Traveller sisters: We put on posh accents to get around prejudice
TWO Traveller sisters known as the ‘Caravan Queens’ have revealed they put on posh voices to disguise their accents when booking restaurants to stop them being turned away.
Lizzie Mac, 20, and younger sister Caitlin, 18, have racked up 152,000 followers on TikTok after posting clips sharing an insight into life as a Traveller on the platform.
Appearing on This Morning yesterday, the pair, who go by ‘Caravan Queens’ online, revealed they’re often turned away from restaurants who either say they’re fully booked or outright tell them they won’t serve Travellers.
They urged the public not to ‘tar all Travellers with the same brush’ and insisted they are individuals in the same way as any other ‘community, race or ethnicity’.
Lizzie says that they’re turned away based on their appearance and accents, with Caitlin admitting they’ve had to ‘master doing a different accent’ if they ‘don’t want hassle’.
She added: ‘Don’t tar everyone with the same brush.
‘In every community, race, ethnicity, we’re all individuals. You wouldn’t do that to a different ethnicity group so it shouldn’t be okay to do that with Travellers.’
Last month, it was revealed that holiday park Pontins used a secret blacklist titled ‘undesirable guests’ to ban customers with 40 common Irish surnames in a bid to stop Traveller families booking holidays at its resorts.
‘We went there and they said: “Oh you can’t come in, we’re fully booked” and we didn’t think anything of it’, said Lizzie.
‘Then that was released and it made so much sense. Pontins isn’t the only place that do that, loads of holiday homes do that, those are just the first that are confirmed.’
The pair use their popular social media channels to dispel myths about the Traveller community, including the common misconception that Travellers don’t have a permanent residence.
Speaking from their home in St Albans, England, Lizzie said: ‘We’ve been here for nearly ten years and we don’t travel around.
‘Like, we go on holiday sometimes, but we don’t pack up everything and leave, and most Travellers don’t do that any more. There’s a percentage of Travellers who do do travelling – but every Traveller I know doesn’t do that.’
The pair have a big following on social media where they share tales of Traveller life.
In one video on the platform, Caitlin revealed: ‘I feel like one out of 100 traveller women actually have a job and go to work, because they mostly leave it down to the husbands.’
When she does get married, Caitlin will be allowed to go on holiday for the first time without her parents.
In one video she explained: ‘I finished primary school, secondary school, I’m in college right now, I completed all my GCSEs.
‘Some will go to school, some won’t, but it’s more common for them to not go to school.’
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‘It’s more common not to go to school’