Discussion Papers In Economics
And BusinessStaying or Leaving?
Gender, Job opportunities, and Poor Law
Administration in Nineteenth-Century England
Chiaki Yamamoto
Discussion Paper 14-24

Graduate School of Economics andOsaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP)
Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, JAPANStaying or Leaving?
Gender, Job opportunities, and Poor Law
Administration in Nineteenth-Century England
Chiaki Yamamoto
Discussion Paper 14-24
June 2014

Graduate School of Economics andOsaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP)
Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, JAPANStaying or Leaving?
Gender, Job opportunities, and Poor Law
Administration in Nineteenth-Century England*
Chiaki YAMAMOTO †Osaka University

Abstract
English agriculture in the first half of the nineteenth century was characterised by the ‘high-wage
north and low-wage south’ pattern. The serious problem of rural unemployment in southern Englandis also widely acknowledged for this period. The question then remains: Why did agriculturallabourers stay in the south? Why did they not move to the industrial north where more job
opportunities were available? In answer to this question, I propose that; the wage rate in the south
was high enough, if income-in-kind is taken into consideration, and that in-kind income, especiallyin the form of drink allowance, was more prevalent in the south. This paper also attempts to estimate
regional unemployment rates directly. While unemployment in the south has been well recognised,
the perceptions are largely based on indirect evidence such as per capita poor law expenditure, or
descriptive information derived from contemporary writings. However, poor law expenditure is
likely to have been affected by the actual practice of poor relief in the local context, and it is almost
impossible to use contemporary remarks for systematic regional comparison. Therefore, I attempt toestimate unemployment rates more directly, in percentage terms. The second aim of this paper is toestimate regional real wages inclusive of income-in-kind. The Rural Query of the 1834 Poor Law
Report, the main source for this paper, asked the rate of male wages with or without beer, cider, orother victuals. I used this information to estimate real wages. Thirdly, I estimate female wages andconsider job opportunities for women, to calculate annual family income in a regional perspective.
Keywords: the Industrial Revolution; income-in-kind; food/drink allowances; regional wage gaps;
migration.
JEL Classification: N13, N33, N53.

*

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Cambridge Group Seminar, the annual conference of
the Economic History Society, and Summer Symposium of the Socio-economic History Society of Japan.
The author would like to thank the participants for their helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.
†
Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, 1-7 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan.
Email: cy@econ.osaka-u.ac.jp

English agriculture in the first half of the nineteenth century was characterized by a ‘high-wage
north and low-wage south’ pattern. In 1852, a contemporary commentator, James Caird, drew afamous map showing the north-south wage differences and the east-west agricultural ones. 1
Furthermore, rural unemployment was a serious problem in South England. 2 Thus, it is of interest
why agricultural labourers stayed in the south, rather than moving to the high-wage north.
In order to answer this question, this study attempts to quantify regional real wages andunemployment, using two directions. One is includes income-in-kind in real wage estimates, and theother determines the unemployment level in percentage terms. The first ‘modern’ census, whichallows historians to investigate England’s economy nationally and regionally, was available only
after 1841; furthermore, the first agricultural census was conducted in the 1860s. Thus, previous
studies on regional diversity have tended to either focus on a farms or start from 1841. The former is
not necessarily representative, and the latter cannot explore the classical Industrial Revolution period.
This study uses the 1834 Poor Law Report, a nationwide survey covering over 1,000 parishes that
asked 53 questions on parishioners’ living conditions to examine the regional diversity of rural
workers. Thus, the study also intends to consider the entire country and provide a regionally detailed
analysis on the pre-1841 period.
Estimating people’s past earnings is a central issue of economic history, and great efforts
have been devoted to constructing real wage series. Partly because of the limitation of source
materials, most early works attempted to calculate adult male wages; when discussing male wages,
attention has been directed only to monetised wages. 3 However, the immobility of southern
agricultural labourers must have been regulated by decision making within the household. They
considered not only male cash earnings but also all other supplementary sources such as in-kind

1

Caird, English Agriculture, frontispiece, which is reproduced in Figure 2 below. Recent historians havealso followed this image. See, for instance, Hunt (1973, 1986), Horrell and Humphries (1992), Boyer(1997), Boyer and Hatton (1997), and Shaw-Taylor (2005).
2

See Gash (1935), Pollard (1978), and Snell (1985).

3

See, for instance, Flinn (1974, 1976); Gourvish (1976); Lindert and Williamson (1983, 1985); Crafts(1985a, b); and Feinstein (1998). Clark (2001) estimates an annual wage series of male farm workers.

1

income, poor law allowances and customary rights, regional unemployment patterns forbreadwinners, and job opportunities for wives and children.
Recent developments have been made in this area. For example, Horrell and Humphries(1995) included contributions by female and child labour in family income estimates, and King andTemin (2001) showed that gleaning as customary rights contributed approximately 5 to 10 per centof family income in the 1830s. 4 Humphries (1990) estimated that the net annual profit of keeping a
cow around 1800 was between three and seven pounds. 5 Lindert and Williamson (1983) andFeinstein (1998) incorporated unemployment and short-term work into their national wage series
despite that more attention was paid to the trend than to quantification. 6
Relatively neglected in the debate, however, is regional variation of these factors.
Important exceptions are E. H. Hunt’s works (Hunt (1973) and Hunt (1986)). His serious effort tocollect spatial and chronological wage data has made it possible to draw wage maps for the period
between 1760 and 1914. Nevertheless, the former only addresses the period 1850-1914, and thelatter does not pay much attention to in-kind income. Clark (2001) also discussed regional variations
in farm wages, but regional differences in unemployment level have remained ignored.
Regionally different practices for in-kind allowances—especially survival of live-in
servants in the north, whose income consisted almost entirely of in-kind provision—has been given
more attention. However, measuring their regional importance is not an easy task. Even whenestimates were conducted, the in-kind income of agricultural labourers in the form of beer or cider
has been largely understated. Horrell and Humphries (1992) noted that ‘in general such payments
4King and Temmin (2001), Table 1, p. 463.

5

Humphries (1990), Table 1, p. 26.

6

Regarding agricultural unemployment, Lindert and Williamson (1983) used estimated unemployment

rates for engineering, metals, and shipbuilding sectors based on union records for the latter half of thenineteenth century, to infer the trend of agricultural unemployment over the three decades between 1820
and 1850 (pp. 12-16). Feinstein (1998) assumed that the excess of winter unemployment over theprevailing summer rate was 10 per cent (based on Boyer (1990) showing actual unemployment as 17 percent) and applied this figure for the five months from November to March in each year between 1815 and1850. It was assumed that the additional higher rates during the winter months gradually disappeared by
1870.

2

constituted a very small percentage of family incomes (less than 1 percent)’. 7 Similarly, Clark(2001)’s national time-series data of male agricultural wage, excluded cases with beer from hisdataset. Based on the 1834 Poor Law Report, he asserted the followings:[W]here beer was provided it was worth about 10 per cent of wages in winter and summer, and lessthan this in harvest. Thus changes in the degree of beer provision will have some effect on wages, but
not an especially dramatic one. 8

The results of our analysis, however, show a somewhat different view. Most importantly,
chronological changes in the pattern of food/drink allowances differed by place and had a dramaticeffect on regional wages.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: Section I briefly explains the source
material used. Section II offers new estimates of unemployment rates by region, and the traditional
north-south gap of unemployment is reconfirmed. Section III offers a revision of the conventional
wage pattern. It is argued that the inclusion of food/drink allowance into the calculation leads us tomodify the traditional high-wage north and low-wage south pattern of farm wages. Section IV
examines regional differences in female job opportunities. It is difficult to reconcile male real figureswith evidence on job opportunities of women, because the north enjoyed more plentiful
opportunities than the south did. This point is discussed in terms of agricultural practices and poorlaw administrations in section V, the conclusion.

