A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



my wages fall when the masters can sell the coal at any price they like and 

 then choose to take less for it ? ' When the miners lack a succession of 

 leaders of the old type the practice of collective bargaining may fail to 

 solve such differences of interest as the more ignorant miners may conceive 

 to exist. 



The depth of degradation for the Durham working-men was the two 

 decades before the reform of the Poor Law. At this time the artificial 

 stimulus of war was removed from agriculture, while manufactures felt an in- 

 crease of foreign competition. Mackenzie gives some interesting figures to 

 illustrate the growth of poor relief. The county poor rates for the year end- 

 ing Easter 1750 were ^7,143. In twenty-five years they had about doubled; 

 by 25 March 1803 they had risen to ^51,966. The year after Waterloo they 

 reached ^83,650; from 1818 to 1820 they oscillated at a little over ^T 10 1,000. 

 Then for a few years they varied between ^75,000 and ^(^97,000 with a 

 slight tendency to decrease, but in 1832 the rates were again over ^T 100,000, 

 and out of the actual rate of ^102,951, ;r86,ooo was spent solely on the 

 relief of the poor, although the population was little more than 250,000. 

 And what a weltering confusion was this system of relief. It was adminis- 

 tered by eighty-six select vestries and sixty-eight assistant overseers, not to 

 mention the ordinary parish organization. In 1832 we learn that 193 paupers 

 were employed on the roads and earned ^1,618 8j.; 357 paupers employed 

 in parish work earned >r663 131.^ 



The new Poor Law of 1834 was a powerful, if unpleasant, remedy for 

 the increasing pauperization of the workers, but it was as ill received here as 

 elsewhere. Riots developed into militant chartism, especially in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Newcastle, and chartism was followed by the growth of the 

 Labour Party, whose trade-unionist wing is especially strong on the local 

 governing bodies of the county and has several representatives in Parliament. 

 However, thanks to the mediation of Bishop Westcott in 1892 Durham has 

 been singularly free from labour troubles since the great strike of that 

 year. The old days of bull-baiting, pugilism, and hard drinking seem to 

 have passed away in Durham, but there is still much to be deprecated in the 

 social and moral life of the county. Intoxication is a painfully common vice 

 among the colliers, especially at week-ends ; while the language and behaviour 

 of the crowds at football or bowling matches too often recall the habits 

 of their mediaeval ancestors.*^ However, real progress in education and 

 refinement is being made. If colliery villages are often ill-built and insanitary 

 the reason is that they are the result of fluctuations of population almost 

 inseparable from the industry, and even so public opinion is slowly but 

 surely effecting improvement. Serious crime is certainly on the decrease in 

 the county, and minor offences, generally the result of drunkenness and 

 moral perversion, will probably disappear considerably as education and the 

 higher ideals of trade-unionism and co-operation increase their hold upon 

 the working classes. 



' Mackenzie and Ross, Hist, of Durham, i, Ixxxv. 



' It is curious to note that ' pila,' some kind of football or bowls probably, was a favourite game in Durham in 

 the fourteenth century. Repeated but vain attempts were made to suppress it. In I 381 a match between 

 the prior's tenants at Southwick and Monkwearmouth and those of the 'lord of Hylton ' ended in a free 

 fight in which the prior's tenants were ' in grave peril of their bodies.' Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), 

 171. 



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