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‘Rustic and Rude’: Hiring Fairs and their Critics in East Yorkshire c. 1850–75

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Gary Moses
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Extract

In 1850, The Yorkshireman, a radical newspaper, offered the following analysis of York's annual Martinmas Hiring Fair:

Martinmas Fair … is an evil which increases crime, causes the profligate waste of money, adds greatly to the already large number of inmates within the walls of our House of Correction, and so increases the City expenses by their maintenance and the necessary increase of the police force to preserve the public from robbery, without conferring a benefit on the public in any way.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , October 1996 , pp. 151 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1. The Yorkshireman, 30th November 1850.

2. Rev. Stephenson, Nash, On The Rise and Progress of the Movement for the Abolition of Statutes Mops, Or Feeing Markets; A Paper Read Before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science at Glasgow, 1860 (London, 1861), pp 3–6.Google Scholar

3. See for example: Stephenson, Rise and Progress, passim; Chester, Greville J., Statute Fairs: Their Evils and Their Remedy (York, 1856)Google Scholar, passim and appendices; Rev. Skinner, James, Facts and Opinions Concerning Statute Hirings, Respectfully Addressed to the Landowners, Clergy, Farmers and Tradesmen of the East Riding of Yorkshire (London, 1861)Google Scholar, passim and appendices.

4. Rev. Morris, F.O., The Present System of Hiring Farm Servants in the East Riding of Yorkshire with Suggestions for its Improvement (London, 1854).Google Scholar

5. See Hollis, P. (ed), Pressure From Without in Early Victorian England (London, 1974)Google Scholar, Preface and Introduction for an analysis of the tactics and methods of Victorian pressure groups; and also Harrison, B., ‘Religion and recreation in Nineteenth Century England’, Past and Present, 38 (1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. The Yorkshire Gazette, 19th November 1859.

7. i.e. they tried to realise moral reform through organisations that possessed a membership and a declared purpose.

8. York Herald, 27th October 1860. This effort began in 1859.

9. Rev. Woodcock, H., Piety Among the Peasantry: Sketches of Primitive Methodism on the Yorkshire Wolds (London, 1889), see pp. 91 and 126–7Google Scholar for details of activities by the Primitive Methodists at Martinmas.

10. See for example: Rev. F.O. Morris, Present System; Rev. James Skinner, ‘Facts and Opinions; A Letter to the Masters and Mistresses of Farm Houses in the East Riding’, Yorkshire Gazette, 10th November 1860 (also reprinted as appendix ii of Facts and Opinions); Greville Chester, Statute Fairs; Rev. Eddowes, John, Martinmas Musings (Driffield, 1854)Google Scholar; The Agricultural Labourer as he Really Is (Driffield, 1854); Rev. Canon Randolph, ‘Statute Hirings’ a paper read before the Social Science Congress at York 1864, reported in the York Herald, 1st October 1864, and ‘Social Conditions and Recreations of the Poor’, a paper given at the Church Congress at York 1866 and reported in the York Herald, 13th October 1866.

11. Morris, , Present System, pp 6–7.Google Scholar

12. Beverley Guardian, 11th November 1865.

13. Yorkshire Gazette, 16th November 1861.

14. The term ‘conventicle of respectability’ is derived from Storch, R., ‘The Problem of Working Class Leisure: Some Roots of Middle Class Moral Reform in the Industrial North: 1825–50’, in Donajgrodzki, A.P. (ed.), Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain (London, 1977), p. 149.Google Scholar

15. Morris, M.C.F., Yorkshire Folk Talk (London, second edition, 1911) pp. 207–210.Google Scholar This was originally written in 1891. Morris was himself a Wolds clergyman and son of Rev. F.O. Morris.

