The Somerset Labouring Classes
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Abridged from THE LABOURING CLASSES OF ENGLAND (William Dodd, 1848)

"They are all more or less dairy and grazing counties; devoted to the manufacture of cheese, rearing 
of young cattle, and sheep farming. Pigs are also reared in vast numbers, and constitute an essential 
appendage to the dairy farm; in the low tracts, immense flocks of geese and other fowl are annually 
fatted for the city markets. The most extensive orchards in Britain are to be found in the valleys of 
Devon and Somerset, and the management of these, and the manufacture of cider and perry, constitute 
one of the main duties of the farmer.

The practice of employing young women prevails more or less in all these counties; their out-door 
labor consists in hay-making, reaping, hoeing turnips, weeding corn, picking stones, beating manure, 
planting and digging potatoes, pulling turnips, and occasionally hacking them for cattle.  They are 
also sometimes employed in winnowing corn, about the threshing machine, and in leading horses and oxen 
at the plough. The in-door labor is milking and making cheese, and looking after, cleaning, turning, 
weighing, and removing the cheeses that are already made. This is a sort of work that is said to be 
'never finished.' 

The wages of women differ slightly, not only in adjoining counties, but even on different farms, according 
to the character of the farmer, or the ability and skill of the laborer. Generally speaking all light 
work, such as apple-picking, turnip-hoeing, stone-gathering, and the like, is paid at the rate of 10d * 
a day, with an allowance of Cider. Hay-making at 1/-, and potato lifting and harvest work at 1/6, with 
Dinner thrown in at harvest time, and a quart of cider. Most of the cider is saved by the women for their 
husbands. When women work by the piece, they strive to earn higher wages, say 8/- a week in summer, 
6/- to 6/6d in winter. These are the regular wages, with a Cider allowance. 

Women accustomed to field labor represent it as good for their health and spirits; this, however, must 
be taken with some restrictions; for where women poorly clad are exposed to cold and wet, and this for 
ten or twelve hours a day when the weather will permit, catarrhs and rheumatism will be the result. 
From this cause we find them complaining as their husbands too often do, of stiffness and pains at the 
joints, long before such complaints can be the result of old age, or natural infirmity. 

Regarding the moral condition of the females in these counties, the evidence is very conflicting. Here 
we find a clergyman inveighing against field labor, as the sources of most of the immorality in the 
district; another, an old fashioned farmer, declaring quite the contrary; a third, less biased than 
either, admitting that field labor is not the best school for morals; a fourth, a grave old man, says, 
'those young ones would never stick to their work were it not for the cider I find them, and the fun 
they make for themselves.'

There are three modes in which the employment of children may take place within these counties: they 
may be taken to assist their parents, may be hired by the day or week as women are, or may be apprenticed 
by the parish. The servitude, in the case of agricultural apprentice-ships, extends from the age of 
ten to twenty-one for boys, and generally till marriage for females. The younger girls are employed 
in the farm houses to look after children, and to do other light work. Boys from seven years of age 
(I have seen them even younger), to twelve are employed in bird-scaring, taking care of poultry, 
following the pigs in the acorn season, herding cattle, getting wood for the house, and the like. As 
they get stronger they lead the horses and oxen at the plough, make hay, and hoe turnips, and by fourteen 
or fifteen years they begin to hold the plough, attend to the stable, help the carter, and drive the 
team. After that time they commence mowing, reaping, hedging, ditching, and the other difficult operations 
performed by the farm laborers. The hours of labor for boys are the same as for men and women; their 
wages are from 9/- to 9/3d a week, with a pint of cider a day. They are taught to love drink from their 
earliest age, and a few years so confirms them in the taste, that they rarely, if ever, get rid of it 
in after life...The labor, taken by itself, would seem to be comparatively harmless; but...The early 
age at which most of the children are taken from school, prevents their getting even the rudiments of 
education. They are too early associated in promiscuous [i.e., mixed] labor with men and women, in whose 
vices they become adept long before they have attained the years of maturity. 

The almost constant employment of women in the fields has many bad effects upon their families ; their 
cottages are not properly attended to, their children are neglected, clothing is allowed to get dirty 
and torn, and many matters in domestic economy are allowed to fall into disorder, so much so, that some 
women say it is more to their advantage to stay in and attend to affairs at home. It is, however, to 
the general condition of the agricultural laborer in these counties that we are to look for the main 
evils that are said to affect his case. His wages vary from two to three dollars per week. This is 
inadequate when he has a large family to support ; and the consequence is, want of sufficient clothing, 
neglect of personal cleanliness, and scantiness of diet. At the farm houses, where the single men live 
with their masters, of course the fare is better; it is by the married cottagers that the greatest evils 
are felt. 

Their cottages are small and in bad order; they are generally damp and in a state of decay; there is no 
inducement to cleanliness or neatness on the part of the laborer, and hence what ought to be homes, are 
mere hovels for shelter. Cottages generally have two apartments; a great many have only one. The consequence 
is, that it is very often extremely difficult, if not impossible, to divide a family so that grown up 
persons of different sexes do not sleep in the same room. Three or four persons not infrequently sleep 
in the same bed, and in a few instances I have heard of families who have arranged it so, that the females 
of both families slept altogether in one cottage, and the males in the other. Generally an old shawl is 
suspended as a curtain between two beds in one room. 

* US Dollars and Cents converted to nearest Pound, shilling and pence.