OLD COUNTRY FOLK 239 



thirteen shillings, farm hands eight to ten shillings, women 

 for field work, eightpence a day. Mechanics now earn from 

 thirty-three to forty-two shillings for a week of five days, 

 labourers eighteen to thirty shillings, farm labourers thir- 

 teen to sixteen shillings. 



© 



Farmers used to hire their men by the year, but they 

 would discharge them two days before the year was up so 

 that they could not ' claim the parish.' In this way the 

 farmer escaped some payment of rates. 



It was wonderful how labouring people contrived to live 

 in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, with their low 

 wages, and the price of bread at one time up to tenpence 

 and even a shilling for the four-pound loaf; when the 

 price of wheat ranged from £30 to £36 a load, and even 

 went as high as £40. 



In and about the year 1812a farm labourer had twelve 

 shillings a week. I have a true record of such a one. 

 There were seven mouths to feed. He was paid in wheat. 

 He had to wheel or carry the corn between two and three 

 miles to the mill and bring back the flour. It was then 

 mixed with bran, beans, peas, or anything of the sort that 

 could be obtained, and even then the amount was in- 

 sufficient. ' We was hungry always — never had a bellyful.' 



Yet some of these sparely-fed people were wonderfully 

 strong. An old man spoke proudly of his mother. ' She 

 was a six-foot woman ; she could pick up and carry two 

 bags (sacks) of meal, one under each arm ; in pattens too ! ' 



Eighty years ago a sack-lifter in Guildford corn-market 

 laid a wager that he would lift a sack of corn in Guildford 