16. The classic critical analysis of the social control approach remains Thompson, F.M.L., ‘Social Control in Victorian Britain’, Economic History Review, Second Series, XXXIV, 2 (May 1981).Google Scholar

17. The contested nature of cultural change and the importance of its recognition is emphasised by Hall, S., ‘Deconstructing the Popular’ in Samuel, R. (ed.), Peoples History and Socialist Theory (London, 1981).Google Scholar

18. For a detailed examination of the farm service system and the continued importance of the market functions of hiring fairs in the East Riding, see Caunce, S., Amongst Farm Horses: The Horselads of East Yorkshire (Stroud, 1991)Google Scholar. See also by Caunce, S.: ‘East Riding Hiring Fairs’, Oral History, 2 (1975)Google Scholar and ‘Twentieth Century Farm Servants: The Horselads of the East Riding of Yorkshire’, Agricultural History Review, 39, ii (1992).

19. Farmers had granted a week's holiday at Martinmas in order to prevent servants obtaining a settlement.

20. Morris, F.O., Present System, p. 3.Google Scholar

21. The words of a Wolds farmer called before the Royal Commission on the Agricultural Depression 1894–7, cited in Adams, M. G., Agricultural Change in the East Riding of Yorkshire 1850–1880, D. Phil. Thesis, University of Hull (1977), p. 32.Google Scholar Although noting that the period was not ‘uniformly golden’, Adams generally emphasises the prosperity of East Riding agriculture during the mid-Victorian period.

22. Wilkinson, O., The Agricultural Revolution in the East Riding of Yorkshire, East Yorkshire Local History Series: no. 5 (1956)Google Scholar; Harris, A., The Rural Landscape of the East Riding of Yorkshire 1700–1850 (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar; Gleave, M.B., ‘Dispersed and Nucleated Settlement on the Yorkshire Wolds, 1770–1850’, Institute of British Geographers Transactions and Papers, 30 (1962)Google Scholar; Adams, Agricultural Change, for details of the changes in agriculture and settlement patterns; ibid., p. 346–7 for the tightening labour market.

23. Sheppard, J.A., ‘East Yorkshire's Agricultural Labour Force in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, Agricultural History Review, 9 (1961), 49.Google Scholar

24. Sheppard, , ‘Agricultural Labour Force’, pp. 48–50Google Scholar; Adams, , Agricultural Change, pp. 333–4Google Scholar; Marsh, G., The Agricultural Labour Force of England and Wales, pp. 227–8Google Scholar, cited in Thirsk, J. and Mingay, G.E. (eds.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. vi, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 673.Google Scholar

25. ‘The Yorkshire Wolds’, The Roving Commissioner of the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, York Herald October 8th 1864. Caird, J., English Agriculture in 1850–51 (London, 1852)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, regarded the Wolds tenant farmers as probably the wealthiest in the country and praised their educated and liberal approach to agricultural improvement, pp. 310–11. In a recent survey P. Joyce has suggested that in the south and east of England agriculture was economically advanced and had abandoned farm service. He contrasts this with the less advanced north and west which retained living in, annual hiring and yearly wage payment: Joyce, P., ‘Work’, in Thompson, F.M.L. (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1850, vol 2 (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar. In fact, rather like lowland Scotland, East Riding agriculture followed a different but equally, if not more, advanced pattern of modernisation which still retained farm service because of its relevance and utility to such a modern agrarian capitalism.

26. William Barugh, Master and Man. A Reply to the Pamphlet of the Rev. Eddowes, John, The Agricultural Labourer as He Really Is (Driffield, 1854), p. 19.Google Scholar

27. Barugh, Master and Man, complained of the insubordination on the part of servants that lay behind the ‘Numerous cases of litigation betwixt masters and servants’, and suggested that the rural exodus meant that a servant no longer feared, and in some cases actively sought dismissal ‘… hands are scarce … farmers know not which way to look for men, and he is quickly engaged for the remainder of the year, at a wage perhaps little inferior to that for which he had formerly been engaged for the whole period’. He called for the hirings to be moved to the early spring or summer, p. 20. Although somewhat hyperbolic these and other complaints by farmers are illustrative of the reality that relations between masters and servants were exploitative and could be subject to ‘structural conflicts’ of a comparable nature to those examined by A. Howkins in other forms of hiring; see Howkins, A. ‘Structural Conflict and the Farmworker: Norfolk, 1900–1920’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 4, 3 (April 1977)Google Scholar. Farmer complaints regarding male and female farm servants’ growing propensity for disorder and insubordination and the number of cases brought before the courts probably peaked in the early to mid 1870s when Chambers of Agriculture meetings became the focus for a vigorous discussion of farm service and hiring fairs (see below).

