Groome was born at his father's rectory of Monk Soham on 30 August 1851. He was educated at Ipswich School, where his lifelong interest in Romanies was sparked, and continued at Oxford University. He left Oxford without taking a degree, spent some time at Göttingen, and then for 6 years lived with Romani at home and abroad. He married a woman of Romani blood, Esmeralda Locke, in 1876 and settled down to regular literary work in Edinburgh. Groome contributed generously and on a variety of subjects to such publications as the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Dictionary of National Biography, Blackwood's Magazine, the Athenaeum, Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia, The Bookman, Chambers' Biographical Dictionary, the Ordinance Gazetteer of Scotland, and as joint editor, with his father and poet Edward Fitzgerald, of "Suffolk Notes and Queries" for the Ipswich Journal. His article on 'Gipsies', in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, made him known to the world as a "gypsyologist". In 1899 he published his most significant book for folklorists, Gypsy Folk-Tales. These well-annotated collections are a significant addition to the comparative study of the world's folktales. He also co-edited the first three volumes of Gypsy Lore Society's Journal, and wrote nineteen brief articles and collections of folktales for it. He wrote a number of books including a novel of Romani life, an English-Scottish border history, a sketch of his father and Fitzgerald, and an autobiographical account of his six years with the Romani. F.H. Groome was a sub-editor of Chambers's Encyclopaedia; joint-editor of the 1897 edition of Chamber's Dictionary of Biography. He is also well remembered for his six volume Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland which appears in full at the Gazetteer of Scotland website. It also appears as part of , produced by the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and is directly searchable within "A Vision of Britain through Time". A singularly alert, swift, and eager intellect, he was unwearied in research, impatient of anything less than precision, a frank and fearless critic; thoroughly at home in wide fields of historical and philological research, and in some of them a master. He was nicknamed the “Tarno Rye”. Groome died on 24 January 1902, and was buried at Monk Soham, Suffolk.
Legacy
In October 1901, Francis Hindes Groome's library of books, letters, and manuscripts bearing upon the study of the Romani was purchased by the Boston Athenæum. The collection comprises over one hundred volumes, some which are rare, and others contain rare tracts and magazine articles. There are also Mr. Groome's own books with his marginal additions, over thirty volumes of manuscript notes, lectures, and his correspondence with M. Paul Bataillard, the eminent French student of the Romani, covering the years 1872-1880.
Works
Books and articles written on the Romani People:
The Gipsies: Reminiscences and Social Life of this Extraordinary Race
