|
Folios 544-559. Digby Neave, Cheshire, Denbigshire and Flintshire. District contains varied agricultural, mining and manufacturing population; 'detail incompatible with conciseness'. Agricultural districts:
- Like other years; late Spring but prices covering costs now, rents being paid and repairs done.
- Birmingham to Liverpool railway completed and so employment lost from that; could be replaced by work on river Weaver navigation and winter work in Forest of Delamere.
- Holywell district: harvest labourers work in mines in winter or on enclosures of the river Dee (since 1824) or on export of Aberdo stone for Terras mortar to Liverpool.
- Wirral: winter work on Liverpool to Birmingham railway or transporting cockles from the Dee estuary inland.
- Denbigh and Flint: average agricultural wages near markets and towns 10-11s, further away 7-8s plus 'sappings heelings' and potato ground turf; boarded labour 4-5s and food; wages and diet poorest in Ruthin union where 1 in 9 are on relief and 1 in 132 a bastard, comment 'moral training must be lamentably deficient'.
- Chester: around towns and markets wages average 13s, elsewhere 10s plus allowances; about 8 weeks outdoor labour for women and children, hoeing and harvesting at 1s per day.
- Children 'are worth their food according to their forwardness and size at all ages of 11, 12 and 13 when they may be worth a £1 with an annual rise'.
- Farming maids £5-£8 per year; towns have great demand for female servants.
- Quotes average price of coals.
- Landlords are reducing cottage rents so that independent labourer can afford it; rent no longer paid by parish.
- Cheap fuel and higher wages are cancelled out by drink; comments on diet and quality of cheese; remarks about joiners and masons.
- Quotes good wages of quarrymen, and shoemakers in Denbigh; in Sandbach shoemakers suffering from trade depression.
- Gives prices of provisions for poor: flour, potatoes, and clothing.
- Clothing benefit contributions are increasing; some union shops for provisions and more building clubs; new poor law has encouraged mutual help
Mineral Districts:
- Lead mining and manufacturing had partial employment in Spring, now recovered; copper demand steady and wages of lead miners in Holywell stable; saving is spreading among labouring classes.
- Extensive coal mines are in full employment (details of wages); iron works in Ruabon need more labourers, with heavy orders and prospect of full winter employment.
- Collieries in Sale in full work, details of wages by age and gender.
- Rent details; cottagers often take lodgers; reference to temperance and abstinence societies, savings banks and medical and sick funds.
- Wages higher than 18 months ago and main food, potatoes, cheaper; clothing - woollen and linens, 23% cheaper.
- In Poynton many discharged when coal mines changed ownership.
- Salt trade in Cheshire has suffered a set back from poor American market; wages down by a third; children are not sent to school; few women have independent earnings, usually help their men; boats drawn by horses not men; very few prepare for unemployment.
- About £19,000 in county rate aid comes from Weaver navigation.
- Prospects in Sandbach, Congleton and Macclesfield 'decidedly Gloomy'; raw material prices have risen and 'more poor thrown out of employ than in 1825'; many manufacturers trading on credit.
General observations:
- Full employment can be followed by deepest distress; 17 in 20 families save nothing and their children's wages replace rather than supplement other family income.
- Charitable funds should be administered on PLAA lines.
- Difficulty of inculcating habits of saving.
- Higher rates hit 'good' and 'bad' masters indiscriminately
.
|
No items
The National Archives
