A HISTORY OF DORSET 



In 1868, when Dorset was at the height of agricultural prosperity, the 

 condition of the labourer was by no means proportionately improved. Cot- 

 tages, with some notable exceptions, were often a disgrace to their owners,'" 

 especially in the villages of Bere Regis, Fordington, Winfrith, Cranborne, 

 and Charminster. If there was a second bedroom at all it was rather a 'closet 

 not closed ' off from the first, and in Charminster there was an average of 

 seven persons to one house. ^" Mr. Stanhope also brought to light other evils, 

 doubtless of long duration. The habit existed in Dorset of hiring whole 

 families : not only was the labourer expected to work, but his wife, or at 

 least the daughters, were drawn in to held work, and the boys were taken 

 away too early from school, and then kept on after they were grown up for 

 the same purpose.'** Thus female labour was encouraged and the education 

 and future prospects of the men neglected. Though wages had been raised 

 by the agricultural revolution they were only paid once a fortnight, or even 

 once a month, and it was only the married men who received additional 

 perquisites.^*' 



In some districts there was little or no market for labour. If the 

 labourer was better off in the island of Purbeck, where the clay and stone 

 quarries raised the general level of wages, in the Vale of Blackmoor, where the 

 small farms were managed by the families themselves, additional labour was 

 not wanted, unless it was of a very casual and unsatisfactory description. 

 Where labour was hired it was at a low wage, and dairy farming gave little 

 scope for piece-work, which might have raised the total earnings. '*''' After 

 this gloomy view of the agricultural labourer, Mr. Little, who visited Dorset 

 fourteen years afterwards, pronounced the position ' much improved.' ' On 

 many estates labourers were well housed, much money having recently been 

 expended on large properties in building improvements.' Wages, though 

 they were still ' far below the standard of the south-eastern and northern 

 counties,' in other words the mining and manufacturing districts, had ' in- 

 creased ten per cent, to thirty per cent, during the last ten years.''" This was 

 remarkable, as the agricultural depression was already felt ; and the fact still 

 remains that the labourer has not suffered in the same way as the landowner 

 and farmer have done. Of course the depression has meant a decreased 

 demand for labour, as the farmer has had to economize. Land has again been 

 inclosed for pastures, farms consolidated, and machinery more and more used 

 in order to dispense with labour. But this decrease in demand has been 

 counterbalanced by a decrease in the supply of labour, owing to the attractions 

 of at least nominally higher wages in the towns, or in the mining districts."* 

 Probably those men who desire it can find work as agricultural labourers, and, 

 in spite of the depression and low prices, wages have not fallen. In 1893 

 Mr. Spencer calculated that the average earnings of a field labourer amounted 



•* The state of the cottages was so notoriously bad that public attention was attracted, and a meeting 

 held at Blandford in 1 843 to consider the matter. The actual example was set by Mr. Sturt, who 

 rebuilt a whole village on his model system. Two cottages, with three bedrooms in each, were placed side by 

 side in the middle of an acre of land which they divided between them ; half an acre being usually accepted 

 as the maximum amount of land that a labourer can cultivate without neglecting his employer's work. 'Journ. 

 of the Bath and West of Engl. Agric. Soc. (Ser. 2, 1S60), viii, 221. 



'" Pari. Accounts and Papers, 1868-9, xiii, 80. Second report by Mr. Stanhope. 



'«« Ibid. 78. '^ Ibid. 79. "o Ibid. 77, 78. 



"' Ibid. 1882, XV, 28. Mr. Little on Dorset. 



"' Ibid. 1893, XXXV, 6, 7. 'The Condition of the Labourer in Dorset.' Mr. Aubrey Spencer. 



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