A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



apparently, no increase was made beyond four, a man with one child 

 receiving js., with two children BJ., but with four gs. bd. 



In other parts of the county, particularly in the Buckingham and 

 Newport districts, the scale was fixed according to the value of the half-peck 

 loaf, three a week being allowed at Adstock for a man and his wife, and one 

 for each child, but elsewhere the allowance was sometimes less. 



At Upton-cum-Chalvey the scale of wages was not only regulated by 

 the size of the family, since ' capacity, constitution, and age ' were taken into 

 consideration, and at several other places no fixed scale was adhered to, but 

 they can only be regarded as exceptions to the general rule. Leckhampstead 

 had developed a system peculiar to itself; no allowance per child was ever 

 given, but all children that the labourers were unable to maintain were taken 

 and kept in the workhouse. This established a workhouse test of the 

 worst possible character, falling on the children and not on the labourer ; but 

 the one saving feature in the system was the high wages fixed for a labourer 

 with a wife and three children. He received 14^. 6d. a week, or 4^. 6d. above 

 the allowance at Aylesbury. Frequently four children were maintained on 

 the same wages, rather than let them go to the workhouse, so that possibly 

 the system in the particular circumstances worked well. 



Such a method of calculating the amount of wages led to a number of 

 improvident marriages, and a consequent increase in the population. Still 

 more was this the case when unmarried men received less than the married, 

 apart from the allowance for each child. 



In the Chilterns there was, as a rule, no difference made, a good 

 labourer, married or unmarried, receiving the same treatment, and at 

 Burnham the comment was that such a distinction would have been an 

 encouragement to improvident marriages ; wages were the reward for labour, 

 and should properly be proportionate to the skill and exertions of the 

 labourer and not to the extent of his family. 218 At West Wycombe, 

 however, an unmarried man received 4-r. if he was over twenty years old, 

 and 3-f. if under twenty, but a married man had 5-r. s19 Elsewhere there was 

 a considerable difference, as a rule the unmarried men earned only from 

 4-r. to 6s. a week, except in harvest-time, but a married man made 8s. to IQJ. 

 At Sherington there was a case of a married labourer having i 31. 6d. 

 ordered for his weekly wages by a magistrate, but the size of his family was 

 not given. 



There was another difference in the employment of unmarried men since 

 they were often only employed by the parish. In the neighbourhood of 

 Woolstone it was said that they were all roundsmen, paid by the parish at the 

 lowest rate, and in many instances they were driven out to seek employment 

 for themselves, so that boys of seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen were 

 induced to marry to establish a claim on the parish for support and main- 

 tenance. 



A further result of the allowance system was the disappearance of piece- 

 work. In Desborough Hundred it was said not to answer since there were too 

 many men to be employed, and neither farmers nor overseers could afford to 



18 At Upton-cum-Chalvey there was no difference for the best labourers, but ' feeling masters ' allowed 

 married men to do more of the hardest work by the piece, and therefore they had more money. 

 819 These wages were paid by both overseers and farmers. 



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