Catton in 1851

On the night of the census, March 30th 1851, the parish of Catton, which covered 895 acres, contained 618 persons in a total of 138 households. With 442 persons per square mile it had the highest population density in its hundred, Taverham. Such factual statements may be made from a brief glance at the printed abstracts of the 1851 census (1), but an examination of the handwritten census enumerators schedules, in conjunction with the mid-19th century directories, allow more detailed and intimate aspects of the parish community to be investigated.  Though the census only records the community as it existed on one particular night and therefore must have its deficiencies (local people working away, or staying with relatives, or whatever), it's near total coverage provides an invaluable insight into the life of this parish in the year of the Great Exhibition and the zenith of early Victorian England.

Clearly an essential element in any such picture is a description of the occupational structure of the locality, but it is not as easy as it might appear to quantify the amount and types of paid work local people were doing.  As Alan Rogers notes, "it is always possible to underestimate the commercial activity in any local community, probably because much of it was carried on in a minor way and was largely unrecorded" (2).  This limitation undoubtedly applies to Catton at this time. Despite the apparent fullness of the census, much work, especially perhaps that done by women, is probably under-recorded.  But despite this shortcoming a reasonably representative impression may still be gained from the available documentary sources.  A full list of the occupations of Catton's heads of households, as recorded in the census schedules, appears in Appendix Two, while Appendix Five contains a division of the employed population into industrial groups.  This division is based upon Charles Booth's 1886 classification (see Appendix One).

The strong agricultural base of Catton's employment structure in 1851 is immediately obvious.  In all, 62 persons were employed in agricultural pursuits, be they farmers, farm bailiffs, gardeners (not in domestic service) or agricultural labourers.  A quarter of the local households had heads that were employed as agricultural labourers. Manufacturing employed twelve household heads, virtually all of them cordwainers (shoemakers) or involved in clothing manufacture, most of it for Norwich manufacturing firms. The village baker and blacksmith are, however, also included in this category.

It will be noticed that, perhaps slightly surprisingly, seven household heads appear under "mining".  There are simple explanations for these workers however, for two of them were brickmakers and the rest lime burners.  This industry expanded during the late 19th century from its original mid-century site (area number 132 on Map 2), and left marks on the landscape of that area which remain to this day.

Charles Booth's division of workers according to their industry rather than their class or grade of employment has considerable advantages as a method of comparing communities and analysing their economic foundations.  Unfortunately this rationalising effect also produces something of a misconception.  The figures produced give an impression of a workforce more specialised than it probably was. In the nineteenth century technology had not yet reached the point where men needed years of training for a particular job which they would concentrate upon entirely.  Many techniques in Victorian rural England did not require highly trained workers to understand them.  The village blacksmith, for instance, could, perhaps with the help of the village wheelwright, still repair most of the agricultural machinery he was likely to come across.  This was nowhere more true than in the building industry.  Between them, Catton's five bricklayers and seven carpenters could probably tackle almost any construction job they were called upon to do.  As Raphael Samuel writes in "Village life and labour": "there were endless and varied individual or sub-contracted jobs which a "handy" man, who had a working knowledge of the different branches of the trade, might turn to.  Formal training was not necessary in order to put up or repair a stretch of garden wall, to lay a cesspit, mend a roof or build a pig-sty... nor was any more elaborate equipment needed than a saw, a hammer and chisel, or a waller's trowel" (3).

But despite the flexibility of such men, obviously many specialists were still required in Victorian England.  These men and women may be largely divided into two groups: professional people and those who provided or maintained the non-essential goods and services which those with some surplus income demanded.  In both these groups Catton seems to have been rather deficient, for although it had professional people, notably two school teachers and two solicitors, only the teachers were employed within the parish.  For the rest, Norwich was the place of work, Catton merely the place where they lived.  The narrow range of non- essential services becomes obvious if the parish is compared with a more rural parish such as Fressingfield in north Suffolk. In this rather isolated community all "the immediate necessities of life - work, social activities, shops, artefacts - were available within the parish itself" (4).  It counted amongst its services a watchmaker, a tea dealer, a rat catcher and seven "dealers" of varying kinds (5). Of these Catton had only one dealer.  Admittedly Catton was smaller than Fressingfield, but why were its services so much more limited? Two answers to this question are possible: either the community simply did not demand these services or they were being obtained elsewhere.  As was noted in the introduction, Catton was not a parish lacking wealthy residents.  It is fair to assume that surplus income and wealth (surplus that is to the expenses of mere survival) existed within the village.  It is not difficult to discover where extra services were being obtained or imported from - the nearby city of Norwich. In this and a multitude of other ways the close proximity of the regional capital had profound effects upon the Catton community.

