Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/485

Rh are, as a rule, noticeable. They will never confess, or implicate another of their fraternity, and, should one of them be accused of a crime, the women are most clamorous, and inflict personal injuries on themselves and their children, to deter the police from doing their duty, and then accuse them of torture. Women and children belonging to criminal gangs are experts in committing grain thefts from kalams or threshing-floors, where they are engaged in harvest time, and also in purloining their neighbours' poultry. Stolen property is seldom found with Wudders. Their receivers are legion, but they especially favour liquor shopkeepers in the vicinity of their encampment. Instances have been known of valuable jewellery being exchanged for a few drams of arrack. In each Wudder community, there is a headman called the Ganga Rāja, and, in the case of criminal gangs of these people, he receives two shares of spoil. Identifiable property is altered at once, many of the Wudders being themselves able to melt gold and silver jewellery, which they dispose of for about one-tenth of the value."

It has been said of the navvies in England that "many persons are quite unaware that the migratory tribe of navvies numbers about 100,000, and moves about from point to point, wherever construction works are going forward, such as railways, harbour, canals, reservoirs and drainage works. Generally the existence of these works is unknown to the public until their completion. They then come into use, but the men who risked their lives to make them are gone nobody knows where. They are public servants, upon whose labours the facilities of modern civilised life largely depend, and surely, therefore, their claim on our sympathies is universal." And these remarks apply