Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:44:16.813Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Quality of Life in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, in the Period 1800–50

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Dennis R. Mills
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

For most of the present century economic and social historians have intermittently debated the question of the standard of living during the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, 1780–1830. As both the “pessimists” and the “optimists” acknowledge, too much emphasis can easily be placed on wage levels and the more easily measured aspects of the question, to the neglect of the quality of life and its non-quantifiable aspects. Insufficient explicit attention has also been paid to the divergent experience of different occupations and different districts of the country.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , December 1978 , pp. 382 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1978

References

1 The following books and articles represent a selection of the more recent part of the debate: Hartwell, R. M., “The standard of living”, in: Economic History Review, New Series, XVI (1963–1964), pp. 135–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. M. Hartwell et al., The long debate on poverty: Eight essays on industrialisation and ‘the condition of England’ (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, E. J., “The standard of living during the Industrial Revolution: A discussion”, in: Economic History Review, NS, XVI, pp. 119–34Google Scholar; J. P. Huzel, “Malthus, the Poor Law, and population in early nineteenth-century England”, ibid., XXII (1969), pp. 430–52; Inglis, B., Poverty and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1971)Google Scholar; several chapters of Land, labour and population in the Industrial Revolution, ed. by Jones, E. L. and Mingay, G. E. (London, 1967)Google Scholar; McCloskey, D. N., “New perspectives on the Old Poor Law”, in: Explorations in Economic History, X (1972–1973), pp. 419–36Google Scholar; Marshall, J. P., The Old Poor Law 1795–1834 (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Rose, M. E., “The allowance system under the New Poor Law”, in: Economic History Review, NS, XIX (1966), pp. 607–20Google Scholar; id., The relief of poverty 1834–1914 (London, 1972); Thompson, E. P., The making of the English working class (Harmondsworth, 1968), chs 7 and 10.Google Scholar

2 Levine, D., “The demographic implications of rural industrialization: A family recon-stitution study of Shepshed, Leicestershire, 1600–1851”, in: Social History, No 2 (1976), pp. 177–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also id., Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (New York, 1977). Other local studies are Barnsby, G. J., “The standard of living in the Black Country during the nineteenth century”, in: Economic History Review, NS, XXIV (1971), pp. 220–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and R. S. Neale, “The standard of living, 1780–1844: A regional and class study”, ibid., XIX, pp. 590–606 (the latter related to labourers at Bath).

3 I wish to acknowledge research grants from the Open University and the Social Science Research Council in respect of this work, which is described in my article “A social and demographic study of Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, c. 1840”, in: Archives, XII (1976). pp. 115–20.Google Scholar Readers may also find it useful to refer to my articles “The christening custom in Melbourn, Cambs”, in: Local Population Studies, No 11 (1973), pp. 11–22Google Scholar, and “The peasant culture”, in: New Society, XL (1977), pp. 10–12Google Scholar; and to my chapter on Melbourn in Land, kinship and lifecycle, ed. by Smith, R. (London, forthcoming).Google Scholar I should also like to thank my research assistants, Mr M. W. Allsworth and Mrs M. Eden-Green, for help with the Melbourn project.

4 For the background to agricultural change see Land, labour and population, op. cit.; Chambers, J. D. and Mingay, G. E., The agricultural revolution 1750–1880 (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Mingay, G. E., Enclosure and the small farmer in the age of the industrial revolution (London, 1968).CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe following books will provide an introduction to the economic and social geography of nineteenth-century Britain: Man made the land: Essays in English historical geography, ed. by Baker, A. R. H. and Harley, J. B. (Newton Abbot, 1973)Google Scholar; Perry, P. J., A geography of 19th-century Britain (London, 1975).Google Scholar On villages, see Ashby, M. K., Joseph Ashby of Tysoe, 1859–1919: A study of English village life (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Havinden, M. A., Estate villages (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Horn, P., Labouring life in the Victorian countryside (London, 1976)Google Scholar; English rural communities: The impact of a specialised economy, ed. by Mills, D. R. (London, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Village life and labour, ed. by Samuel, R. (London, 1975).Google Scholar

5 Collins, E. J. T., “Harvest technology and labour supply in Britain 1790–1870”, in: Economic History Review, NS, XXII, pp. 453–73Google Scholar; Village life and labour, op. cit., ch. 1; Alfred Power writing in First Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales [Parliamentary Papers, 1835, XXXV], p. 223.Google Scholar Mingay, “The transformation of agriculture”, in: The long debate on poverty, op. cit., gives an overall survey of the agricultural labourer's position.

