Life as an Essex Agricultural Labourer 1840-1920 (Part 4)

The agricultural labourer. His work and life

Victorian England was very class conscious. Cecil Alexander’s hymn, ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’, contains the now obsolete verse: The rich man in his castle The poor man at his gate He made them high and lowly And ordered his estate.

Agricultural labourers were of a lower social order than the wheelwright, miller or baker who provided the essential services to all villagers.

Work on the land was seasonal and men had to support their families on around 12 shillings a week. In a letter to ‘The Times’ in 1854, ‘a poor parson’ wondered how a man could feed his family given that a bushel of flour, which would last one week, cost 13s.4d.. “I leave you to judge how large a margin is left for rent, clothing, firing, candles, etc”¹. Just over two-thirds of an agricultural labourer’s income was spent on food and drink. In 1838 Essex agricultural labourers spent 57% of their income on bread².

“Corn was the stuff of his life. From it came his wages and his staple food. He took it to the miller to be ground.

He offered it to God among the marrows and Michaelmas daisies of Harvest Thanksgiving”³.

During the winter months work was scarce and many single men were laid off. A farm growing forty to fifty of acres of barley could occupy two men full time throughout the winter. The threshing machine gradually phased out this occupation. The risk of the workhouse was real.

Many labourers belonged to a Club or Benefit Society into which, according to the Royal Commission on Labour (1893), 2d ‘insurance’ was paid per week and about “8s a week sick pay is given for 3 months, and 2s afterwards”⁴. The author commented that too many met in public houses. There were also Doctors’ Clubs to pay for medical assistance. Farm labourers paid 3d a week to cover his wife’s funeral expenses.

For ordinary labourers the weekly wage in the Maldon Poor Law district was 12s in the summer and 11s in the winter. Harvest work done by piece earned the labourer an extra £6 to £8. “The average earnings, including harvest and other piece-work, Mr Spencer estimates at from 14s to 16s a week, a higher rate than obtains in Worcestershire, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire and Somersetshire, but below that in Surrey and Kent. But whilst higher wages are earned, the cottage accommodation is very inferior, and this … ‘seemed to be the worst feature of the Essex labourers’ position’”⁵.

In 1907 wages were “13s.9d., and average extra earnings by piecework 3s.2d., so the total amount received per week is 16s.11d.”⁶. With the price of wheat lower, the author of Victoria County History commented that, “the labourer’s position is better … than it had ever been before”⁷.

Taking the average basic weekly wage countywide and applying the national price of wheat per quarter, the “labourer’s position” can be established in terms of the number of days it took to earn a quarter of wheat (see Graph). Relative poverty during the period was worse in 1860 than during the later agricultural depression. The reason was the simple law of supply and demand.

Between 1871 and 1901, one-third of the nation’s male agricultural labourers (including foreman and bailiffs) left the land to find employment elsewhere whilst the population rose by 43%. “The townward pressure was relentless”⁸. Agricultural wages between 1871 and 1901 had risen by 20% but the price of wheat had slumped.

In his book, ‘Meagre Harvest’ (1990), A.F.J. Brown charts the patchy success of the agricultural labourers’ union cause noting the antipathy of farmers towards members. Very few labourers belonged to a trade union.

Union policy, especially during the agricultural depression of the 1870s, was to encourage migration, if only to produce a smaller labour supply. Some Essex labourers emigrated to America or New Zealand in search of a better life. At Christmas 1874, the Vicar of Navestock openly endorsed the policy.

Piece work provided extra income for families. The whole family was often employed. Children were often absent from school. For example, at Great Parndon (now part of Harlow New Town), older girls were kept away from school so that their mothers could go hay-making (6 June 1864). The school closed on 5 August 1864, until 19 September, for “harvest holiday”. The school log book records children absent to “pick stones” (9 February 1869); for “bird scaring” (7 July 1870), “gathering blackberries” (25 September 1884) and, “gleaning” (5 October 1871).

Mark Thurston (born 1861 at Finchingfield) went bird scaring at the age of seven, six days a week, working a twelve hour day from 6am to 6pm for 3d a day. He rarely attended school.

Issac Mead (born 1859 at High Easter) looked after sheep at the age of eleven, “and filling the time weeding and cutting up thistles”⁹. He too earned eighteen pence a week before progressing to milk cows six days a week for 2s.6d.. He was proud to be taking home his own earnings to support the family.

Whilst on the subject of children’s involvement in farming, Mark Thurston became a quarter man about the age of twelve, earning a quarter of a man’s wages. Workers progressed to being ‘half men’ before gaining full adult pay.

Gleaning, a family activity in August, also supplemented wages. It was strictly regulated and only those who lived in the parish could glean in the fields. A sheaf was often left in the middle of the field to indicate that gleaners must not trespass. This was called the guard-sheaf.

Revd. Reeve recalled that in Stondon Massey (1900):

“In harvest the largest of the three [church] bells was tolled at eight in the morning and at five in the afternoon as a signal for gleaners to enter and leave the fields. This was to prevent any unfair advantage being taken by those who had no family ties over those who were not able to leave home so readily. The introduction of machinery for mowing and reaping, and the efficiency of the horse-rakes has made anything like general gleaning a thing of the past, and the bell has not been used for the purpose for many years”¹⁰.

In the 1940s, “Old” Mrs Bourdon of Wethersfield said that the whole family used to go out into the fields all day to collect ears which had been missed: “We gleaned as much as twenty-six to twenty-eight bushels of wheat and barley”¹¹. This was taken to the local miller and when ground into flour – “of course he kept the bran” – provided sufficient home made bread all winter. The money saved enabled the rent to be paid for the cottage.

From good soil a labourer’s wife was able to glean about three to four bushels single-handed. This was equivalent to at least a month’s pay.