28. Kebbel, T.E., The Agricultural Labourer (London, 1870), pp. 163–1.Google Scholar

29. The term used by A. Howkins to denote the ‘traditional’ type of farm service common to early modern England ‘in which one or two sons or daughters of social equals lived for a time with a different family and “learnt a trade”, hoping themselves eventually to take a farm’. Howkins rightly distinguishes this from the type of farm service that developed in the East Riding and involved hiring young men and women ‘whose status was that of hired labour with little or no hope of ever becoming farmers themselves’, Howkins, A., ‘Peasants, Servants and Labourers: The Marginal Workforce in British Agriculture c. 1870–1914’, Agricultural History Review, 42 (1994) p. 58.Google Scholar

30. Editor's footnoted comment, Nichols, G., ‘On the Condition of the Agricultural Labourer’, Transactions of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, 9 (1846), 74.Google Scholar

31. Jenkins, W.H.M., ‘Show Farm “Eastburn” – Driffield’, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 5, 5 (1869), p. 413.Google Scholar

32. Reports of the Royal Commission on the Depressed Condition of the Agricultural Interests. Assistant Commissioner Coleman's Report on Agriculture in Yorkshire (London, 1881), p. 143. M.C.F. Morris, Yorkshire Folk Talk (1911), describes this system as largely prevailing in the East Riding by the late-Victorian period, especially on the Wolds. The First Report From the Commissioners on The Employment of Children, Young Persons and Women in Agriculture (London, 1868), refers to the following transitional ‘in house’ system, intemediate between the two other extremes: ‘the farmers house is like a barrack with a long chamber full of beds, one of which the foreman commonly occupies to keep order and rouse the men in the morning’, p. 367.

33. Caunce, Farm Horses, and ‘Twentieth Century Farm Servants’: Devine, T.M. (ed.), Farm Servants and Labour in Lowland Scotland 1770–1914 (Edinburgh, 1984)Google Scholar, Editor's Introduction: ‘Scottish Farm Service in The Agricultural Revolution’; A. Orr, ‘Farm Servants and Farm Labour in the Forth Valley and South East Lowlands’ in Devine, Farm Servants; Howkins, ‘Peasants’, and ‘Labour History and the Rural Poor, 1850–1980’, Rural History, 1:1 (1990); Anthony, R., ‘Farm Servant vs Agricultural Labourer, 1870–1914: A Commentary on Howkins’, Agricultural History Review, 32 (1995).Google Scholar

34. The decline of farm service is often regarded as an essential element in the creation of a fully proletarian workforce in that it erodes the ‘semi patriarchal’ social relations bonding master and servants and fettering the development of capitalist social relations: ‘… the decline of farm service contributed significantly to the deterioration of social relations. Its physical proximity, with farm-servant living with employer and the shared leisure and mutual obligation fostered by this system gave way to social segregation’, Snell, K.D.M., Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1987) p. 101.Google Scholar It is suggested here, in this article, that although living in, farm service, and annual hiring continue in the East Riding they develop in a manner that means that capitalist relations of production are able to develop alongside the advanced capitalist forces of production.

35. Yorkshire Gazette, 27th November 1853.

36. Total Attendance at East Riding Hiring Fairs as Estimated by the East Riding Constabulary.

Chief Constables Reports to East Riding Quarter Sessions, as reported in the Hull And Eastern Counties Herald: January 5th 1865, January 4th 1866, January 3rd 1867, January 2nd 1868, January 7th 1869, January 6th 1870, January 5th, 1871, January 4th 1872. The totals for males and females were combined from 1869.

37. The hiring fair at Cottingham was revived in 1867, the number of hiring fairs at Beverley and Driffield increased in the 1870s; as a consequence of farmers’ failed attempts to move them to a later date.

