Catton in 1851 - 1871 (continued)

The “golden years” were past with the end of a long run of good harvests in 1865 and a general cut in labourers’ wages in 1868 (11). Over the previous decades there had been increasing pressure on estates to be as productive as possible, leaving labour intensive crops to smallholders. As a result of this trend and the growth of Norwich market gardening increased in the parish. By 1871 three men described themselves as market gardeners in the census – William Clarke, Edward Lambert and George Utting. There had been two market gardeners in 1861 and only one in 1851.

As the numbers working in agriculture declined so new areas of employment rose to prominence (see Appendix Five). An example of this is provided by the employees of George William Attoe. In 1851, G.W.Attoe was a farmer of some 7 acres in the Lime Kiln area in the south of the parish. At that time he employed no workers on his small farm according to the census. By 1861 his holding had increased to 18 acres and he now employed 8 men and 2 boys. He was now described as a farmer and a lime merchant. A decade later the emphasis had changed and he was a lime merchant “and a farmer of two acres.” As his farming interest declined so his lime business expanded – he now employed 12 men and 2 boys.

Some of these occupational changes are difficult to assess, with many men simply described as labourers, but it seems clear that the number of gardeners had risen. This was especially true of the proportion who were born in Catton, who now made up a third of local gardeners (see Figure 9). The number of brickmakers had risen even more dramatically – from only two in 1851 to nine twenty years later. This trend was witnessed throughout East Anglia but was highlighted in Catton by the suburban growth of Norwich. Indeed, by 1875, Catton and neighbouring Sprowston had brick, tile and pottery works run by a firm who were the “sole patentees for Norfolk for Hoffman’s Annual Kilns” (12).

Of course, growth is mirrored by decline. In Catton’s case, cordwainers had disappeared by the time of the 1861 census – there had been six in the parish in 1851. The attraction of  Norwich’s  expanding shoemaking industry, which was not yet of a highly mechanised nature, probably accounts for the departure of these men. Textile outworking had suffered a similar decline in the village to that which had taken place in many villages around Norwich, but domestic service had increased. The same was true of laundry work which employed 14 of Catton’s 19 working wives (74%) – most of whom were from households of social classes four or five. Amongst women in general, laundry workers had increased almost three-fold over the twenty-year period. Dressmakers had increased in number from 8 to 10.

Essentially the ‘fifties and ‘sixties had seen the gradual decline of agricultural employment and the rise of domestic service. Not surprisingly this attracted young single women and encouraged young single men to leave. Catton had 69 single people over 25 years of age, of  whom 56 were women and only 13 men.

Catton’s range of retail and service activities was limited both by the nearness of Norwich (an increasingly large number of local people were employed in transport activities) and by the concentration of more service facilities in fewer towns, partly as a result of the development of the railway network. Thus agriculture, though of declining importance, remained the occupational area employing the greatest number of heads of households – 32 (see Appendix Six). It was still extremely important in the life of the community, in no way yet challenged for its supremacy by, for instance, manufacturing, which declined between 1851 and 1871.

The “high farming years” produced only a limited improvement in the living standards of agricultural labourers. This was due in part to the “increasing stress …being placed on (the lands) economic value for the private individual rather than on its social value to the community” (13) as reflected in the increasing percentage of agricultural income spent on manure, machinery and foodstuffs (14). Labourers complained of still having to rely upon “pen and ink” (credit) for many necessities, such as soap, candles and cheese. Their wages, theoretically linked to the price of flour, increasingly fluctuated according to the supply of, and demand for, labour. While it is true farmers subsidised the labourers basic wage with fuel and food, concessions which could be easily withdrawn if the farmers saw fit, the Norfolk labourers spending was, in the ‘sixties, the lowest of any county, being only half that of the Northumbrian labourer (15).