I
Before delving into the detailed analysis, it is necessary to briefly explain the data sources used. The

7

Horrell and Humphries (1992), footnote 12, p. 851. Humphries asserted the importance of other forms ofincome resources derived from common rights such as cowkeep, gathering firewood and peat from
common land, and gleaning after harvest. See Humphries (1990).
8

Clark (2001), p. 480. Although the samples are excluded for the national series, he shows the benchmark

figures based on the 1834 report by converting beer into equivalent money wages (Table 2, p. 481).

3

main source of this paper is the Rural Query of the 1834 Poor Law Report. According to Blaug(1964), the Royal Commission of Enquiry into the Poor Laws was appointed in 1832, and it is likelythat England and Wales were divided into 26 districts. Each district was investigated by one assistantcommissioner, who was supposed to visit as many parishes as he could. Although we do not know
how many parishes were actually visited by the assistant commissioners, they sent out the Rural
Query in mid-August 1832; most queries were returned by January next year. Responses werereturned from approximately 1,200 parishes or places in England, covering roughly 10 per cent ofparishes and approximately 20 per cent of the population. 9
Figure 1 shows the geographical distribution of the observations. The number in eachcounty shows how many parishes returned replies. Sussex was well represented, and Westmorland,West Riding, the East Anglian counties, Kent, and Hampshire had over 40 returns. On the other hand,
there were less than 10 returns from Middlesex, Rutland, East Riding, Derbyshire, andMonmouthshire.
It is worth commenting on the unit of observation used in this study. Previous studies using
the same source tend to summarize figures by county. For instance, Verdon (2002b) noted that theincidence of involvement of women and children in haymaking was observed more frequently in
Middlesex than in Sussex because 50 per cent of parishes in Middlesex returned their involvement
and 49 per cent of parishes in Sussex did. 10 However, there are only 2 observations in theformer—that is one parish reported haymaking and the other did not—and 76 in the latter, so it isdifficult to say that Middlesex people actually enjoyed more work in haymaking than those in
Sussex did.
To avoid this problem, this study uses wider observation units. Figure 2 is the map
proposed by James Caird in 1852. 11 The horizontal line divides England and Wales into thehigh-wage north and the low-wage south, and the vertical line divides the arable east and the pastoral
9

Blaug (1964), p. 234.

10

Verdon (2002b), Table 1, p. 313. Although the sample size of Middlesex shown in Figure 1 is three,

one sample did not respond to Question 11 about female job opportunities.
11

Caird (1852), frontispiece.

4

west. Following his classification, four regions—the high-wage rable North East, the high-wage
pastoral North West, the low-wage arable South East, and the low-wage pastoral South West—are
the main units of analysis.
The Rural Query asks 53 questions in addition to the population number and theexpenditure on the poor. Among them, this study mainly uses answers to the following fivequestions:

Question 6: ‘Number of Labourers generally out of Employment, and how maintained in Summer
and in Winter?’
Question 8: ‘Weekly Wages, with and without Beer or Cyder, in Summer and in Winter?’
Question 10: ‘What in the whole might an average Labourer, obtaining an average amount of
employment, both in Day-wok and Piece-work, expect to earn in the year, including Harvest-workand the value of all his other advantages and means of living except Parish Relief?’
Question 11: ‘Have you any and what Employment for Women and Children?’
Question 12: ‘What can Women and Children under 16, earn per week, in Summer, in Winter andHarvest, and how employed?’ 12

While the source is well known and has been frequently mentioned by historians, 13
qualitative nature of these questions raises some difficulties for quantitative analysis. Moreover, theamount of information varies significantly according to location. The following are some examples
on the wage levels at Great Faringdon (Berkshire) and Wootton (Oxfordshire).

Summer, in the hay month, 12s. per week, including beer; in the harvest, from 12s. to 20s. per
week. Winter, 8s. to 9s. per week, without beer. 14.

12

There are three editions of questions, and wordings in each edition are slightly different from others.

The questions of the third edition are presented here.
13

See, for example, Boyer (1990), King (1991), and Verdon (2002a, b).

14

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 15a.

5

From 9s. to 12s. 15

Concerning Great Faringdon, the statement contains information about (1) summer wages, (2)availability of in-kind allowance in summer (beer in this case), (3) wage rate during the harvest, (4)wage rate during winter, and (5) availability of in-kind allowance in winter. On the other hand, thedescription on Wootton is very simple. Therefore, great care is required for quantification.
Concurrently, by carefully processing the information contained in the Rural Query, it is possible topresent reasonable estimates concerning economic circumstances at the parish level that allow us todraw a national picture with regional details.

II
As previously mentioned, there was serious unemployment in the south after the Napoleonic War,but this perception has mainly been based on somewhat indirect evidence, such as expenditures onpoor relief (which skyrocketed after the introduction of the Speenhamland system) andimpressionistic commentaries by contemporaries. However, the Poor Law expenditure amount islikely to have been affected by the actual poor relief practice in the local context, and it is almost
impossible to use contemporary remarks for a systematic regional comparison.
Figure 3 shows the weighted averages of the per capita Poor Law expenditure by county
based on the Report. The map of geographical distribution mentioned previously shows that somecounties have only a few parishes that produced information. Thus, we doubt the representativeness;even so, it is possible to find a broad trend: counties where the per capita expenditure exceeded 15 s.
are all in the south and in the east. The heaviest burden is observed in Sussex, followed by East
Anglia and the Midland counties.
This section substantiates this trend with a more direct indicator: the unemployment rate.
The Rural Query of the 1834 Poor Law Report asks the ‘Number of Labourers generally out of
15

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 382a.

6

Employment, and how maintained in Summer and in Winter’ (Question 6). As exemplified in thefollowing examples, the information is descriptive and the amount of information varies by location.

In Summer about 6, chiefly old and infirm Men, employed in repairing the Parish Roads; in Winterabout 12 or 14 employed on the Parish Roads when out of work. 16

In summer very few willing and able-bodied men are ever out of employment. Some few drunkards
and idle persons, whom no one is willing to employ, are put to less productive labour, such asstone-picking, and in part supported from the Poor’s Rate. 17

In Summer, in general none out of employment. In Winter, none. 18

In order to estimate parish unemployment rates, the following procedure was used.

1. The descriptions shown in Appendix are given a value of 0.
2. Information is classified as general, summer, winter, harvest, and spring.
3. If the number of unemployed is given using a range (e.g. ‘10 to 12’), a simple mean of therange is used.
4. If only one value is given, NA (not available) is used except for the case in which the value isa general description.
5. The following are used for two values:-

if the values are for summer and winter, a simple mean of the two is adopted.

-

if they are for summer and harvest, NA is used.

-

if they are for summer and spring, NA is used.

-

if they are for winter and harvest, a weight of 48/52 is used for the unemployed in

16

Iddesleigh, Devonshire, BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 129a.

17

Witham, Essex, BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 190a.

18

Dalton, Lancashire, BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 271a.

7

winter and 4/52 is used for the unemployed during the harvest.
6. Where three values are provided,-

if the values are for summer, winter, and harvest (spring), the weight is 22/52 forsummer, 26/52 for winter, and 4/52 for harvest (spring).

-

if they are for general, harvest, and spring, the weight is 44/52 for general,4/52 forharvest, and 4/52 for spring.