6 The Poor Law Report of 1834, ed. by S. G. and E. O. A. Checkland (reprinted 1973)Google Scholar, has a useful summary in the introduction. See also Holderness, B. A., “‘Open’ and ‘close’ parishes in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries”, in: Agricultural History Review, XX (1972), pp. 126–39.Google Scholar

7 Gooch, W., General view of the agriculture of the county of Cambridge (London, 1813), p. 279.Google Scholar

8 Spufford, M., Contrasting communities (London, 1974), pp. 33, 36, 66, 100–01, 136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Jones, E. L., “Agricultural origins of industry”, in: Past & Present, No 40 (1968), pp. 58–71, especially pp. 63–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Ibid., pp. 61–63,69–71. See also the chapter by Joan Thirsk in Man made the land, op. cit.

11 The importance of direct subsistence has been underestimated by some of the optimists, e.g., Mingay, “The transformation of agriculture”, loc. cit., p. 37, who believed that “Probably the majority of labourers who wanted them possessed cottage gardens or rented allotments in the 19th century.” As we shall see, this was not true of Melbourn, and it seems to be a surprising assertion to make for all England.

12 English rural communities, op. cit., pp. 182–88. A full account of the change from parochial to union rating is given by Caplan, Maurice, “The New Poor Law and the struggle for union chargeability”, in: International Review of Social History, XXIII (1978), pp. 267–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Holderness, “‘Open’ and ‘close’ parishes”, loc. cit.

14 English rural communities, p. 189; Caplan, loc. cit., pp. 270–72.

15 Mills, D. R., “Landownership and rural population with special reference to Leicestershire in the mid- 19th century” (Leicester Ph.D. thesis, 1963), ch. 6 and Appendix 6Google Scholar; id., “English villages in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: A sociological approach, Pt I: The concept of a sociological classification”, in: The Amateur Historian, VI (1965), pp. 271–78.Google Scholar Poor rates of two or three shillings in the pound were quite common in 1847 in industrialised villages in Leicestershire, while figures below one shilling were more typical of wholly agricultural areas.

16 These three paragraphs are based on a wide study of Melbourn documents, plus the following printed references: Fisher, F. J., “London as an ‘Engine of economic growth’”, in: The early modern town: A reader, ed. by Clark, P. (London, 1976), p. 213Google Scholar; Victoria County History of Cambridgeshire, ed. by Salzman, R. F., II (London, 1948)Google Scholar; Gooch, General view, op. cit., p. 15; Vancouver, C., General view of the County of Cambridge (London, 1794), pp. 77–79Google Scholar; Mathias, P., The brewing industry in England 1700–1830 (London, 1959), pp. 396–98, 403, 439Google Scholar; Jonas, S., “On the farming of Cambridgeshire”, in: Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, VII (1847), pp. 35, 40, 47.Google Scholar

17 Based on an aggregative analysis of the parish registers and Documents relating to Cambridgeshire villages, ed. by Palmer, W. M. and Saunders, H. W. (Cambridge, 1926–1927), VI.Google Scholar Palmer and Saunders used the multiplier of five persons per hearth, but I have preferred the multiplier of 4.75 used by Patten, John, “Population distribution in Norfolk and Suffolk during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”, in: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, No 65 (1975), p. 59.Google Scholar

18 House of Lords Committee on Labouring Poor [PP, r830–31, CCLXXXVII], pp. 391, 394Google Scholar, evidence of Francis Pym Jr, Esq.

