John Sampson (linguist)

John Sampson, the eldest, left school at the age of 14, after his father's death, and was apprenticed to the engraver and lithographer Alexander MacGregor.

The Wood family to which he belonged, descendants of Abram Wood (died 1799), were noted as speakers of Welsh-Romani, a quite pure inflected Romani dialect, which was to become Sampson's major study, and which earned him the sobriquet Romano rai ("Romany Lord", Gypsy scholar), or just "the Rai".

[8] In 1901 Sampson met the artist Augustus John, who was teaching in an art school connected with University College.

[11] In the work of compiling The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales, Sampson had assistants, notably Dora Esther Yates, who resisted his advances but found him intriguing.

[13] Yates was in revolt against a strict family background, and recalled as comic the occasion when she and Marston were sent in 1906 to research the language of some German Roma in Blackpool.

[14] Yates and Marston were sent in 1907 to find the burial place of Abram Wood, which they did, at Llangelynnin; Lyster later confirmed it, with a 1799 register entry.

Yates and Marston were also successful in tracking down Matthew Wood, Sampson's important Welsh Romani source who had then been out of contact for nine years, at Betws Gwerfil Goch in 1908.

[17] It was Yates who organised Sampson's funeral that took place on 21 November 1931 at Llangwm, west of Corwen and north of Bala.

[3] The match was against the wishes of her father David Sprunt, and took place in secret at the Church of St Luke, Liverpool.

From about 1909 he led a double life, with Margaret, Amyas, and Honor living in a cottage rented at Betws Gwerfil Goch in north Wales, and with Gladys, a relationship that was covert in his lifetime.