7. In some parishes, more than one report was made. In this case, a representing number foreach report is calculated in accordance with these rules, and a simple mean of the figures iscomputed. If the amount of information differs in each report (e.g. there are two reports for
Ford, Northumberland: one reports the number of unemployed workers in summer and theother contains figures for summer and winter), the report containing more information isadopted.
8. The denominator used to calculate the unemployment rate is the male population aged 20 andabove in the 1831 census. 19

Parish-level data are aggregated into Caird’s four regions and not to counties, because some counties
have few observations, as shown in Figure 1.
Table 1 shows the results. Unemployment was most serious in the south, and the rate washigher in South East England than in South West. In contrast, agricultural labourers in the northenjoyed almost full employment. This is consistent with the traditional view. In the 1830s, northern
farmers had to compete with factory owners for unskilled labourers, which likely tightened thelabour market in the north such that the unemployment rates remained low. In contrast, labour
surplus prevailed in the south, mainly because the only prominent industrial town was London. 20
Furthermore, many rural textile industries, which were important sources of income for rural
19

BPP, 1832, vols. xxx-xxxi.

20‘…late eighteenth-century London had more steam engines with more horse power than Lancashire; midnineteenth-century London remained by far the largest manufacturing city in the country’ (Schwarz (1992),
p. 1).

8

labouring families, had disappeared by the 1830s. According to Caird’s or Hunt’s assertion,
agricultural labourers in the south, largely suffered from serious unemployment and low wages.
However, whether they suffered from low wages is unknown.

III(1) Evaluating income in kind in monetary terms
In order to explore the chronological changes, this section reviews another contemporary survey. The
State of the Poor published by Sir Frederic Morton Eden in 1797 contains information similar to thatavailable in the 1834 Poor Law Report. Eden’s investigation was conducted in 1794 and 1795. Crop
failure in these years, which caused steep increases in corn prices, led him to explore 134 perishes
using 20 questions, such as parish areas, parish population, occupations of parishioners, and theirearnings and expenditure. 21 The results of the exploration are assembled in Volume II, ‘parochial
reports’. Eden gathered information chiefly through asking local clergymen. When no suchassistance was available, he himself visited the parish or sent ‘a remarkably faithful and intelligent
person; who has spent more than a year in travelling from place to place’.22 Along with 99 family
budgets, the State of the Poor contains general observation of wage levels in 134 parishes.
Neither the State of the Poor nor the 1834 Reports mentioned exact food/drink provision
amounts in monetary terms but simply stated whether they exited, as shown in the followings
examples:The common wages of labour, in husbandry, are, 1s. a day, without board. 23 (Dunstable,
Bedfordshire)

Common labourers receive 9s. a week, and beer; in hay harvest, 10s. a week, and beer; in corn
21

However, the information about individual parishes was selective. Typically, only a few points werementioned for each parish.
22

Eden (1797), vol. I, p.ii.

23

Eden (1797), vol. II, p. 1.

9

harvest, 2s. a day, and dinner. 24 (New Windsor, Berkshire)

The wages of labourers are, in harvest, 10d. 1s. and 14d. a day, with victuals; at other times ofthe year, 10d. a day, with victuals. 25 (Gilcrux, Cumberland)

In addition, of the 134 parishes surveyed, the number of parishes that provided common wage rates
applicable throughout the year such as Dunstable was only 36. Most parishes such as New Windsor
and Gilcrux reported some seasonal differences in wage levels. The former case is straightforward. A
common wage of 1 s. a day in Dunstable is assumed to apply throughout the year. Constructing adataset with the data provided in this manner may be more correct. However, to explicitly identify
seasonal effects and to maximize the sample size, a regression analysis was conducted by assuming
the following wage function.

WAGE = α 1 + α 2 PRINX + α 3 SSUM + α 4 SWIN
+ α 5 SHAR + α 6 SHAY + α 7VICDUM(1)

The variable WAGE is nominal wage rates described in the sources. PRINX is the priceindex proposed by Saito (1981). Following Arthur Young’s proposition, Saito set up three pricezones according to the distance from London. 26 The same price index is applied to all parishes inthe zone, and the index takes a value of 100, 88, or 81. SSUM, SWIN, SHAR, and SHAY are season
dummies with ‘common’ or ‘general’ wages as a reference for summer, winter, harvest, and hay
harvest, respectively. 27 Thus, New Windsor and Gilcrux produce more than one observation.
Gilcrux includes 10 d. per day in the dataset with no seasonal dummy and 1 s. a day (a simple mean
24

Eden (1797), vol. II, p. 23.

25

Eden, (1797), vol. II, p. 76.

26

Saito (1981), pp. 640-1.

27

Because the dataset from the State of the Poor contains very few data for hay harvest, I combined hay

and harvest wages for 1795; furthermore, SHAY is applied only to the estimation for the 1830s.

10

of 10 d., 1 s., and 14 d.) for the harvest season (SHAR=1). VICDUM is a binary victual dummy: If
the wage information includes beer, cider, or any other victuals, VICDUM takes a value of 1.
Therefore, the coefficient α 7 becomes the estimated amount of victuals in monetary terms.

(2) Declining victuals and drinks: 1795 and 1832
The estimation results are as follows, where Equation 2 refers to the 1790s and Equation 3 to the1830s. 28

WAGE = .255 +.103 PRINX + .493 SSUM – 1.903 SWIN(.08)

(2.89)**(.70)(-2.56)*+ 2.827 SHAR – 2.408 VICDUM(3.62)**(2)(-4.06)**
adjusted R2 = .253

N=110.

WAGE = 5.916 +.050 PRINX + 1.223 SSUM – .412 SWIN
(9.11)** (7.51)**(6.52)**(-2.20)*+ 5.025 SHAR + 3.091 SHAY – 1.565 VICDUM(18.59)**(8.07)**(3)(-13.45)**

adjusted R2 = .286

N=1,932

According to Equation 2, a labourer’s wage increased by 0.493 s. during the summer, and it rose
further by 2.827 s. during the harvest; however, wages dropped by 1.903 s. in winter. However, if
food or drink was offered, the wage level was reduced by approximately 2.4 s. Similarly, estimatedvictuals in 1832 are estimated as 1.6 s., suggesting that agricultural labourers experienced great
28

T values are in parentheses. ‘**’ and ‘*’ indicate significance at the 1 per cent and 5 per cent level,

respectively.

11

reduction of food/drink allowance over the four decades. Ignoring seasonal differences andfood/drink allowances, the nominal wage rates averaged 8.3 s. per week in 1795 and 11.0 s. per
week in 1832. Thus, the importance of income-in-kind dropped from 28.9 per cent to 14.2 per cent.
It is somewhat surprising that income-in-kind accounted for approximately 30 per cent offarm workers’ income at the end of the eighteenth century. As previously mentioned, Horrell andHumphries (1992) stated that income-in-kind contributed less than one per cent of family income,which seems low. Furthermore, the proportion of cash income changed considerably. Therefore, theassertion by Clark (2001) that the degree of beer provision did not have dramatic effects on wages isquestionable.
Food/drink provision seems to have declined not only in monetary terms but also in its
frequency. Table 2 shows the geographical distribution of the observations. The decline in thepercentage of observations ‘with victuals’ is remarkable, from 62.7 per cent to 33.1 per cent,consistent with the conventional view of declining in-kind income during the period. In the sixth
volume of the Agrarian History of England and Wales, Armstrong (1989) summarized the situationas ‘[I]n any case, with rising prices during the second half of the [eighteenth] century they [payments
in kind] became more costly to provide in real term’. 29 Thus food or drink was offered lessfrequently to farm workers in 1832, and it may have been more modest when offered (i.e., possibly
drink, and not food).