38. Yorkshire Gazette, 27th November 1853.

39. First Report 1867, p. 99.

40. Yorkshire Gazette, 14th January 1854, Letter, ‘Farmer of Beverley’.

41. Eddowes, , Martinmas Musings, p. 3.Google Scholar

42. Yorkshire Gazette, 26th November 1853.

43. Yorkshire Gazette, 18th November 1854.

44. York Herald, 20th November 1876, ‘A Yorkshire Statute Fair’.

45. York Herald, 24th November 1827.

46. As discussed in Cunningham, H., Leisure in the Industrial Revolution c. 1 780–c. 1880 (London, 1980), Ch. 5 and passim.Google Scholar

47. Hull and Eastern Counties Herald, 24th November 1863 and lst December 1870.

48. Chester, , Statute Fairs, p. 9.Google Scholar

49. Yorkshire Gazette, 18th November 1854.

50. Malcolmson, R.W., Popular Recreations in English Society (Cambridge, 1973), p. 150.Google Scholar

51. For a full elaboration of the concept of the ‘ traditional intellectual’ and related themes, see Hoare, Q. and Smith, G. Nowell (eds.), Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London, 1971), pp. 1–23.Google Scholar

52. Roberts, D., Paternalism in Early Victorian England (New Jersey, 1979), p. 62.Google Scholar

53. Heeney, B., ‘On being a Mid Victorian Clergyman’, Journal of Religious History, vii, 3 (1973)Google Scholar; Howkins, A., Reshaping Rural England (London, 1991) Ch. 3Google Scholar; Hugh Cunningham, ‘Leisure’, Ch. 4.

54. Roberts, , Paternalism, p. 156.Google Scholar

55. Obelkevich, J., Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976).Google Scholar

56. Under the influence of the Oxford movement churches and church services were restored and clerical absenteeism declined from the mid-1840s, and this ‘… gave many villages their first resident vicar within memory’, parish education and school building expanded. Lawson, J., Primary Education in East Yorkshire, East Yorkshire Local History Series: no. 10 (York, 1959), p. 16.Google Scholar

57. Eddowes, , Martinmas Musings, p. 11.Google Scholar For an interesting discussion of the internal dynamics and meanings of hiring fairs, and the myopic propensities of external observers, see Roberts, M., ‘“Waiting Upon Chance”: English Hiring Fairs and their Meanings from the 14th to the 20th Century’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 1, 2 (June 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58. Memorial of the York Diocesan Board of Education, ‘Hiring of Farm Servants’ Appendix to Chester, Statute Fairs, this memorial was published in the local press, see for example, Yorkshire Gazette, 18th October 1856.

59. Chester, , Statute Fairs, p. 7.Google Scholar

60. ibid.

61. ibid. p. 15.

62. ibid. p. 13.

63. ibid. p. 11.

64. Wilberforce, R.I., Archdeacon of the East Riding, A Letter to the Gentry, Yeomen, and Farmers of the Archdeaconry of the East Riding (Bridlington, 1842).Google Scholar

65. ibid. pp. 2–6.

66. ibid. p. 6.

67. Simpson, M.E., Ploughing and Sowing; or, Annals of an Evening School in a Yorkshire Village, and the work that grew out of it (Ed.) Legard, F. Digby (London, 1861), p. 1.Google Scholar For a discussion of Mary Simpson and her work see Freeman, C.B., Mary Simpson of Boynton Vicarage: Teacher of Ploughboys and Critic of Methodism, East Yorkshire Local History Series: no. 28 (York, 1971)Google Scholar.

68. Thomson, W., Archbishop of York, Work and Prospects - A Charge (London, 1865), p. 15.Google Scholar

69. Rev. Eddowes, J., The Agricultural Labourer As He Really Is: Or, Village Morals in 1854 (Driffield, 1854), p. 7.Google Scholar

70. Borthwick Institute for Historical Research York, Visitation Returns, Archbishop Wm. Thomson: illustrative examples from 1865 are: Boynton, Bridlington, Rev. F. Simpson ‘Children leave the parish at an early age for farm service’; Foston on the Wolds, Hull, Rev. W. Bayles ’… the parish is a poor one … all go to service at 12 or 13 years of age’; Hook, Howden, Rev. O.L. Chambers ’the migratory character of the population, farming labourers hired only for the year, it is difficult to hold any influence over them for good’.