So far only male occupations have been looked at, but female workers must not be forgotten. The popular conception of Victorian women staying "in the home" and leaving the breadwinning to their husbands is largely a myth. In reality vast numbers of women worked and their incomes were an important part of household budgets.  Indeed, since about eighty per cent of Britain's population were working class, wages were often very low and unpredictable and there were more women than men, it was inevitable that a large number of women would be forced to find paid employment.  However, any measurement of the extent of this work is even more difficult to calculate than the nature of male employment. All one can do is comment upon the data as it stands, quite how complete it is debatable.  84 Catton women were listed in the census as employed, that is not simply described as a "farmer's wife" or whatever, but described as having a specific job. This represented almost 30% of the 283 women aged 10 years or over.  69 of those employed were single women, of whom 85% were domestic servants.  These figures mean that one in five of all females over the age of 10 years were employed as domestic servants, an indication of the presence of a considerable number of affluent households in the parish.

A total of nine widows were in employment, two of them being school teachers and three laundresses. "Laundry work," notes Samuel (p.181), "was far from being a mere supplement to the man's earnings; in winter time it had often to serve in their stead... in some households laundry work was the only means of support...(in some villages) it seems to have become the usual means of giving a widow independent support -  relatives and friends helping a woman to set up on her own if she lost her husband." Six wives were working, their husbands being in social class four, with the exception of one from a class three household.  The idea of Victorian women not working was then, for Catton, true of the middle and upper classes whose "lives of leisure" were maintained by their servants, but not true of working class women.  In addition, of course, there were many domestic tasks for these women to do.

The Catton occupational structure for females is not unusual for the period, domestic service, sweated trades and laundry work being predominant.  Domestic service was both locally and nationally the largest employer of women and the second largest employer of England's population.  It was to remain so until the First World War.  The effects of this on the social structure of Catton are illustrated in Figure 1.  The 15 to 19 years and, more spectacularly, the 20 to 24 years female age groups were enlarged by an influx of country-born women. Some of these women were entering the parish with their husbands or to join them, but the majority came to take up posts as servants.  Catton-born girls were remaining for a while before leaving.  They left either when they married or, as in the 25 to 29 age group, perhaps in search of "promotion" within domestic service, often to Norwich or London.  Amongst older age groups the numbers of Catton-born men and women seem to be almost equal, suggesting long term residence with little distortion caused by seeking improved employment.  These people were generally not linked by marriage, however, as will be discussed in more detail below.

The attractions of domestic service, despite its low wages (perhaps the lowest in the community) and hard work, are not difficult to see. Domestic service allowed young girls to learn the skills of housemaking while in secure lodgings and under the "moral" care of older servants.  Service could begin a path to respectable positions and, furthermore, it reduced the strain on the home budget and on accommodation (6). Most other working women were employed as dressmakers (of which there were eight in Catton) or as laundresses (seven). A few women were outworkers for Norwich textile manufactures. This industry was now in decline, resulting in one-fifth of Norwich's population becoming paupers by 1848 and economic recession in those parts of east Norfolk which contained large numbers of domestic outworkers for Norwich (7). The industry remained in existence until the end of the Crimean war, but the wages paid were tiny.  George Edwards speaks of his mother working sixteen hours a day at her loom in Marsham for four shillings per week (8).  L.Marion Springall gives a good description of the work done by, and open to, a labourer's wife: "laundry work for the squire's or parson's household...(and) occasional help given at the larger houses in the village brought in gifts of food and cast-off clothing as well as small  sums of money.  In the autumn, practically every labourers wife locked her cottage door and took the whole family gleaning" (9).