(3) Regional differences
Table 2 provides insight on the geographical diversity of in-kind income, which seems to have been
widespread in the South West England (e.g. Devonshire and Somersetshire). However, two problems
must be considered. One is the distinction between food allowance and drinks, and the other is a
re-tabulation of Table 2 by location instead of by frequency of observations.
It is likely that the cost of food allowance was much more expensive than drinks. Clark(2001) presents a case in a Cumberland estate in 1732, where ‘the same person was paid both 9d. per
29

Armstrong (1989), p. 720.

12

day and 4d. per day for threshing’. 30 By contrast, in the course of his farm wage estimation between
1670 and 1869, he used the 1834 Poor Law Report as a benchmark and converted beer allowance
into money wage equivalents. The average difference between wages with and without beer in
specific parishes in each season was used, and he calculated 1.94d. per day for winter, 2.13d. per day
for summer, and 2.67d. per day for hay and harvest. 31 While the Cumberland worker received 5d.
less than he did 100 years prior without a food allowance, beer allowance in 1832 wasapproximately half that even in the hay and harvest seasons. Following Clark’s assumption of asix-day week, the current estimation (1.565 s. per week) equals 3.130d. per day, which is slightly
higher than Clark’s maximum figure mainly because food and drinks are not distinguished in
Equations 2 and 3.
Separating beer allowance from food provision, the following is derived:

WAGE = 6.877 + .040 PRINX + 1.234 SSUM - 0.405 SWIN + 5.549 SHAR
(10.689)** (6.016)**(6.747)**(-2.217)*(20.654)**+ 3.170 SHAY – 1.367 BEERDUM - 3.411 FOODDUM(8.481)**(-11.841)**(4)(-11.5546)**
adjusted R2 = 0.321

N=1,932

Here, beer allowance was 1.367 s. per week, and the cost of food provision was twice as high as thatof drinks. Overall, 1.367 s. per week equals 2.73 d. per day, which is consistent with Clark’s figure.
Table 3 shows the spatial distribution of food and drink allowances by county. The numberof parishes where any form of in-kind allowance was reported (not observations) is counted. For
example, Table 2 shows that there are 34 observations for Bedfordshire, but the number of parishes
where wage data are available is 15 parishes according to Table 3. Although the sample size as awhole seems to be sufficiently large, a breakdown into 42 counties makes some of the subsets too

30

Clark (2001), p. 480.

31

See the notes in Clark (2001), p. 481, Table 2.

13small: the Middlesex and Rutland percentages are not significant.
Figures 4 and 5 map the regional patterns of income-in-kind presented in Table 3. Figure 4
shows the counties in which at least one parish reported food provision, and the pattern looks
conventional. Counties in the north and South West had few parishes reporting food provisions: one
in Sussex and three in Bedfordshire. These parishes in the southern counties may be exceptional.
However, in Cumberland, food allowance seemed more common (i.e. 7 out of 35 parishes).
As hinted in Table 2, drink allowance prevailed in South West England. In Devonshire, 17
out of 18 parishes reported that some form of drink was provided to farm workers. Herefordshire andadjacent counties also show high percentages of drink allowance. The survival of allowance in the
Midlands and East Anglia differs from the traditional view, in particular, high percentages for
Cambridgeshire and Essex (55.9 per cent and 55.8 per cent, respectively). Because the sample sizes
for the counties are 34 and 43, respectively, the results should be relatively reliable. In contrast, thenorthern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, and Durham are cash-dependent.
Notably unique is Durham, in which no parish reported the existence of drink provision.

(4) Revising regional wage estimates
Literature on the regional differences in farm wages in the mid-nineteenth century has generally
followed the contemporary findings presented in Caird’s English Agriculture originally published in
1852, which defines high- and low-wage regions as shown in Figure 2. 32 Although nominal wage
rates are used, the image has been reinforced in the study by Hunt (1986), one of the most prominentcontributions to the debate. Figure 6 shows his calculation on farm wages in 1833-45. With the
exception of London and its adjacent counties, the general pattern is consistent with Caird’s map.
Regardless of whether the wage comparison is conducted as a time series or cros secion,
one issue persists: differences in the cost of living. In the second half of the nineteenth century, thepurchasing power of farm wages seems to have been similar in many locations. Comparing the32

Caird (1852), frontispiece. See, for instance, Hunt (1973, 1986), Horrell and Humphries (1992), Boyer(1997), Boyer and Hatton (1997), and Shaw-Taylor (2005).

14

prices of bread, flour, butter, tea, sugar, bacon, and cheese between 1860/1 and1912/13, Hunt (1973)
concluded that ‘the cost of living of rural workers did not vary significantly in different parts of thecountry: differences in real wages paralleled differences in money wages’. 33 In other words, heclaims that nominal money wages can be considered real wage rates. Even if this were the case in
the early nineteenth century, the regional differences in the survival of food/drink allowance imply
that real wage rates could be biased if they were ignored. Therefore, our next task is to use the resultsof the estimation of food/drink allowance to draw a new regional wage map.
While the 1834 Rural Query contains useful information concerning wages, constructing
wage figures representing each parish is difficult. As previously mentioned, information provided in
the report is not always numeric but somewhat exemplary. Moreover, the amount of information
varies by location. A single general figure or several seasonal figures may be provided for the year.
In order to consider seasonal wage differences and the inclusion of food and drink allowances, thefollowing procedure was employed. Steps 3 and 4 represent adjustments made for food and drink
allowances, while steps 5 to 8 relate to seasonal adjustments.

1. Wage data in each parish were classified into five categories: general (i.e. throughout theyear), summer, winter, harvest, and hay time.
2. When a range of wage rates such as ‘from 10 s. to 12 s.’ is given, a simple mean of the values
is adopted (in this case, 11 s.).
3. When wage rates with and without beer (e.g. victuals/board/meat) are provided separately,
those without in-kind allowance are used.
4. When the wage rate is that with beer (or victuals), 1.37 (or 3.41) s. are added.
5. When one wage rate is provided, it is adopted if it is a general wage rate. In other cases, ‘NA’is used for the parish.
6. When two seasonal wage rates are given, the following occurs:
33

if the wage rates are for summer and winter, a simple mean of the two is adopted.

Hunt (1973), p. 87.

15

-

if they are general and harvest wages, a weighted average is calculated using a weight of
48/52 for general wage and 4/52 for harvest wage.

-

if they are general and summer wages, a similar weighted average is conducted, that is,
the weight for the general wage is 48/52, and that for summer is 4/52.

-

if they are winter and harvest wages, weightings of 48/52 and 4/52 are used for the
winter wage and harvest wage, respectively.

-

if the two have another configuration, ‘NA’ is used.

7. When three figures are given,-

if they are general, harvest, and hay-time wages, weights used are 44/52 for the general,
4/52 for the harvest, and 4/52 for the hay harvest wages.

-

if they are summer, winter, and harvest wages, weights used are 22/52, 26/52, and 4/52
for summer, winter, and harvest wages, respectively.

-

if they are summer, winter, and hay-time wages, weights are 22/52 for summer, 26/52 forwinter, and 4/52 for hay harvest.

-

if they are winter, harvest, and hay-time wages, weights are 44/52 for winter, 4/52 forharvest, and 4/52 for hay harvest.

-

In other cases, ‘NA’ is used.

8. There is only one combination for four values provided (summer/winter/harvest/hay).
Weights of 18/52, 26/52, 4/52, and 4/52 are applied to these respective wage rates.

