284 



MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



lodging, and contain also the evidence of throe 

 women as consecutively arranged in the book. 



To understand these accounts it is necessary 

 to bear in mind that these {vLmWles find them- 

 selves out of the wages mentioned ; and that for 

 calculation, it is near enough to reckon a pound 

 at five dolhirs, a shilling at twenty-five cents, 

 and a penny at two cents. As to lodging 

 and food it would be curious to run the com- 

 parison between that which the white laborers 

 of England obtain, as here stated, in " Dorset 

 and Somerset,'' and thatwhich is the lot of slaves 

 in " Dorset and Somerset," Mari/land. Here 

 every black family has a good tight house, made 

 of logs, filled in with billets of wood and cla}', a 

 dry clay floor, which they prefer to one of plank, 

 and a shingle roof; abundance of ^vood, with, 

 generally their own garden, as much as they 

 choose to work ; and their hog, be.sides their 

 regular allowance of meat, generally three, 

 sometimes four pounds each, and their poultry 

 to raise for sale ; with their " patch " of unlimited 

 size for sweet potatoes and cabbages. Besides 

 these they have the ofFal of the garden, the dairy, 

 and the orchard for the children, %vith some old 

 ^voman to take care of them ; a phj'sician quickly 

 in attendance in case of sickness, and the good 

 house- wife to see that they get tea and sugar. 

 and soup, and other suitable diet in all cases of 

 need. 



There is not a man who has had an opportu- 

 nity of observation that does not know this to 

 be a true picture. We give it as a mere pre- 

 sentment of facts for the information of a 

 natural curiosity as to the comparative condition 

 of laboring classes in different countries. Facts 

 which, like eveiy other sort of knowledge, men 

 of any ism may well desire to possess. 



" With regard to lodging, there is no differ- 

 ence between that of the women who labor 

 in the fields and the v^-omen of the same class 

 ^vho do not. The want of sufficient accommoda- 

 tion seems universal. Cottages generally have 

 only two bedrooms (with very rare exceptions) ; 

 a great many have only one. The consequence 

 is, that it is very often extremely difficult, if not 

 impossible, to divide a family so that grown-up 

 persons of different sexes, brothers and sisters, 

 fathers and daughters, do not sleep in the 

 same room. Three or four persons not unfre- 

 quently sleep in the same bed. In a few 

 instances I found that two families, neigh- 

 bors. aiTanged so that the females of both 

 families slept together in one cottage and 

 the males in the other ; but such an arrange- 

 ' mcnt is very rare, and in the generality of cot- 

 tages I believe that the only attempt that is or 

 that can be made to separate bed.s, with occu- 

 pants of different sexes, and necessarilj' placed 

 close together from the smallness of the rooms, 

 is an old shawl or some article of dress sus- 

 jjended as a curtain between them. At Slour- 

 pain, a village near Blandford, I mea.sured a 

 bed-room in a cottage consisting of two rooms, 

 the bed-room in question up stairs, and a room 

 on the gi'ound-floor in which the family lived 

 (584) 



during the day. There were eleven in the fam- 

 ily : and the aggregate earnings in money were 

 16s. Gd. weekly (Dec. 1842), with certain advan- 

 tages, the principal being the father's title to a 

 grist of a bushel of corn a week, at Is. below 

 the market price, his fuel carted for him, &r.— 

 They had also an allotment of a quarter of an 

 acre, for which they paid a rent of 7s. 7d. a j'ear. 

 The following diagram shows the shape of the 

 room and the poi^ition of the three beds. A, B, 

 C, it contained. The room was ten feet square, 

 not reckoning the two small recesses by the 

 sides of the chimney, about 18 inches deep. — 

 The roof was the tliatch, the middle of the 

 cliamber being about seven feet high. Oppo- 

 site the fire-place was a small window, about 

 15 inches squai-e, the only one to the room. 



Door to staircase. 



; Chimney. 



A 

 Bed. 



B 



Bed. 



C 



Bed. 



Windows. 



Bed A was occupied by the father and rjoth- 

 er, a little boy, Jeremiah, aged 1^ years, and an 

 infant aged 4 months. 



Bed B was occupied by three daughters, — 

 the two eldest, Sarah and Elizabeth, twins, 

 aged 20 ; and Mary, aged 7. 



Bed C was occupied by the four sous, — Silas, 

 aced 17 ; John, aged 15 ; Jame.s, aged 14 ; and 

 Ehas, aged 10. 



There was no curtain, or any kind of separa- 

 tion between the beds. 



This I was told was not an extraordinary 

 case ; but that, more or less eveiy bedroom in 

 the village was crowded ^vith inmates of both 

 sexes, of various ages, and that such a state of 

 things was caused by the want of cottages. 



It is impossible not to be .struck, in viijiting 

 the dwellings of the agricultural laborers, with 

 the general want of new cottages, notwithstand- 

 ing the universal increase of population. Eve- 

 rywhere the cottages are old, and frequently in 

 a state of decay, and are, consequently, ill adapt- 

 ed for their increased number of inmates of 

 late years. The floor of the room in which the 

 family live during the day is always of stone in 

 these counties, and -wet or damp through the 

 winter months, being frequently lower tlian the 

 soil outside. The situation of the cottage is of- 

 ten extremely bad, no attention having been 

 paid at the time of its building to facilities for 

 draining. Cottages are frequently erected on a 

 dead level, so that water cannot escape ; and 

 sometimes on spots lower than the suiToiinding 

 gi-ound. In the village of Stourpain, in Dorset- 

 shire, there is a row of several laborers' cot- 

 tages, mostly joining each other, and fronting 

 tlie street, in tlie middle of which is an open 



