Catalogue of Works on Gardening, &,-c. 



375 



difficLilt, if not impossible, to divide a family so that grown-up persons of dif- 

 ferent sexes, brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters, do not sleep in the 

 same room. Three or four persons not unfrequently sleep in the same bed. 

 In a few instances I found that two families, neighbours, arranged so that the 

 females of both families slept together in one cottage and the males in the 

 other ; but such an arrangement is very rare, and in the generality of cottages 

 I believe that the only attempt that is or that can be made to separate beds, 

 with occupants of different sexes, and necessarily placed close together from 

 the smallness of the rooms, is an old shawl or some article of dress suspended 

 as a curtain between them. At Stourpain, a village near Blandford, I mea- 

 sured a bed-room in a cottage consisting of two rooms, the bed-room in ques- 

 tion up stairs, and a room on the ground floor in which the family lived during 

 the day. There were eleven in the family : and the aggregate earnings in 

 money were 165. Qd. weekly (Dec. ISiS), with certain advantages, the prin- 

 cipal being the father's title to a grist of a bushel of corn a week, at 1*. below 

 the market price, his fuel carted for him, &c. They had also an allotment of 

 a quarter of an acre, for which they paid a rent of 7s. Id. a year. The follow- 

 ing diagram shows the shape of the room and the position of the three beds, 

 A, B, C, it contained. The room was 10 ft. square, not reckoning the two 

 small recesses by the sides of the chimney, about 18 in. deep. The roof was 

 the thatch, the middle of the chamber being about 7 ft. high. Opposite the 

 fire-place was a small window, about 15 in. square, the only one to the room. 



Door to Staircase- 





Chimney. 



- 1 



A 

 Bed. 











C 







Bed. 







B 







Bed. 







1 







" Bed A was occupied by the father and mother, a little boy, Jeremiah, aged 

 li year, and an infant aged 4 months. 



"Bed B was occupied by the three daughters, — the two eldest, Sarah and 

 Elizabeth, twins, aged 20 ; and Mary, aged 7. 



"Bed C was occupied by the four sons, — Silas, aged 17 j John, aged 15 ; 

 James, aged 14 ; and Elias, aged 10. 



" There was no curtain, or any kind of separation between the beds. 



" This I was told was not an extraordinary case ; but that, more or less, 

 every bed-room in the village was crowded with inmates of both sexes, of 

 various iiges, and that such a state of things was caused by the want o( 

 cottages. 



