Category: Xenophobia

• The Child-Stealing Gypsies

  This theory held that Romani people were part of a hidden child-harvesting network that stole fair-haired or aristocratic children and moved them through secret circuits for begging, resale, or private demand among elites. Though versions of the myth were much older, it remained powerful in the nineteenth century and attached itself to modern print culture, policing, and xenophobic fears of mobile outsiders. In some extreme forms, the story claimed that stolen children were acquired for wealthy or aristocratic households. The documented record clearly shows that the “Gypsy child-stealer” was a widespread myth in European print and folklore. What remains false is the underlying claim that Romani communities operated such a network. The legend functioned primarily as a racialized fantasy projected onto an already stigmatized people.