Dora Yates (1879–1974)

Dora Yates was born to a Jewish family in Liverpool, England, one of eight children of Hannah and George Samuel Yates. She taught herself to read and write both English and Hebrew before the age of five. By age 16, she was at the University of Liverpool, where she was on the committee of the women's debating and athletic societies. A remarkable linguist, she graduated in 1899 with a first class honors degree in English, Latin, German, and Anglo-Saxon. A year later, she earned a master's degree using Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Middle English. She also was fluent in French and German and eventually in every dialect of Romani. In 1906, she returned to Liverpool University to become a tutor in English literature, and stayed for the next 39 years. John Sampson, the University Librarian, a recognized Romani scholar, recruited her to study the lives of the Gypsies with him. She spent some 30 years working as his assistant to record the speech and folktales of the Wood family of Welsh Gypsies, material that became the basis for his landmark book The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales (1926). When Sampson died in 1931, Yates became the administrator of his literary estate. The Welsh village of Gwerfil-Goch where many of the Woods family had settled, became a focal point for Romani scholarship; there Yates met the poet Arthur Symons, the artist Augustus John, and scholars R.A. Scott Macfie, T.W. Thompson, Eric Otto Winstedt, and the Rev. George Hall. She assisted Macfie with the editing and production of the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (JGLS) until its publication was interrupted by World War I in 1914, and again after 1922. After Macfie died in 1935, Yates became the secretary of the Society and edited the JGLS until her own death in 1974. In 1945, after her official retirement from Liverpool University, she was appointed curator of the Scott Macfie Collection of Gypsy books. In 1948, she published her collection, A Book of Gypsy Folk tales. Liverpool University awarded her an honorary doctorate in honor of her achievements in 1963. Her autobiography, My Gypsy Days: Recollections of a Romani Rawnie, was published in 1953.