19 Pigot and Company's Directory of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire etc. (London, 1839), pp. 66–67.Google Scholar

20 Carter, E., History of the county of Cambridge (London, 1819), pp. 188, 262Google Scholar; Cooper, C. H., Annals of Cambridge, IV (Cambridge, 1852), p. 186.Google Scholar The volume of traffic can be gauged by the remembrance of as many as 20 malt wagons at a time drawing up outside the Fox and Hounds at Barley on the old route, Wilkerson, J. C., Two ears of Barley: Chronicle of an English village (Royston, 1969), p. 84.Google Scholar

21 Hodder, E., Samuel Morley (London, 1888), p. 9Google Scholar; Porter, E., “Cambridgeshire schools”, in: Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Life (St Ives, Cambs.), 12 1968, p. 44Google Scholar; Collection, W. M. Palmer, Cambridge University Library, A 3, p. 145Google Scholar; 1831 and 1841 Census enumerations; Cambridgeshire Record Office, 296/SP 39; Tithe survey map, Cambridge University Library; and my reconstitution of Melbourn Parish Registers.

22 Land tax assessments, Cambridgeshire Record Office; Post Office Directory of Nine Counties (London, 1846).Google Scholar

23 Village life and labour, pp. 11–12; 1841 and 1851 Cēnsus enumerations; my reconstitution of the Parish Registers; Jonas, “On the farming of Cambridgeshire”, loc. cit., p. 49.

24 Per Mr A. J. Palmer, Cawdon House, Melbourn, whom I wish to thank for much other help.

25 Per Mr M. H. Stockbridge, 2 Orchard Road, Melbourn.

26 Melbourn Town Book II, pp. 160, 182.1 should like to thank the Parish Clerk and the Parish Council for making Town Books II and III available to me.

27 Ward, J. F., West Cambridgeshire fruit growing area: A survey of soils and fruit 1925–27 [Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Bulletin, No 61] (London, 1933), pp. 30–32.Google Scholar

28 Grove, R., “Coprolite mining in Cambridgeshire”, in: Agricultural History Review, XXIV (1976), pp. 36–43.Google Scholar

29 Melbourn Census enumeration 1841; Town Book II, pp. 1–3, 10–11, 21, 42, 46; House of Lords Committee on Labouring Poor, op. cit., pp. 398–99; A digest of parochial returns to the Select Committee appointed to enquire into the education of the poor [PP, 1819, IX], Pt I [Shannon reprint Poorer Classes, 3], p. 71Google Scholar; Report on the administration of the Poor Laws, Appendix B 1: Answers to rural queries, Pts I–III [PP, 1834, XXX–XXXII], pp. 60a, 60b, 60cGoogle Scholar, being the evidence of William Crole Carver, overseer for Melbourn. Pt I of the Answers to rural queries contains answers to qq. 1–13, Pt II to qq. 14–27, and Pt III to qq. 28–37. Each parish appears on the same page in each volume, e.g., 60a, 60b, 60c for Melbourn, 49 for Bassingbourn, etc. There are five parts altogether, also available as Shannon reprint Poor Law, 10–14.

30 Neale, “The standard of living”, loc. cit., pp. 590–92, 602–03.

31 Hobsbawm, E. J. and Rudé, G., Captain Swing (London, 1969), p. 76Google Scholar; Answers to rural queries, op. cit., pp. 60b, 49c, 60c; Return showing population, annual value of property, expenditure, rate in the pound, total number of paupers relieved [PP, 1847–1848, LIII], pp. 17, 181–83.Google Scholar

32 For a discussion of the distinction between income and wage subsidisation, see Mc-Closkey, “New perspectives on the Old Poor Law”, loc. cit. The distinction, however, becomes an academic one when one is confronted with statements such as that by Alfred Power to the effect that in Cambridgeshire the making of allowances for families of those in employment was prevalent, but was not a direct aid to wages, Report on the administration of the Poor Laws, Appendix A, Pt I [PP, 1834, XXVIII], p. 241a.Google Scholar For corn prices see Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, P., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (London, 1971), p. 470.Google Scholar I owe this reference and other comments on poor relief to Mr Peter Grey.