71. Rev. Morris, M.C.F., The British Workman Past and Present (London, 1928), p. 121.Google Scholar

72. Eddowes, , Agricultural Labourer, p. 12.Google Scholar

73. Rev. Legard, F. Digby, ‘The Education of Farm Servants’, pp. 2–3Google Scholar, in Legard (ed.), More About Farm Lads. Legard emphasised the importance of the tightening labour market due to emigration and high farming's demand for more labour as important in promoting a situation in which ‘instead of being slaves to the masters, these men are becoming masters’.

74. Visitation Returns, 1865, Upper Helmsley nr York, Rev. J. Harrow.

75. Eddowes, , The Agricultural Labourer, p. 10.Google Scholar

76. D., and Neave, S., East Riding Chapels and Meeting Houses, East Yorkshire Local History Society (Bridlington, 1990), p. 4.Google Scholar

77. Visitation Returns, 1865, Burton Agnes.

78. Visitaton Returns, Archbishop Thomson, 1877, Keyingham, Rev. J. Sharp-Tomlinson.

79. Visitation Returns, Archbishop Thomson, 1868, North Frodingham, Rev. H. West.

80. Woodcock, , Piety Among the Peasantry, p. 179.Google Scholar

81. Visitation Returns, 1865, Bridlington St Marys Burlington, Rev. H.F. Barnes.

82. Visitation Returns, 1865, Catwick, Rev. J. Hudson.

83. Simpson, , Ploughing and Sowing, p. 71.Google Scholar

84. Visitation Returns, 1877, Fridaythorpe, Rev. T. Barton.

85. Woodcock, , Piety Among the Peasantry, p. 229.Google Scholar

86. Visitation Returns, 1868, North Frodingham.

87. Hobsbawm, E.J., Primitive Rebels, Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester, 1959), p. 138.Google Scholar The assertive and non deferential nature of the East Riding Farm Servant is emphasised in Neave, D., Mutual Aid in The Victorian Countryside: friendly societies in the rural East Riding, 1830–1912 (Hull, 1991).Google Scholar

88. Simpson, Mary, Why Church is Better than Chapel or Meeting, A Word to those who Like Chapel Best (London, 1863)Google Scholar, see also, Ploughing and Sowing, passim.

89. Skinner, , Facts and Opinions, p. 17.Google Scholar

90. Morris, , Folk Talk, p. 11.Google ScholarWoodcock, , Piety, p. 27.Google Scholar

91. Hull and Eastern Counties Herald, 2nd January 1862.

92. Hull and Eastern Counties Herald, 7th January 1864.

93. Hull and Eastern Conties Herald, 6th January 1870.

94. Caunce, S., Farm Horses, p. 58.Google Scholar

95. Hull and Eastern Counties Herald, 18th November 1869.

96. Hull Times, 13th November 1875, Hull Times, 20th November 1875, this involved a crowd of 2,000 people ‘the majority of them appeared to be wild and riotous’, several farm servants were summonsed as ringleaders. Disorderly proceedings were also reported at Bridlington hirings in 1875.

97. ‘Any direct influence for good we have hitherto had had ended with the hours of hiring’, Simpson, M.Gleanings, Being a Sequel to ‘Ploughing and Sowing’, (ed.) Rev. Legard, F.D. (1876)Google Scholar, cited in Caunce Farm Horses, p. 177.

98. Ward, J.T., ‘East Yorkshire Estates in the Nineteenth Century’, East Yorkshire Local History Society, 23 (1967)Google Scholar; Lawson, , Primary Education, p. 9.Google Scholar

99. ‘The Hiring of Servants’, the Clergy of the Deanery of South Dickering, Yorkshire Gazette, 14th November 1863. See also Wilberforce, , A Letter, p. 11.Google Scholar

100. Example of this assistance are the Sykes’ cooperation in promoting Registration Societies in villages on their Sledmere estate, and their sponsorship of Martinmas Feasts for loyal servants, Yorkshire Gazette 13th December 1859. Sir Henry Boynton supported registration societies and encouraged his tenants to do likewise, see Yorkshire Gazette 12th November 1859.