Because parish-level data are derived from this procedure, the adult male population in each parish(aged 20 years and older) is used as the weight to calculate the corresponding county-level figure.
Figure 7 shows a different pattern than Figure 6 does. Overall, there is a downward
revision in the north and an upward revision in the south. Downward revisions are found for ninecounties, that is, Cheshire, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland, andNorth and West Ridings of Yorkshire. Most revisions are in the high-wage north defined by Caird.
The most notable is Cheshire, where the wage level of 11.4 s. seen in Figure 6 is reduced to 9.9 s. in

16

Figure 7. Upward revisions of more than one s. are found in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire,
Cambridgeshire, Dorset, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Middlesex,
Northamptonshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, and East
Riding of Yorkshire: most, apart from Staffordshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire, are south of
Caird’s line. The wage level of Huntingdonshire is the one revised most upward, although thenumber of samples for the county indicates questionable reliability. As shown in Equation 4, regional
price differences are considered, making our figures more reliable than Hunt’s nominal wages.

(5) Male wages and unemployment
Inclusion of income-in-kind into the calculation of real wage rates has revealed the following threepoints. First, as previous studies have suggested, the importance of food/drink allowance declined
during the Industrial Revolution. The proportion of in-kind income to the average male nominal
wage rates fell from 28.9 per cent at the end of the eighteenth century to 14.2 per cent in the 1830s.
The frequency of provision declined as well. While food/drink allowance was observed in 62.7 percent of the sample parishes in 1795, this number dropped to 33.1 per cent in 1832. Second, the extent
to which food/drink allowance survived differed by county. Food provision remained in the north,but drink allowance survived in the south. Drink allowance was available in many parishes in the
Midlands and in the East Anglian counties, such as Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire,
Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Essex. Third, the actual wage level in the south
was higher than previously assumed. In other words, the conventional ‘high-wage north andlow-wage south’ view should be revised. As previously indicated, even in the 1830s, drink allowance
was fairly common in the south. Thus, the real wage rates in most southern counties were estimatedto be higher. Thus, the clear-cut pattern of ‘high-wage north and low-wage south’ suggested by Caird
is incorrect.
The last point is interesting, because it suggests that the effect of industrialization on malewage rates may not have been significant. Comparing farm labourers’ wages in Lancashire (12.4 s.)
and Buckinghamshire (9.8 s.) in 1833-45, Hunt (1986) concluded the following:17

Few would deny that industrialization was a main cause of the relative improvement in Lancashire
wages in the eighteenth century and of the wage advantages Lancastrians enjoyed throughout thefollowing century. And most would agree that Buckinghamshire exemplifies the plight of peripheral
regions that experienced population increase unaccompanied by industrialization. 34

However, estimates in this paper are 11.9 s. and 10.9 s. respectively. In other words, ‘the advantage
Lancastrians enjoyed’ was reduced from 26.5 per cent to only 9.2 per cent.
This revision allows us to solve the conundrum that low wage rates and highunemployment coexisted in the South. Hunt’s observation of the large Lancashire-Buckinghamshire
wage gap shows a labour market segregation in the first half of the nineteenth century, as Pollard
indicated three decades ago. However, concerning male wages, this problem is solved even for the
integrated regional labour markets. Figure 8 shows our estimates of the regional male wages together
with unemployment rates by Caird’s regions. The wage rate in South East England was slightly
higher than that in North West, where factory production flourished the most. Thus, South East
agricultural labourers stayed, because the farms paid wages above the equilibrium.

IV
Concerning male weekly wage rates, the ‘high-wage north/low-wage south’ divide is now blurred.
This suggests that southern agricultural labourers did not move because their wage level was
sufficiently high to take a risk of leaving familiar villages. However, it is difficult to reconcile thishypothesis with evidence on annual household income. In this section, we discuss this issue from thethree following viewpoints: 1) how to convert weekly male wages into annual income, 2) inclusionof female earnings into household decision-making considerations, and 3) the effect of job
opportunities for women on female annual incomes. 35

34

Hunt (1986), p. 961. Furthermore, see his Table 4 on the same page.

35

The Rural Query also asks wage rates for children. However, only earnings of wives are discussed here,18

Besides Question 8, which asks about weekly wages, the Rural Query contains a question
about annual income. Question 10 asks ‘what in the whole might an average Labourer, obtaining an
average amount of employment, both in Day-wok and Piece-work, expect to earn in the year,
including Harvest-work and the value of all his other advantages and means of living except Parish
Relief?’ The answers here are again impressionistic to some extent, but I assume that they reflected
some information on seasonal fluctuations in job opportunities and short-term working hours.
Column (b) of Table 4 summarises the answers to Question 10, 36 and Column (c) shows
the annual income derived from weekly wages based on Question 8. I simply multiplied each figurein Column (a) by 52 (weeks). Income based on weekly-wages are expected to be larger than those
based on Question 10, because weekly wages implicitly assume full employment. This does not
apply to South West Endgland, but the overall picture seems to be consistent. I took simple meansof
the two as best guesses, which are shown in Column (e).
This exercise does not change the order of income level ranking. The annual income inSouth East England, 29.9 pounds, is higher than 29.3 pounds in North West. However, this orderchanges if we consider female wage rates and job opportunities, because weekly wage rates forfemales were higher in the north.
The 1834 Poor Law Report also asks about female wages (Question 12). As in theevaluation of food/drink allowance with male wages in the previous section, we can derive thefollowing equation with female wages:

female wage = 8.320 - 0.049 PRINX + 0.522 SSUM - 1.606SWIN + 3.742 SHAR

because it is very difficult to confirm the typical household structure in each parish or region. However,children’s contribution to household income in the period was considerable. Horrell and Humphries(1995) estimated that their contribution between 1817 and 1839 was 20.1 per cent in high-wage
agriculture (Caird’s north region) and 4.6 per cent in low-wage agriculture (Caird’s south). Horrell andHumphries (1995), Table 1, p. 491.
36

While the question clearly asks ‘annual’ earnings, some answered daily or weekly wages. For thetabulation of Table 4, parishes that returned these types of remarks are discarded and only annual figures
are included.

19

(12.176)** (-7.114)**(2.060)*(-6.314)*(14.478)**+ 2.314 SHAY – 1.355 BEERDUM – 1.512 VICDUM(4.326)**(-3.868)**(5)(-3.104)**

adjusted R2 = 0.429

N=2,007

In order to obtain representative female wage rates for each parish (i.e. wage rates controlling forseasonality and drink/food allowances), a procedure identical to that for representative male wages isapplied. For the adjustment of income-in-kind, 1.36 s. for beer and 1.51 s. for food was used, andinstead of using females aged 20 years and older, the total female population is used for weight tocalculate regional figures.
Table 5 shows the results, and the north-south wage gap is clear. The weekly wage rate
was highest in North East England followed by North West. On the other hand, the wage rate inSouth East England was low. Consequently, the contribution of women to household income is thelowest in South East England. While the annual earnings of women in North East England accounted
for 39 per cent of male annual income, that of South Eastern women was below 30 per cent.
Furthermore, the numbers shown in Table 5 must be overstated, for the same reasons as
male weekly wages are. Unfortunately, we cannot obtain direct information about female
unemployment. Instead, I used female job opportunities as a denominator to control this problem.
The Rural Query asks ‘Have you any and what Employment for Women and Children?’(Question 11). The descriptive nature of answers is the same as for other questions, which makes any
generalization difficult. It is possible to group the information contained in the answers into two
types: The qualitative and quantitative value of job opportunities. In some cases, both types of
information are given. In Cople, Bedfordshire, ‘lace-making, and gleaning in time of harvest’ were
women’s jobs, 37 and in Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire, ‘very little: weeding, lace-making, reaping
and raking in Harvest’ 38 was available. Information on the frequency is thus omitted, and the37

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 4a.

