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