By 1871 no agricultural labourers between the ages of 15 and 35 appear in the census listing. This is a clear indication of the special difficulties facing young labourers in the area and a vital contributing factor towards the declining labouring population. They had traditionally been paid about two shillings per week less, and been employed more casually than, married men. The latter, if unemployed, would cost twice as much to relieve as they would to employ. Since farmers paid most of the poor rates they did not want to see married men idle and so only employed single men at peak times (especially harvesting). This forced single men to exist on any odd jobs they could find. But by 1871 they were no longer forced to survive on such casual work. Improving transport, better education, industrial development and more newspapers made real alternatives available and known to ambitious young men.

To gain maximum benefit from these changes a man needed to be literate. The literacy rate in rural Norfolk is difficult to measure accuracy, but Hobsbawn and Rude estimate that in 1838/9 about 44% of men and 49% of women in the county were literate (16). This may seem a low proportion but ordinary families had to overcome a number of obstacles before having their children educated. These problems included limited schooling, tiring work, overcrowded housing and so on. Before 1872 many Norfolk villages had no schools at all (17).

Needless to say, literacy rates varied across the country. In 1838/9 the percentages of persons able to sign their own name at the time of their marriage (a crude but simple-to-apply measure of “literacy”) varied from 75% in London to around 40% in places such as East Anglia. One may question the validity of testing literacy in this way – some people could doubtless do no more than sign their name - but at least it allows comparisons between different places and periods.

As is revealed by Figure 10 Catton had always had a greater proportion of literate people than the national average throughout the period 1840-1900. As early as 1840 three-quarters of Catton men could sign their own name in the marriage register, while almost 85% of brides possessed this skill. The local literacy rate continued to rise until virtually all those marrying could write by the early 1860’s.  These developments do not seem dramatic until one looks closely at the children of labourers (Figure 11). While literacy amongst labourers’ daughters increased little after 1850, the proportion of labourers’ sons who were literate increased greatly between 1840 and 1865. In the early 1840’s only 1% of these men could sign their names. Twenty years later they were all “literate.” Changes in the availability of education and the attitudes of the parents of these young men had clearly had an effect!

How were these local children and their “in-coming” peers educated? The parish had long made some charitable provision for the schooling of the poor and some education had existed privately for those able to pay. In many villages the children of labourers received education at a Methodist Sunday school; George Edwards later reported that "this was the only schooling I ever got” (18). He was by no means alone in this. “Almost every self-educated working man in early or mid-Victorian England who later wrote memoirs paid tribute to the beneficial influences of Methodist in his youth” (19). But such opportunities would have existed outside Catton, since it had no chapel or Sunday school of its own. How then can we explain the spread of literacy amongst Catton’s population? Two factors seem to have been important.

Firstly, there was in the middle of the century what contemporary directories described as a “Free school, supported by subscription” in the village. An 1850 directory makes the nature of this school clear, describing Mrs. Harriet Jackson as “mistress national school.” The “National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church” had been founded in 1811 and encouraged by an annual Treasury grant instituted in 1833. By 1845 “national schools” existed in the nearby parishes of Hainford and Horstead, while in Frettenham was a school also “supported by subscription.”

What was the quality of these schools? G. Best considers that the quality “varied in proportion with the parents’ expectations and readiness to pay for what their children got.”  He qualifies this however: “An important exception to that rule … was in well-regulated rural areas where the expectations (and often payments) were not those of parents so much as squires and parsons” (20). It seems likely that this was the situation in Catton, explaining the longevity of the “free school for 40 children” which existed in 1836 and was still there in 1869 on the eve of its replacement, the school in Church Street, being built. The Free School’s staff seems to have consisted of two or three people. Mrs. Jackson (nee Duffield?) and a helper – Mrs. Keziah Reynolds in 1851 – until Mrs. Allen took over as mistress in the late ‘sixties. National schools usually taught by the “monitorial” system, Catton’s school may well have done likewise.