38

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 40a.

20

contents of job opportunities are classified into agricultural and manufacturing jobs. Thus,
manufacturing and agricultural jobs were available in Cople. Buryan Deanery in Cornwall, where‘the cultivation of potatoes, weeding the crops, harvesting hay and corn, straw hat weaving, andcuring fish’ were mentioned, 39 is also interpreted as a parish where agricultural and manufacturingjobs were available. In South Bedburn in Durham, there was ‘nothing, but in Husbandry, no
manufactories’. 40 Therefore, available jobs in the parish are agricultural only.
Table 6 summarizes the result. Thus, job opportunities for women were significant: thepercentage for England was 80 per cent overall. However, nothing was available in 171 out of 851
parishes in England. Regional variation in manufacturing opportunities was larger than that inagricultural ones. Although 38 per cent of North Eastern parishes enjoyed manufacturing jobs, total
employment in manufacturing in the North East was only 7 per cent. According to the descriptions in
the Rural Query, water-powered mills were built in the northern countryside, and women weredirectly employed there. In other cases, jobs are likely to have been supplementary to factory
production. In the Ovenden township on the outskirts of Halifax, for instance, women were
‘employed chiefly in cotton and worsted weaving, cotton and worsted mills, and othermanufactures’, 41 where there seem to have been some factories. In Brampton, Cumberland,
approximately 17 miles east of Carlisle, ‘there is field-work for Women and Children during theSummer and Autumn months; and spinning, knitting, sewing, winding of bobbins [italics added], andweaving, at other times of the year’. 42 On the other hand, rural industries in South East Englandseem to have disappeared or to have been declining. The reply from Sherborne in Dorset reads ‘thesilk-throwing business generally; ... the silk business, however, of late years, has been muchdepressed’. 43 In Rodborne tithing, Wiltshire, available jobs were ‘very little, and that only in

39

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 82a.

40

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 146a.

41

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 623a.

42

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 101a.

43

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 145a.

21

Summer. Lace-making in the Winter; but that is declining very fast’. 44
The overall pattern of female job opportunities was similar to that of male unemployment.
The percentages of parishes where neither agricultural nor manufacturing jobs were available washigh in South East England and lower in the north. 45 I used these percentages to discount female
incomes, and the ‘adjusted female annual income’ in Table 7 shows the results. 46 The level offemale income in North East England was 42 per cent higher than England as a whole, and that ofSouth West remained as small as 89 per cent.
Attention should be paid to the annual family income index shown in the right column inTable 7. While male annual income in North West England was lower than that in South East, low
female wages and less job opportunities in South East England made the annual family income
slightly lower than North West, so the high-north and low-south pattern has reappeared. Although
the difference between the two is small, lower income coinciding with the higher unemployment ratein the south leads us go back to the first question: Why did the southern agricultural labourers not
move to high-wage areas but stay unemployed? Even if the job situation for women was morefavourable in the north, male wage rates should have mattered most. Southern agricultural labourers
probably did not relocate because the male income level was likely sufficient if in-kind income isconsidered.
In addition, regional agricultural practices must have affected the structure of labour
supply and demand. While cottage industries in the south were declining sharply, most southern
farmers still required their employees’ wives and children to work during harvest. The availability ofagricultural job opportunities was almost identical in the north and south. Combining North Westand North East, the number of parishes where agricultural jobs were available accounts for 63.6 per
44

BPP 1834, vol. xxx, p. 579a.

45This should not be taken for granted, because sexual division of labour was the norm in the period. For

example, lace-making and straw plaiting were almost exclusively female jobs. In agriculture, stone
picking, weeding, and milking were practiced mainly by women. Wheat was harvested by male mowers
with scythes that women and children gathered.
46

Thus, female annual income in England as a whole, 9.2 s., is multiplied by 0.80 for either or bothmanufacturing and agriculture jobs available in 680 out of 851 parishes (or 80 per cent (Table 9)).

22

cent, while that in the South was 63.7 per cent.
Arable farmers faced greater seasonal fluctuation in labour requirement. During winter,
there were few particular jobs other than threshing. In summer, however, haymaking and harvest
required a significant amount of labour. Furthermore, the peak period in the harvest of main cereals,
especially wheat, is relatively short. It was essential for arable farmers to keep a sufficient number ofmowers and reapers during this crucial period. If a farmer failed and the wheat over-ripened before
harvest, his loss could be enormous.
Figure 9 shows the percentages of arable and pastoral parishes in each region. The Rural
Query also reports the land use of each parish. Total acreage of each parish and of arable, pastoral,
commons, gardens, woods, and other lands were reported. The reports are, again, imperfect here. A
comparison of the parish acreages reported in the 1834 Report with those shown in the 1831 Census
reveals that the number of entries where the two figures are identical is only 14 of over 1,000 entries.
In some cases, even the total acreage is not given. Therefore, I defined a parish as ‘arable’ if the ratioof arable to pastoral acreage in the parish was over 1.560 (or the arable acreage divided by the sumof arable and pastoral acreages (arable/(arable + pastoral) is equal to or greater than 60.8 per cent),
which is the average for England as a whole. If this ratio was smaller, the parish is defined as‘pastoral’. The map fits well with the division by Caird (Figure 2). North East and the South East
England are very arable; in the west, pastoral parishes represent over half the parishes.
A significant number of arable parishes exited in South West as well, although thepercentage was slightly less than half. This particular feature of agriculture in the south in generalmust have been related to the immobility of southern labourers. It is very likely that southern cereal
farmers, facing seasonal fluctuation in labour demand, had a strong incentive to keep a surplus oflabour in the region. Because the dismissal of a male worker meant that the farmer might also lose
the labour of the worker’s wife and children, the bargaining power of male agricultural labourers
may have strengthened. Thus, a high level of unemployment and its consequences (i.e. the heavy
burden of the poor rates in the south) were institutionalized through this peculiar kind of bargaining
structure, which manifested itself in relatively higher male real wages of the region.

23

V
Pollard (1978) listed the reasons urban industry failed to use labourers in the countryside because ofwhich this labour pool continued to exist during the first third of the nineteenth century. His list
includes the following: 1) the technical difficulty of transport, 2) labourers’ reluctance to face a newoccupation and new environment, 3) the Poor Law and the Settlement Acts, and 4) the interest oflandlords and farmers to keep the labour reserve for harvest weeks. 47 Although related to the fourth
point, relative high wages in the south should be added to his list. Because of the regionally different
pattern of decline and survival of drink allowances, southern agricultural labourers enjoyedrelatively higher income than previously thought. As a result, the wage level in the south remained
above the equilibrium level.
The seasonal fluctuation in arable farming provided a strong incentive for cereal farmers tokeep a labour reservoir. This incentive must have also existed in North East England, which wasanother region where males enjoyed high wages. Table 6 shows there were relatively numerous jobs
for women in the region. This could also be applied to male workers because of the proximity of
fast-growing industrial areas. Figure 10 shows the net migration rate in each county. The North East
region is comprised of Northumberland, Durham, North Riding, East Riding, and Lincolnshire.
Attention should be drawn to a serious population drain from North Riding, which is surrounded bycounties in which net immigration was enormous. It appears that Durham mines and industrial towns
in West Riding, Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire offered wage labour and attracted people from
North Riding, East Riding, and Lincolnshire. Thus, the bargaining power of farmers in North East
England may have been eroded.
Compared with the northern counties, labour mobility in the south was rather modest.
Although the net immigration in and around London, Birmingham, and Monmouthshire wasapparent, the population flow to and from other southern counties was not obvious. This may havebeen partly because of the rather higher male wage rates, as previously shown. However, this should
47

Pollard (1978), pp. 108-10.

