Catton in 1851 (continued)

“Closed” villages were generally considered calm communities. Indeed, “good behaviour” was insisted upon by local landowners. “There was a conscious policy by the small number of landowners …to restrict residence only to the good poor and to inspire loyalty from them by benevolent treatment” (48).

The estate, with its various tradesmen and servants, was a powerful force in the parish, both economically and socially. The owner of the Hall, together with the other important men who were locally resident, dominated the village economy. The land in the centre and north of the parish was mostly owned by the three major local landowners and the two major tenant farmers rented it from them. The smaller farmers and landowners were concentrated in the south which was the first area to see suburban development and industrial use (such as weaving).

In 1843 the major farmers were Mark Redgrave and William Jennings (see Map 4). By 1851 Ephraim Hinde (senior and junior) had replaced them, running farms of 317 and 130 acres respectively. Whether this land was solely within Catton or not is unclear. They employed 21 and 4 men, which represented 80% of the 31 labourers noted by the farmers as their workforce. Ephraim Hinde, senior, must have been a powerful man locally, running his large farm on the Spixworth Road through his farm bailiff(s). As D. Mills has noted, “the typical estate tenant, at least in corn growing areas, was a man of substantial means whose enterprise depended on hired labour; many such men did little or no manual work” (49). Mills goes on to describe a typical “closed” village as having large farms, gentlemen’s residences, little industry, few craftsmen and a slow rate of population increase (50). He also points to the low population density of such parishes. This was not a feature of Catton – perhaps as a result of its nearness to Norwich.

Another feature of such communities was the strength of the Anglican church and social paternalism. Victorian society only organised a limited range of functions collectively. Those were “dominated either by the church, the minor landed aristocracy of the area, or by both” (51). As we have already seen, the local gentry were important in the village. Men such as Robert Chamberlain (Sheriff of Norwich 1848 and Mayor 1854-6 and 1871) were used to being in positions of power and naturally occupied the top rungs of the strict social ladder of Catton. From the Middle Ages church influence had been strong in Catton. In the 1850’s and 80’s the Morse and Gurney families helped pay for building work and a new organ for the parish church. Throughout the period in question leading local families took a prominent part in church activities.

Uniquely in its area of Norfolk Catton did not have a nonconformist chapel. This is perhaps not surprising. “Where the village was of the closed integrated type,” wrote J.D. Gay, “the squire and the parson would wield a patriarchal influence ensuring the stranglehold of the Church of England…In those miniature welfare states there was little possibility of chapel life developing”  (52). A “small Wesleyan” chapel is mentioned in White’s Directories of 1836 and 1845, but no sign of this building appears on the 1843 tithe map or in the 1851 Religious Census. When a temporary place of worship was built in 1894 in an expanding southern corner of the parish it was a Church of England mission hall rather than a Methodist or Baptist chapel. Even where land was owned by smaller landlords it seems the influence of the establishment prevented the construction of anything other than an Anglican place of worship. Denied a chapel local people may have worshipped elsewhere. The 1851 census points to Catton’s religious participation being the smallest in its area. Some neighbouring parishes recorded much larger numbers of worshippers (see Figure 5). One man who certainly had nonconformist interests was George Gowing, a major Catton landowner described in 1850 as a Baptist minister. Interestingly, his residence was just outside the parish.

Thus though there was some diversity in land ownership there appears to have been little diversity in social influence. The influences of the major village gentry complemented each other. Their use of their land holdings was also similar. With the exception of George Morse’s penchant for the woods and impressive landscaping around his Hall, most of the parish was used for agricultural purposes. Relatively small landowners built impressive villas on their property, but there was little residential development. Legal changes in the 1860’s were to remove the necessity for “closed” parishes by ending the practice of parishes having to support their own paupers, but the effects of these arrangements were to be visible for years to come.

Having looked at Catton in general terms it is now necessary to examine its very foundation, agriculture, in more detail. 1851 was not a good year for English agriculture in general and East Anglian agriculture in particular. Norfolk wheat prices began to climb while labourers’ wages remained at about eight shillings per week, a low level even when wheat was relatively cheap. The wages and flour prices graph (see Figure 6) reveals the effect of these changes on labourers “spending power.”  The changes had a depressing effect on all the industries and persons supplying the basic goods consumed by the farm workers. This agricultural and industrial economic downturn forms the background to Catton’s condition in 1851.

