LABOUR AND HIKINGS 95 



The scarcity of cottages accounts to a large extent for the custom 

 of boarding and lodging the labourers in the farm-house — the custom 

 enables both male and female servants to save a considerable pro- 

 portion of their wage, which is carefully laid by each year with a 

 view to marriage and taking a small farm on leaving service ; but 

 although Westmorland must be accounted a county of small holdings, 

 there is much competition for them, and the rents are so high for the 

 quality of the land, that many of the best men are forced to emigrate 

 each year. 



In the Annual Report for 1868 of the Penrith Branch of the 

 Carhsle Savings' Bank the amount due to 260 male farm servants 

 was £9,259 9s. 5d., and to 240 female farm servants £7,904 8s. 9d. 

 In the Kirkby Lonsdale, Morland, Shap, Appleby, Kirkby Stephen, 

 and Temple Sowerby Lodges of Friendly Societies there were, in 1868, 

 364 farm servants and farm labourers members. 



Women have been employed in outdoor farm labour to a greater 

 extent than is desirable, especially during the first three quarters 

 of the century, though it has been on a continually decreasing scale. 

 In 1794 Pringle reported that it was " painful to behold the beautiful 

 servant maids of the district toiling in the severe labours of the field ; 

 they drive the harrow and the plough, when they are drawn by three 

 horses ; nay, it is not uncommon to see, toiling at the dung carts a 

 girl whose elegant features and delicately-proportioned limbs but 

 ill accord with such rough treatment." Henry Tremenheere of 

 Grasmere, one of the assistant commissioners to the Royal Commission 

 on the Employment of Women and Children in Agiiculture, reported, 

 in 1869, that the greater part of such work as spreading dung, weeding 

 crops, thinning turnips, and taking up potatoes is still done by female 

 farm servants and by extra women when they can be procured. About 

 20 years previously the public agricultural gang system had been 

 introduced, and there existed in Penrith eight public gang masters 

 and seven women carrying on the same business, who employed about 

 300 young women and children of the lowest class. Tremenheere found 

 that they were not properly looked after while they were at work, 

 and that their education was neglected ; they were sent out in gangs 

 of 20 to 40 to the larger arable farms, the age of the children was from 

 ten years upwards, and they received a penny a 100 yards for turnip 