24

be interpreted in the sense that farmers in South East England included a drink allowance to reducethe incentives of agricultural labourers to emigrate.
Other traditional explanations, such as labourers’ reluctance to leave their home villages
and farmers’ anxiety regarding social disturbances also played a role in the endurance of this labour
reservoir. Other parts of the Rural Query provide some information on these points. As a vicar of
Westoning, Bedfordshire, mentioned, ‘In this parish and neighbourhood, the strongest prejudicesprevail against emigration, among the poor, owing in part to want of sufficient information on thesubject’. 48 Boyer and Hatton (1997) explored determinants of migration for the second half of thenineteenth century by conducting regressions to determine the effects of wage gaps, distance, and thestock of previous migrants on male migration flows. The elasticity of the stock of previous migrants
they estimated was substantial and comparable to that of wage gap. In other words, a 10 per centincrease of migration stock offset a 10 per cent increase in the wage gap, meaning that people wereunlikely to relocate unless a substantial number of people had already out-migrated beforehand.
Prior to the railway age, most rural workers could not expect their acquaintances to live in large
towns.
If rural farm workers, reluctant to leave their parishes, were not satisfied with the total
income derived from cash wages, in-kind allowance, and outdoor relief, disturbances occurred.
Before the enquiry for the 1834 Poor Law Report occurred, agricultural riots raged in southerncounties. 49 The Swing Riots, which began in 1830, included arson, threatening (‘Swing’) letters,
and breaking of machines, where workers demanded higher wages, more job opportunities, rent andtithe reduction, and improved poor relief conditions. The 1834 Poor Law Report also asks, ‘Can you
give the Commissioners any information respecting the causes and consequences of the Agricultural
Riots and Burning of 1830 and 1831?’ (Question 53). William Mount, an overseer and Justice of thePeace in Wasing, Berkshire, attributed the causes to ‘evil-disposed persons worked upon an ill-paid
discontented peasantry, who, for want of regular employment during the Winter months, were in the48

BPP 1834, vol. xxxiv, p. 9e. In Westoning, the unemployment rate was the highest at 33.1 per cent. The

figure is my own calculation reflected in Table 6 and Figure 12.
49

Hobsbawm and Rudé (1969)25

habit of spending their time in those rural pest, the beer-shop’, and described the consequence asfollows:‘great destruction of property, heavy pecuniary charges on Counties, Parishes and individuals; andfor a time unprecedented misery in the families of the rioters. The best and steadied Labourers wereunsettled; mutual confidence destroyed, and alarm prevailed through this and the six adjoining
Counties. The wages of a Labourer with a family were in most instances raised from 9 s. to 10 s.
per week, and those of a single man in proportion’. 50

The answer by another JP from Steeple Claydon, Buckinghamshire was as follows:‘Causes: discontent, disturbance in France, private revenge, idleness. Consequences have been,raising the unmarried Man’s pay from 3 s. 6 d. to 5 s. weekly, which made the Farmer far moreangry and discontented than the Labourer had been’. 51

Concerning mechanization in agriculture, Collins (1987) found that southern arable farmers found itvery difficult to adopt labour-saving schemes. He maintained that the ‘social cost of mechanization,
expressed in terms of wage rates, levels of employment and labour relations, might outweigh theeconomic benefits’. 52 Indeed, agricultural labourers often burnt reapers and binders at night as lateas 1890s.
It is worth noting that, at least in these two parishes, labourers successfully increased
wages, which must have increased their incentive to stay in the parish. Corn-producing farmers inarable parishes required a labour pool for harvest, which made wage rates and income levels
negotiable. As a result, the income level in the region remained higher, the mechanism behind theimmobility of agricultural labourers in the South East. It may have been unstable, but it was in50

BPP 1834, vol. xxxiv, p. 28e.

51

BPP 1834, vol. xxxiv, p. 33e.

52

Collins (1987), p. 36.

26

equilibria until the mid-nineteenth century.

Footnote reference
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(2004) ‘Agriculture during the Industrial Revolution’, in Floud and Johnson (2004).
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(1989).
Berg, M., and P. Hudson,(1992) ‘Rehabilitating the industrial revolution’, Economic History Review, 45(1).
Burnett, J.,(1997) ‘An investigation of the female-male wage gap during the industrial revolution in Britain’,
Economic History Review, 50 (2).
Blaug, M.,(1964) ‘The Poor Law Report Reexamined’, Journal of Economic History, 24 (2).
Boyer, G. R.,(1990) An Economic History of the English Poor Law 1750-1850, Cambridge.
(1997) ‘Labour migration in southern and eastern England, 1861-1901’, European Journal of Economic
History, 1(2).
Boyer, G. R., and T. J. Hatton,(1997) ‘Migration and labour market integration in late nineteenth-century England and Wales’,Economic History Review, 50(4).
Caird, J.,(1852) English Agriculture in 1850-51, 2nd ed., London (reprinted in 1968).
Clark, G.,(2001) ‘Farm wages and living standards in the industrial revolution: England, 1670-1869’, Economic

27

History Review, 54 (3).
Collins, E. J. T.,(1987) ‘The Rationality of ‘Surplus’ Agricultural Labour: Mechanization in English Agriculture in the
Nineteenth Century’, Agricultural History Review, 35(1).
Crafts, N. F. R.,(1985a) ‘English Workers’ Real Wages during the Industrial Revolution: Some Remaining Problems’,
Journal of Economic History, 45(1).
(1985b) British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution, Oxford.
Crafts, N. F. R., and C. K. Harley,(1992) ‘Output Growth and the British industrial revolution: a restatement of the Crafts-Harley view’,
Economic History Review, 45(4).
Eden, F. M.,(1797) The State of the Poor, London.
Flinn, M. W.,(1974) ‘Trends in Real Wages, 1750-1850’, Economic History Review, 27(3).
(1976) ‘Real Wage Trends in Britain, 1750-1850: A Reply’, Economic History Review, 29(1).
Gash, N.,(1935) ‘Rural Unemployment, 1815-34’, Economic History Review, 1st series, 6 (1).
Gourvish, T. R.,(1976) ‘Flinn and Real Wage Trends in Britain, 1750-1850: A Comment’, Economic History Review
29(1).
Higgs, E.,(1996) A Clearer Sense of the Census, London.
Hobsbawm, E., and G. Rudé,(1969) Captain Swing, London.
Horrell, S., and J. Humphries,(1992) ‘Old Questions, New Data, and Alternative Perspectives: Families’ Living Standards in the
Industrial Revolution, Journal of Economic History, 52(4).
Humphries, J.,28

(1990) ‘Enclosures, Common Rights, and Women: The Proletarianization of Families in the Late
Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’, Journal of Economic History, 50 (1).
Hunt, E. H.,(1973) Regional Wage Variations in Britain: 1850-1914, Oxford.
(1986) ‘Industrialization and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760-1914’, Journal of Economic
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Jones, E. L.,(1964) ‘The Agricultural Labour Market in England, 1793-1872,’ Economic History Review, 17 (2).
King, P.,
(1991) ‘Customary rights and women’s earnings: The importance of gleaning to the rural labouring poor,
1750-1850’, Economic History Review, 44(3).
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Lindert H. and J. G. Williamson,(1983) ‘English Workers’ Living Standards During the Industrial Revolution: A New Look’, Economic
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(1985) ‘English Workers’ Real Wages: Reply to Crafts’, Journal of Economic History 45(1).
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29

Economic History, 10(3).
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Verdon, N.,(2002a) Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-Century England: Gender, Work and Wages, Woodbridge.
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British Parliamentary Papers (BPP)
1831 Census, Comparative Account, session 1831, vol. xviii.
1831 Census, Enumeration Abstract, session 1833, vols. xxxvi-xxxvii.
1831 Census, Parish Register Abstract, session 1833, vol. xxxviii..
1841 Census, Enumeration Abstract, session 1843, vol. xxii..
1851 Census, Population Tables, II, session 1852-3, vol. lxxxviii (i).
Report from the Select Committee on Agriculture, session 1833, vol. v.
Report from His Majesty’s Commissioners for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operationof the Poor Laws, Rural Queries, session 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.