This pattern of rural life was repeated elsewhere. At Mountnessing, “The village was almost self-supporting. There was the old mill … perched on an artificial mound and the cottagers used to have their gleaning corn ground there”¹².

Mothers made loaves in batches in a shared bake-house at the rear of their homes. These resembled cottage- loaves “except that they were bigger often weighing from six to eight pounds apiece”¹³.

Accounts vary, but a typical family ate the equivalent of half to one bushel of wheat per week.

“When Mark [Thurston] first went out into the fields to work [c.1868], his mother would pack him up with a hunk of bread (‘nigh as big as a baby’s head’) and a lump of cheese; or, on the more fortunate days, she would cut the bread open, scoop out a core of crumb, and insert a nugget of butter before closing the two halves together again. When he grew older, and the hours were longer and work harder, much the same diet still had to suffice”.

Growing vegetables was another way in which men occupied their free time, and supported their families.

Locally, the Midsummer Day hailstorm of 1897 affected the agricultural labourer. Dozens were seen in their own gardens in Blackmore sobbing at the devastation that has occurred.

Then there was hunting for rabbits and illegally for game. Some sold on their catch to earn extra money. If caught trespassing though, the fines were punitive. There are many occurrences recorded in the local newspaper.

For example, in 1896, John Oliver, a labourer in High Ongar was caught “working a bank with a ferret and nets … in search of game on land belonging to Mr Thomas Hull”. The witness, Keeper Maynard, “took some small rabbits from him after a scuffle”. The defendant was fined 10s plus 8s.6d costs and “removed to the cells”.

The paper carried the headline: “Does Oliver Want Any More” 14 , reference of course to Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

Rat catching and stealing sparrows’ eggs was a legal pastime. The haystacks in the rickyards were a haven and breeding ground for rats and sparrows and this was a way of controlling the population. George Everett of Boxford, Suffolk, recalled that as a child, the schoolmaster paid him a penny for a rat tail and a farthing for an egg.

The Essex Chronicle, 11 January 1907 records:

Blackmore
SPARROW AND RAT CLUB – At the monthly meeting on the 7 th inst. no less than 1797 sparrow heads and a large number of rat tails were brought in.

In one Club in Essex it was a condition that each member produced thirty sparrow heads and thirty rat tails each year. The meetings, which were often held in pubs, ceased in the 1950s with changing farming methods.

Cats were often kept on farms to control the rodent population.

Mention should be made of the public house in the life of the agricultural labourer. It was a place for men to relax and socialise. Drinking must have been a secondary activity: with beer at 2d a pint at the turn of the twentieth century and earnings 11s a week, around 1s only was available for beer and tobacco (“baccy”). The phrase ‘latch lifter’ was coined as being sufficient money for a man to buy a pint and gain entry to an evening’s entertainment at the pub.

Housing was generally very poor. Cottages were poorly constructed with thin walls, rarely a fireplace in the bedroom, and draughty causing rheumatic and chest infections among inhabitants.

Although better cottages might be available, the author Dr Thresh observed, these were in a location which were not close to the occupants’ workplace. Causes of the dilapidation of such cottages were that either the owner relied on limited rents providing a sole income, or rents were collected by agents of absentee landlords who “have not seen the property for years or, having seen them, are ashamed to apply personally for the rent”¹⁵.

Home and work needed to be close by, particularly before the invention of the bicycle.

So when a new farmer took over at Michealmas, the labourer could find himself out of a job and with only one month’s notice to quit his tied cottage.

The attraction to the agricultural labourer to migrate to London was great.

Even though wages had increased by 1900, it was “not sufficient to retain men in the villages”.

The Essex County Chronicle cited “an honest hard-working man, temperate, upright and greatly respected. He receives 12s a week as wages with £6 or £7 for one month’s labour at harvest time. The rent of his cottage is £5 per year. He has six children, the youngest is about six years old. He cultivates an allotment of twenty rods, for which he pays 5s a year. ‘I could not recommend my sons to follow my example and stay on the land’. And thus it comes to pass that one is in London as a footman, another is a tradesman’s employ, and a third in the neighbourhood of London in a hotel”.

“It must be remembered that an unskilled town labourer getting £1 a week has always a chance of rising by good conduct and intelligence to 30s or more; but however industrious a farm labourer may be, he never receives more than 2s or 3s beyond the average weekly wage of the most incompetent yokel”¹⁶.

The words ‘yokel’ or ‘hodge’ were unfair expressions to apply to the agricultural labourer.

Although probably illiterate and uneducated in the formal sense, Charlotte Fell Smith (1898) marvelled at “the unerring eye and mathematical precision of aim which steer the huge unwieldy cart horses down the diagonal line from point to point”¹⁷.

“Only the shepherd, the stock-man, carpenter and thatcher are specialists, each in their own peculiar line, and not infrequently the ordinary labourer may be called to take his turn at one or other of the avocations of these superior workmen”.

In 1914, a horsekeeper of Hill Farm, Ashdon, was paid 14 shillings per week. He worked a seven day week; was up by 4.30am to feed and groom the horses ahead of going out into the fields at 6.00am. At harvest time he would work well into the evening.

Agricultural labourers earned 12 shillings per week.

The Corn Production Act 1917 set minimum wages for agricultural labourers.

George Everett (Boxford, Suffolk) recalled that this was not paid on every farm and men were not unhappy to take work at reduced wages.

As before, when there was no work there was little or no pay.

When the Corn Production Act was repealed in 1921 wages immediately fell. “Farmers lived on their losses” in the inter-war years, one commentator said.

Ashley Cooper concludes his book ‘Our Mother Earth’ (1998) by observing that only in times of national crisis is the necessity for domestic crops supported by Government adding that the spectre of climate change should make the politicians rethink.