As with so many other aspects of local life the establishment assisted this institution as a means of “self-improvement” for local people. In his explorations of riotous parishes in the early 1840's T.C. Foster described the thin attendance at their Sunday and weekly schools. Few of those appearing in court on arson or threatening behaviour charges were literate he noted (21). These observations supported the strongly held Victorian views regarding the need for “moral improvement” and the education of the poor. The local gentry could play an important part in fostering these developments.

The other avenue for working class education was via a less formal route. Until the end of the century “schooling was regarded by the common people as but one of several means of acquiring literacy. Children learned to read, and sometimes to write, from their parents, relatives, friends or neighbours, in various informal settings and at times convenient to other tasks. When they did go to school it was frequently to a dame school, which was the truly indigenous institution for educational self-help of the working class “ (22). Little record remains of these small schools since they had no special buildings and were not considered efficient by the Victorian middle classes, but they seem to have existed in many communities. However, the establishment of the Catton free school makes the existence of a dame school in the village unlikely.

Better education encouraged mobility. It did not make “ labourers unfit for work on the farm; it made them want decent living conditions. If they could not get these in the country they went to the towns” (23). As a result of the changes taking place both within Catton and outside it, there was a considerable exodus, both to Norwich and to other cities. By 1861 Norfolk’s rural population had fallen, Norwich was still growing and almost 150,000 Norfolk-born people were living elsewhere in Britain (24).

Catton’s population was, however, not declining – the number leaving the parish were matched by those moving in from outside it. The Norwich-born immigrants and those from outside Norfolk were predominantly of social class one (see Figure 9), being mainly people linked by business or family ties to the nearby city. The majority of newcomers were born elsewhere in Norfolk. They were mostly of social classes four or five, confirming the census abstracts contemporary assumption that the increasing populations of Catton and Sprowston were largely the result of immigration from agricultural districts (25). Whole families were migrating, following the lead of the young labourers. To quote the census statisticians again, the declining population of the St. Faiths district (of which Catton was of course a somewhat unusual member) was attributable “ to the migration of labourers and their families to the manufacturing districts” (26).

The reduction in the labour supply assisted the living standards of those remaining on the land but was not popular with their employers. By the late ‘sixties farmers were “ leading the local clamour for a better distribution of labour” (27). Engineering workers in London were earning almost two pounds for less than 60 hours work per week (3p per hour) while unskilled industrial workers earned about half as much. Norfolk labourers were earning less than 1p per hour. Farmers began to realise the attractions cities offered their workers and they noticed their labourers’ attitudes changing. There was “ a sort of independence – aye, of insubordination in many places, owing to the scarcity of labour” as the farm worker, realising his labour was a “precious article” began to drive bargains with his master (28).

The close relationship between farmer and  workers which had often existed early in the century was felt to be breaking down. Whereas they had once frequently worked together and lived in the same farm house, the farmer and his labourers were now becoming ever more distant from each other. George Edwards wrote of the “exhausted desperation” felt by farm workers in the hard years of the 1840’s but there is no evidence of such desperation in Catton. Particularly in the later 1860’s, when wage rates were generally rising and labourers from outside parishes were being attracted in, conditions were relatively good for the working people of the village. But, as noted above, labourers attitudes were changing.” Prosperity,” as R. A. Church puts it, “acted as a stimulant rather than a bromide” – a stimulant to move elsewhere.

There is no evidence of discontent or disruption in Catton during these years. Nonconformist chapels are often cited as the places where working class leaders developed their organisational skills and campaigning morality. No chapel existed in Catton though they were to be found in virtually all the parishes surrounding it. The number of residents who walked to nearby chapels such as the 1830 Baptist chapel on the North Walsham Road is difficult to say, but it seems likely that at least some people did.

Catton in 1871 was in no sense a completely rural society, being considerably influenced by the close presence of East Anglia’s largest city. Its population growth (see Figure 4) was much more similar to Norwich than to rural Norfolk. It is essential then to look briefly at the effect upon Catton of its neighbour and the extent of “suburbanisation” between 1851 and 1871.

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