The census schedules contain six farmers (their names and acreages are listed in Appendix Three) who between them cultivated 536 acres (or 60% of the total land area of the parish.) Four market gardeners are also named, but the size of their holdings are not given. The farmers employed 38 labourers, but 59 males gave “agricultural labourer” as their occupation. This is a lower percentage of the total population than in the Suffolk village of Fressingfield (53). How can this discrepancy between Catton’s labouring population and the 38 accounted for by the farmers be explained? Two answers may be advanced. Some labourers were seasonal workers temporarily out of work – this may be especially true of some of the younger men. A number of men may also have walked to work in nearby “closed” parishes such as Beeston St. Andrew and Spixworth (54).

The organisation of individual farms depended upon their size. In the words of L. Marion Springall: “The larger ones had a steward or bailiff  who superintended the labourers, gave orders each morning and rode over the farm to see they were properly carried out. He paid the men and sometimes had the power to dismiss unsatisfactory workers and engage others” (55). On smaller farms the farmers did all this themselves so Catton’s four farm bailiffs – S. Bacon, T. Hove, R. Poll and T. Pratt – presumably worked on the two large farms rather than the “lesser” farms (of 40, 30, 12 and 7 acres).

Farm workers also fell into two basic categories: those who did more specialised work – including looking after animals – and (more typical in Norfolk) day labourers. Numerous skills were required of the agricultural workforce, with those skilled in several jobs finding the best-paid and most regular employment. Sometimes gangs of workers were organised, perhaps by an enterprising labourer, and employed in a nearby “closed” parish. This often involved walking several miles to and from work. The majority of the members of these gangs were women, the rest being children (sometimes only six years of age in Norfolk). A survey of the late 1860’s found about 75% of the gang members to be women (56). For this very physically demanding work the women would receive about 8d. per day, the younger children much less. No women are listed as agricultural labourers in the Catton census, but it is highly likely that some were thus employed, at least at certain busy times of the year. The youngest child described as an agricultural labourer was nine years old.

The 1850’s were years which saw the continuing mechanisation of farming, but this did not immediately reduce the demand for labour as might be supposed. At least initially, the new machinery supplemented rather than replaced human labour. Machines did jobs such as heavy hoeing or cutting roots and hay. Farmers realised that making workers redundant would increase the poor rate which they, the farmers, largely paid. For this reason some employers continued to use methods known to be inefficient in order to maintain employment. This was probably the case with the continued dropping of wheat in preference to drilled wheat (57).

Living conditions for farm labourers varied according to the work they did. As Springall notes, “ there were (some) men with responsible positions on the farms – the yearly men – whom no farmer could afford to have discontented and underpaid.” These men had the “comfortable supper of Norfolk dumplings, potatoes and, now and then, a little bacon or other meat…their cottages were simply furnished and brightened with pictures, brass candlesticks and perhaps a clock…The distress seems to have been generally among the day labourers…” (58).

The working hours and conditions of farm workers remained much as they had been for decades. The day labourers would work from about six a.m. to six p.m. with about a one and a half-hour break for lunch in the summer. In the winter work continued for as long as daylight permitted with only a half-hour break for lunch. There were no formal holidays for labourers until the Bank Holiday Acts of 1871 and 1875, but the seasonal nature of agriculture produced slack periods in the working years of many farm employees. The wages paid varied from place to place, but the general Norfolk trend is shown in Figure 6. They had been falling since the repeal of the Corn Laws, but the years 1851 to 1853 saw wages reach a particularly low point (at only 66% of their 1847 level). This made the supplements to the basic rate that could be earned in piece-work (such as ditching and hedging) even more essential than usual. Other “invisible” extras also helped: the gleanings harvesters were allowed, the beer allowance, the harvest supper and largesse. For their longer hours of work the men who managed the animals earned a shilling or two more per week, but the old and infirm sometimes earned only half the standard rate. When times were good labouring families remained economically solvent throughout the year, but when little work was available life could become extremely difficult. A good harvest would boost incomes and domestic food stocks, but bad weather and the resultant poor harvest could mean days without work and a hungry winter.

