214 HIRING FAIRS IN ENGLAND. 
some hiring at Martinmas. Married men are usually 
engaged privately and are not hired at fairs. In Rutland a 
little hiring, chiefly for lads to live in the farmhouses, still 
takes place in November at Oakham and Ketton; but the 
custom of hiring and of boarding in the farmhouses is almost 
extinct, and appears to be only resorted to where there are no 
cottages available. Yearly hirings take place in September 
in Cambridgeshire at Wisbech for foremen, shepherds, 
horsekeepers, and cattlemen. Married as well as unmarried 
men are frequently engaged at this fair. The norsekeepers 
are, as a rule, unmarried, and lodge in the foreman’s cottage, 
where they either board themselves or are supplied with 
meals for about 8s. or 8s. 6d. a week. 
In Derbyshire, Shropshire, Stafford, Warwick, Leicester, 
Worcester, Oxford, Berks, and Bucks, the practice of hiring 
at fairs (“‘statute fairs,’ or “mops” as they are calledum 
some places) exists, though to a much smaller extent than 
formerly, in regard to the yearly hiring of men and youths to 
take charge of horses and cattle, and also of women and 
girls for situations in farmhouses and for domestic service. 
Many of the so-called hiring fairsin these counties are now 
merely pleasure fairs, the system of private engagements 
having become almost universal. In Cheshire the hirings 
formerly held have become extinct. The other counties in 
which hiring at fairs takes place are in the South and South- 
West of England; and in all the system may be said to be 
rapidly dying out, engagements being now made privately 
or through the medium of advertisements. Among those 
counties in which it is most prevalent are Hereford and 
Monmouth. A little hiring at fairs still takes place in 
Hampshire, Dorset, Wilts, and Gloucester, and a good many 
labourers of all classes are still hired at the yearly Dorches- 
ter fairs in February, though it is stated that they are not of 
the best class, either there or at the Wiltshire fairs. 
[Zarnings of Agricultural Labourers in the United Kingdom. Cd. 346.) 

