Lecture 3
LECTURE 3 - THE POOR AND THE LAND
1. The Structure of rural society and the agricultural interest
Rural society: landlords & tenants, bailiffs, smallholders, cottagers, agricultural labour, clergy, rural tradesmen & craftsmen, rural manufacturers
Seasons in grain growing and pastoral areas
Tenant farmers
2. The institutions of rural society
The parish
Settlement
The ‘official parish’ and the ‘dark parish’
3. The structures of agricultural labour
Types of agricultural labour
a. Yearly contract labour
b. Unpaid family labour
3. Part-time work, paid by the week or the piece
4. The impact of enclosure
Chambers & Mingay against the Hammonds,
Impact of enclosure on female labour
5. The impact of agricultural change
loss of common rights
Jeannette Neeson
E.P. Thompson
Arthur Young
6. The impact of 18thC. price rises and Napoleonic Wars
prices rose by 76.3% 1740-50-1785-95
-in the same period real wages declined on average 18.5%
decline in cottage industry
7. Rural protest
Captain Swing
Food riots
Illiteracy
8. Poor Relief
The Old Poor Law
Compare to charity on the Continent