Harvest time was a crucially important part of the labourers’ year. Labour was in great demand so the farm workers’ bargaining position was strengthened. As a result their wages rose, albeit briefly. The extra earnings were often spent on replacing those expensive but vital items, boots. The work itself was hard “for the weather was hot and the pace relentless” (59). A labourer of the time described it thus: “Every man, woman and child went forth into the fields to help…and win the extra wage for harvest…When the first corn field was ready…the sicklemen or scythemen with the gatherers and binders were at the field. The gatherers of the sheaves and the binders were generally the wives and children of the men, and the whole work of the harvest was of the nature of a family outing…though a hard working one…the reapers or mowers fall in one by one behind the leader, the women and children as gatherers and binders following in their wake. The first stop was when the leader wanted to sharpen. He said, “Now,” and all stopped at the end of his sickle or scythe swing. Then came the music of half a dozen tools sharpening as the stone rasped the steel blades…(60). Harvesting over, the end of this particular part of the year was marked by the harvest home supper, the “harvest frolics” and associated drinking. The religious equivalent, the harvest thanksgiving service, also took place. In this agricultural environment, the harvest retained its age-old importance for the people of Catton, both socially and spiritually.

At all times the earnings of the labourers wife and children were important. East Anglia was a region that contained “some of the main areas of gang labour and, apart from this, women could earn the equivalent of ten weeks wages by gleaning. Total family incomes could vary by over 100% according to the number of dependants” (61). Earning a living required long hours of toil by all members of the family (over about six or seven years of age) for at least part of the year.

Most of these limited earnings were spent on either food or housing – the former limited in variety, the latter in quality. There was a general shortage of cottages in rural Norfolk since the limited returns on initial capital investment made them an unattractive investment. Overcrowding led to what “respectable” Victorians termed the “moral dangers of unchastity”, but only a minority realised that, as J. Fraser puts it, “in cottage herding (was) the sufficient account and history of it all”. Higher mortality, especially amongst young children, also resulted, as did outbreaks of infectious diseases such as typhus. But it was not just overcrowding that varied, the related levels of rents and housing standards also differed from parish to parish. Rents could be anything from two to five pounds per annum (62). Housing conditions in Catton seem to have been good by contemporary standards, with an average of 4.3 persons per labourers’ household (the largest of these containing ten and nine persons). The most tangible proof of the size and solid construction of much of this accommodation  remains to this day along Church Street, Catton Street and George Hill. In many cases these cottages are four-roomed and stand in terraces of four or more properties. Few of them are of the more usual two-roomed type. Many would have had lean-to “back houses” added in the nineteenth century, but even in these well-built cottages the labourers wife would have “counted herself fortunate to have a supply of water available from a nearby well or to have an oven” (63).

Not surprisingly, the limited cooking facilities and the water shortage influenced the range of foods available to the lowly paid labourers’ families, making their diet “simple and monotonous even when there was sufficient. Wheaten bread, of the best quality, was the principal food; it appeared at every meal with, or without, a little butter or cheese, and an onion or apple” (64). Norfolk dumpling, cabbage and potatoes were also often eaten and, occasionally, a little meat or fruit pie. Some tea with a little sugar was drunk. In a “difficult” year such as 1851 the labourers’ family diet contained very little butter, cheese or milk (65).

A useful insight into the lifestyle of the labouring population of Victorian Norfolk is provided by an estimate of the budget of such a family. It assumes an income of ten shillings per week for a family with three children and is listed in detail in Appendix Four (66). By far the largest single item was flour, of which about three stones (19kg) were bought each week at a cost of six and sixpence (32p). Since this represents 65% of the weekly budget a crude “cost of living” index can be produced by comparing wages and flour prices. This appears as Figure 6. It indicates a two-year period of decreasing living standards, beginning in 1851.

Of the three shillings and six pence (17p) not spent on flour, one and fivepence (7p) was spent on other food and drinks, a shilling (5p) on clothing, sixpence (2p) on a hundredweight of coal and sixpence (2p) on soap and candles. The costs of rent and the boots so essential for work were met from “harvest money”. Any medical aid usually had to be from the poor law doctor. Social paternalism tended to lessen as farmers sought to pursue their own economic interests during difficult years.

The agricultural labourer had one of the lowest standards of living of any major occupational group in mid-Victorian England. The late ‘forties and early ‘fifties were especially difficult years, bringing pauperism to many old and sick men and women. But though their economic position may be so described, their quality of life is more difficult to assess. Their work was “often monotonous drudgery, carried on in all weathers and, (in) some seasons, for immensely long hours, and with very little aid from machinery until late in the century; on the other hand, they lived in village communities, worked with a measure of independence, spent their days in the open air and were part of a social system which provided an orderly and structured life. The relatively few agricultural labourers who have left autobiographies tend to write freely about the injustices of their employers and the poor rewards of their work, but affectionately, even lovingly, about the nature of the work itself...” (67). As Springall observes the culture of Victorian villages was centred on work and craftsmanship. “Book learning … was not essential to people who found happiness in their work and could express themselves through the materials they fashioned into things for their own use” (68).

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