‘Pikey’ another term for ‘chav’

Growing up in south Essex in the 1950s and 60s I was familiar with gypsies, it wasn’t that unusual to come home from school to find old Granny Price sitting on the back doorstep having tea with mum, or there would be a knock at the back door and a gypsy standing there with a churn asking if he could have some water – we always obliged. They were Romanies and would not cross the threshold and enter the house, I never heard them swear either or show violence to anyone except their own; like most people we left our back door unlocked with no fear of theft. They did however warn us of didicois, tinkers and other travellers who were not pure-bred Romanies; these collectively were the “pikeys” of my youth – a term never applied then to Romanies.

Moving to Canterbury in 1990 I was surprised that after my sons started senior school I heard them using the term “pikey” in respect of other pupils who clearly were not travellers; it turned out that locally the term “pikey” is or was used as an alternative to “chav”, (which coincidentally is derived from a gypsy word for youngster).

Given that Orlando Bloom is but a few years older than my sons, I suspect that when he called himself a “pikey from Kent” he meant no offence to anyone but was self deprecatingly referring to himself as a “chav”, not as a traveller. Bob Britnell Orchard Close Canterbury Thomas and Alice Manouch. They lived at 10 Victoria Row, Canterbury and I have discovered that Alice was killed in an air raid in 1942.

My grandfather, also Thomas, left Canterbury around 1914 and moved to Sussex. I never knew him so never got to ask the question why he left, or why no contact was kept with his family in Kent.

Please email at kayemem63@ gmail.com or c/o St Olavs Bookshop, North Street, Chichester, PO19 1LQ. Kathryn Manouch Kent Road Chichester