| Administrative History | The majority of these papers are concerned with the letters written by Henry Sherriff, a Romani, to his lawyer friend, Richard (Dick) Wade, when Henry was in prison.
It was said that Henry Dry-Bread had been born in a ditch on the Chatsworth Estate. He never received a formal school education. Although Henry did learn to read and write in what he described as 'College', his euphemism for prison.
Richard Wade was born in 1926. He qualified as a lawyer in the family practice but retired early to follow his painting and writing career. After a chance meeting with Billy Wells, the famous Gypsy striker of the Rank Films gong, Richard was inspired to discover more about about the Romani way of life. Having learnt to speak Romani, he met George Henry Sherriff, although the precise circumstances of that encounter are not known. Sherriff is Romani for Dry Bread.
Henry claimed to be the last living speaker of 'puri chib', the old inflected Romani language which had reputedly disappeared from Britain by the early 1960s. |
| Custodial History | These items were donated by a private individual in June 2003. |