33 Hampson, E. M., The treatment of poverty in Cambridgeshire 1597–1834 (Cambridge, 1934), pp. 194–95Google Scholar; House of Lords Committee on Labouring Poor, pp. 386, 398–99; Answers to rural queries, p. 60b. A quartern loaf was more than twice the size of a modern loaf and weighed four pounds or over, cf. Burnett, J., Plenty and want: A social history of diet in England from 1815 to the present day (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 52.Google Scholar

34 House of Lords Committee on Labouring Poor, p. 398; Answers to rural queries, pp. 60a, 60b; Town Book I, 1826–27, Cambridgeshire Record Office, P 117/8/1; cf. Rose's view that allowances were not generous, “The allowance system under the New Poor Law”, loc. cit., especially pp. 619–20.

35 Melbourn tithe survey, Cambridge University Library; Enclosure award, Cambridgeshire Record Office; 1841 Census enumeration; Hearth tax, Public Record Office, E 179/244/23; Spufford, Contrasting communities, op. cit., p. 33; Town Book I. Sheep masters were an even smaller elite of sizeable farmers.

36 Town Book II, p. 8; Gooch, General view, pp. 58–60,75, 80; Parker, R., The common stream (London, 1975), pp. 208–09, 241Google Scholar; Denson, J., A Peasant's voice to landowners (London, 1830), p. 19.Google Scholar

37 House of Lords Committee on Labouring Poor, pp. 398–99; Answers to rural queries, p. 60b; Cambridgeshire Record Office, P 117/4/1, p. 12; Town Book III, p. 78; Denson, A Peasant's voice, op. cit., pp. iv–vi. For a comprehensive discussion of allotments, see the chapter by D. C. Barnett in Land, labour and population.

38 Answers to rural queries, p. 60b; Parker, The common stream, op. cit., p. 212; Thompson, The making of the English working class, op. cit., p. 347. Porter, E., Cambridgeshire customs and folklore (London, 1969), p. 370Google Scholar, records the eating of blackbird pie, nor should we overlook the possibilities of poaching.

39 Letters XXXVI and XXXVII in the Morning Chronicle, May 8 and September 27, 1850, and letters reprinted in The Victorian working class, ed. by Razzell, P. E. and Wainwright, R. W. (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Town Book II, p. 173; Gooch, , General view, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

40 Census enumeration 1841 and Tithe survey 1839. See also Mills, D. R., “The technique of house repopulation: Experience from a Cambridgeshire village, 1841”, in: Local Historian, XIII (1978), pp. 86–97Google Scholar; English rural communities, chs 2, 3 and 10; Wood-forde, J., The truth about cottages (London, 1969).Google Scholar

41 Denson, , A Peasant's voice, pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

42 Mills, “The christening custom in Melbourn”, loc. cit. It is interesting that the Con-gregationalists overcame the problem of burying unbaptised children by recording the burial simply as the son or daughter of AB (father's name).

43 Tranter, N. L., “Demographic change in Bedfordshire from 1670–1800” (Nottingham Ph.D. thesis, 1966), pp. 358–59Google Scholar; Wrigley, E. A., Population and history (London, 1969), p. 197.Google Scholar

44 Jones, R. E., “Infant mortality in rural North Shropshire 1561–1810”, in: Population Studies, XXX (1976), pp. 305–17, especially pp. 305, 308, 315.Google ScholarThompson, , The making of the English working class, p. 361Google Scholar, quotes figures of 250 per 1,000 under age one and 500 per 1,000 for the age group 0–5 in Sheffield about 1840.

45 Census enumeration 1841; Household and family in past time, ed. by Laslett, P. and Wall, R. (1972), pp. 83, 87, 133, 214, 235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I have used their Ratio 2 in these calculations, i.e. number of households, excluding institutions (W. C. Carver's school) divided into total population, to arrive at mean household size.

46 Chambers, J. D., Population, economy, and society in pre-industrial England (1972), pp. 150–51.Google Scholar

47 See the chapter by Razzell, P. E. in Population in industrialisation, ed. by Drake, M. (London, 1969)Google Scholar, for an account of inoculation against smallpox.