.
Why we are telling this story
Because it is ours, and because almost nobody knows it.
A Romani boy from a tent in Epping Forest, whose mother died in a lane and whose father busked in taverns to feed him, ended up on a platform beside William Booth before he was eighteen — and went on to preach to crowds of thousands across England and America.
That is not a story about a remarkable man. Cornelius sold his horse. Rodney preached to turnips. Neither of them was anybody. The remarkable part was never the men.
“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” — 1 Corinthians 1:27
This is the first of a series on the life of Gipsy Smith, drawn from three biographies: his own account, Norman Shields’ Gypsy from the Forest, and David Lazell’s From the Forest I Came.