101. Landownership was tightly concentrated in the East Riding, many landowners were supportive of Anglican Churches and Schools, but increasingly a large number were non-resident see: Ward, Landed Estates, pp. 16–17; see also Adams, Agricultural Change, ch. 10; and Neave, Mutual Aid, who points out that this absenteeism meant that Anglican clergy were often the only persons of ‘influence’ in many East Riding villages, p. 10.

102. Skinner, , Facts and Opinions, p. 3.Google Scholar

103. Randolph, ‘On Statute Hirings’, York Herald, October 1st, 1864, ‘Editorial’ Yorkshire Gazette, 11th November 1866.

104. First Report, pp. 94–100. Written characters were dismissed as unworkable ‘If one man won't employ them another will’, p. 98, register offices were ‘too much trouble’, p. 100.

105. York Herald, 14th July, 1876.

106. An example of this trend is the formation of Chambers of Agriculture in the East Riding during the 1860s. These welcomed Landlord patronage and support but were in the hands of tenant farmers. Indeed, the East Riding Chamber of Agriculture decided to discontinue the practice of electing large proprietors as its Chairmen because ‘ they had not often attended their meetings, nor had there been any accession of the landed interest on the role of members’, Beverley Recorder, 14th December 1872.

107. Farmer complaints about their labourers are, of course, perennial. However, there is a discernible increase in farmers discomfort in their dealings with farm servants from the 1860s in particular. Farm servants are demanding and gaining higher wages at hiring fairs and there are complaints that both female and male servants have become difficult to manage and even that farmers have become ‘tools in the hands of the servants’, York Herald, 5th July 1875. There is also a perceptible increase in the number of master and servant cases before magistrates. A particular concern is that many servants are breaking their contracts and that farmers are no longer able to enforce these contracts because the law of master and servant now requires that contracts of more than 12 months be in writing. Hence farmers now support written contracts and oppose those hirings that take place before Martinmas.

108. Chambers of Agriculture approached forty different authorities in Yorkshire, Notts, Lincs, and Durham and requested that all hirings held prior to Martinmas cease. Letter, ‘Statute Hirings’, Dunn, J., York Herald, 28th October 1878.Google Scholar

109. i.e. those that occurred prior to Martinmas. There were attempts to organise a boycott of the pre-Martinmas hirings at Beverley and Driffield, and to create new later hirings. This failed, farm servants continued to attend, farmers were divided and many still attended the original hiring day, the result was the aforementioned increase in the number of hirings.

110. Skinner, , Facts and Opinions, p. 10.Google Scholar

111. It was claimed that farmers had once insisted upon attendance at church as a condition of hiring but servants now refused such pressures, First Report 1867, p. 100.

112. Caunce, , Hiring Fairs, p. 51Google Scholar, uses this term to describe the informal collective bargaining that took place at the hirings.

113. Yorkshire Gazette, 25th November 1854.

114. York Herald, 29th November 1866.

115. York Herald, 19th November 1864.

116. Hull and Eastern Counties Herald 18th November, however, by 1870 there were only a dozen such girls, Hull and Eastern Counties Herald, 17th November, 1870.

117. York Herald, 24th November, 1875.

118. The indoor farm servant was favourbly contrasted to the field worker in point of respectability. She was thought to be engaged in proper “women's work” which would serve to improve her as a prospective wife and mother, and to prepare her for service in a “big house” if she wanted to move onto higher things … ’, Kitteringham, J., ‘Country work girls in nineteenth century England’, in Samuel, R. (ed.), Village Life and Labour (London, 1975), p. 97.Google Scholar Despite this tendency towards increased separation in the roles of female and male farm servants, females often continued to undertake work that was regarded as ‘outdoor’, e.g. threshing and dairying. It is interesting to note that in an area such as Malton where dairy work was prevalent women remained most attached to outdoor hirings. By the end of the nineteenth century farmers complained that they could not obtain women to undertake outdoor work.

119. See Caunce, Farm Horses, Chs. 5, 6, 17 and conclusion.