The census reveals that a considerable number of Catton children were attending school, though how long their yearly schooling periods were is impossible to ascertain.  It seems extremely likely that many of these schoolchildren took breaks at busy times of the year to assist the family budget.  Their contributions towards this were often vital, especially in difficult years such as 1851. 67 children are described in the census as "scholars" (34 boys and 33 girls), a high figure when judged against the 65 children of the major schooling age, five to nine years. Most of the scholars were either educated at home, as seven were, or at the free school in the village which dated from about 1830.  This school was supported by subscriptions and had places for about 50 children (10).  Catton's oldest scholars at this time were a 16 year old boy, a 13 year old girl and a 13 year old boy.  It is interesting to note that both the eldest boy and girl came from households headed by men in social class four. This seems to indicate a fairly wide educational provision for those who desired it and helps to explain a higher level of literacy than Fressingfield's 43% of men and 18% of women.

Quite what the term "scholar" actually meant is sometimes difficult to assess.  It seems to have meant different things to different people. It may well be that the major  landowners of the parish expected their employee's children to attend school. A. Digby quotes the example of  Ketteringham.  In return for model cottages, moderate rents, good wages and an "efficient" village school the cottagers "were not allowed to take lodgers and parents had to send their children to school until the age of 12 or they were not found employment later on" (11). Interestingly, no lodgers appear in Catton's 1851 census record.  In some places farmers discouraged learning, fearing it would lead to discontented workers, but this does not appear to have been the case in Catton.  As will be noted in Chapter Four the leading figures in local society positively encouraged education and, as a result, the parish literacy rate was higher than the county norm.  In addition, child employment was rare in Catton.  The 1851 census only records five children under the age of 13 as having specific occupations, though three other children in a single family are described, rather ambiguously, as "gardener's children". Of these young workers only two were under the age of 10 years, two nine year old agricultural labourers.  For the four farm workers who had not yet reached 13 life would have been very hard, involving as it did many hours of crow scaring and so on.  The hardships of such work often left boys stunted both physically and mentally notes Springall (12), especially since they often worked long hours alone. Children whose school attendance was sporadic and ended at an early age would not just learn little, but were in danger of rapidly losing what they had learnt.  If they were often busy on agricultural tasks such as tending animals they might even miss Sunday school.  Sunday schools played an important part in the education of the poor in many parishes.  In Catton an attendance of about 50 was recorded at the Anglican Sunday school on March 30th, 1851 (13).  At that time about 185 children in the parish were under 15 years of age.

Another important feature of any community is the movement of people both into it and out of it.  The latter is not revealed by the census though it may be inferred by indirect means, a sudden drop in a particular age group, for instance. Attempts to measure immigration are, thankfully, on much firmer ground.  In 1851 the census asked for the first time where each person was born (14).  If the birthplaces of Catton's inhabitants are tallied it becomes clear that they were rather more mobile than their counterparts in Fressingfield.  In the Suffolk village two-thirds of the population had been born in that parish.  In Catton the same proportion originated from outside the parish and of 113 married couples only 10 contained partners both born in Catton. Fressingfield seems to have been a more static community than the Norfolk village which was attracting considerable numbers of outsiders.  The process was further increased by emigration moreover, as a glance at Figure 2 will reveal.  The newcomers were not producing a rapidly growing population.  The small proportion of Catton-born people amongst those aged 25 or over (see Figure 1) points to the emigrants being young people.  This impression is supported by the presence of only 15 men among the single people over 25.  Many of the 42 single women were domestic servants.

Those who remained in Catton from their birth tended to be of social classes four and five. Six out of 10 agricultural labourers, for instance, were born in the parish. While A. Digby may be correct in her assertion that the "laws of settlement and removal had only a minor restrictive effect on the labourers mobility", (15) they remained the most immobile group in local rural society.  This may have been more for a lack of obvious alternatives than through legal obligation.  This situation certainly did not exist for farmers, less than 20% of whom were born within the parish. It seems then that mobility was at least partly connected to class, itself an important facet of the village.  The largest number of household heads were of social class four. 62 households fell into this category as compared with 28 class three and 2 class five.  The middle and upper classes were well represented too, there being 25 class two and 9 class one households.  The upper class households tended to be large.  Largest of all, containing 15 people (including a visitor and four servants) was that of E.S. Long.

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