30

Appendix
Zero unemployment in the parish/township is assumed for the following descriptions.
♦

all are employed in Summer and Winter♦All are generally kept in employ although all are not wanted.

♦

all are in full employment♦

All are, generally speaking, employed in Summer.

♦

all employed♦ample employment♦

but few♦

But very few Labourers are out of employ in this parish.

♦

Employment generally good♦

few or none♦

generally employed♦

generally in employment♦

Labourers are generally employed.

♦

Mines at present employing all.

♦

never

♦

never any

♦

no

♦

No Labourers entirely out of Employment.

♦

none

♦

none but those that are idle♦

none except some old men employed on the Roads.

♦

none under the name of Labourers.

♦

not any♦

not frequently any

31♦

not one♦scarcely any♦

seldom unemployed♦

Should any be out of employment they are either taken by the farmers, or sent to the roads.

♦

The working class in the hundred of Amounderness needs never to be unemployed, as
weaving is carried on throughout the hundred.

♦

There are no Labourers out of employ♦

There is generally good employment all the year round.

♦they are generally employed♦very few♦

very seldom♦

We have no Labourers out of employment at any part of the year.

♦

We have very few out of employment.

♦

We have very few out of employment; we take care to find work for all; there are some badcharacters in most parishes who will not work if they can avoid it.

32

Table 1 Unemployment rates in Caird’s regions

England
North East
North WestSouth East
South West

Unemployed
8,035
171
712
5,574
1,577

Male 20+
210,150
17,65336,642
109,524
46,331

Source: BPP 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.

33

Unemployment Rate
3.8%
1.0%
1.9%
5.1%
3.4%

N
643
54
98
318
173

Table 2 Geographical distribution of wage data observations, 1795 and 1832.

Bedfordshire
Berkshire
Buckinghamshire
Cambridgeshire
Cheshire
CornwallCumberland
Derbyshire
Devonshire
Dorsetshire
DurhamEssexGloucestershire
Hampshire
Herefordshire
Hertfordshire
Huntingdonshire
Kent
Lancashire
Leicestershire
Lincolnshire
Middlesex
Monmouthshire
Norfolk
Northamptonshire
Northumberland
Nottinghamshire
Oxfordshire
Rutland
Shropshire
Somersetshire
Staffordshire
Suffolk
SurreySussex
Warwickshire
Westmorland
Wiltshire
Worcestershire
Yorkshire, East Riding
Yorkshire, North Riding
Yorkshire, West Riding
Total

1795 (the State of the Poor)
withoutwith
Total
victuals
victuals
2
4
6
0
4
4
0
3
3
1

4

5

4

21

25

0
1
1

2
0
0

2
1
1

1

0

1

0

2

2

2
10

3
2

5
12

4
1

1
6

5
7

0

3

3

6
0
0
0
0

2
1
1
2
1

8
1
1
2
1

0
1

2
1

2
2

1

0

1

6

4

10

41
37.3%

69
62.7%

110
100.0%

Source: Eden (1797); BPP, 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.

34

1832 (the Poor Law Report)
withoutwith
Total
victuals
victuals
19
15
34
44
18
62
41
23
64
39
34
73
20
3
23
29
26
55
60
10
70
8
3
11
19
29
48
4
7
11
57
0
57
63
45
108
29
19
48
71
21
92
13
25
38
19
21
40
18
5
23
61
16
77
24
5
29
16
19
35
28
3
31
3
1
4
11
3
14
54
9
63
17
18
35
35
4
39
41
9
50
25
18
43
5
1
6
16
16
32
22
29
51
10
13
23
67
10
77
31
8
39
90
32
122
30
45
75
31
7
38
34
18
52
17
20
37
4
5
9
19
2
21
49
24
73
1293
639
1932
66.9%
33.1%
100.0%

Table 3 Existence of food/drink allowance, 1832

Bedfordshire
Berkshire
Buckinghamshire
Cambridgeshire
Cheshire
CornwallCumberland
Derbyshire
Devonshire
Dorsetshire
DurhamEssexGloucestershire
Hampshire
Herefordshire
Hertfordshire
Huntingdonshire
Kent
Lancashire
Leicestershire
Lincolnshire
Middlesex
Monmouthshire
Norfolk
Northamptonshire
Northumberland
Nottinghamshire
Oxfordshire
Rutland
Shropshire
Somersetshire
Staffordshire
Suffolk
SurreySussex
Warwickshire
Westmorland
Wiltshire
Worcestershire
Yorkshire, East Riding
Yorkshire, North Riding
Yorkshire, West Riding
EnglandBeer/Cider
8
53.3%
52.0%
13
66.7%
16
19
55.9%
3
23.1%
66.7%
16
1
2.9%
40.0%
2
17
94.4%
66.7%
4
0.0%
0
24
55.8%
78.9%
15
14
30.4%
80.0%
12
13
81.3%
4
40.0%
26.8%
11
3
20.0%
80.0%
12
3
17.6%
33.3%
1
2
33.3%
5
16.1%
11
73.3%
2
11.1%
8
33.3%
10
58.8%
33.3%
1
62.5%
10
17
89.5%
8
88.9%
7
18.9%
6
30.0%
33.9%
21
24
85.7%
1
5.9%
12
52.2%
12
75.0%
2
50.0%
7.7%
1
13
36.1%
384
43.5%

Source: BPP, 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.

35

Food
3
0
0
0
0
8
7
2
1
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
2
2
0
0
0
0
0
2
1
0
0
2
4
0
0
0
1
4
4
0
1
1
0
4
51

N
20.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
33.3%
20.0%
40.0%
5.6%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
13.3%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
13.3%
13.3%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
11.1%
4.2%
0.0%
0.0%
12.5%
21.1%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
1.6%
14.3%
23.5%
0.0%
6.3%
25.0%
0.0%
11.1%
5.8%

15
25
24
34
13
24
35
5
18
6
30
43
19
46
15
16
10
41
15
15
17
3
6
31
15
18
24
17
3
16
19
9
37
20
62
28
17
23
16
4
13
36
883

Table 4 Male wage rates and annual income

England
North East
North WestSouth East
South West

Weekly male wages
Male annual income
Male annual income(b)/(c)based on Question 8 based on Question 10 based on weekly wage(a)(b)(c)=(a)*52(d)(shilling)N(pound)N(pound)
N
(%)
490
11.39
28.3
622
29.6
490 95.5%
31.7
32 93.8%
12.19
32
29.7
52
11.70
72
28.2
114
30.4
72 92.7%
236
29.3
290
30.5
236 95.9%
11.74
26.0
150 102.3%
166
10.01
150
26.6

Annual income(best guesses)(e)(pound)
28.9
30.7
29.3
29.9
26.3

Source: BPP, 1834, vol. xxx.

Table 5 Female weekly wages and annual income
Weekly female wages Female annual income
based on Question 12(weekly wage * 52)(shilling)N

England

3.5

North East

4.5

North West

Male annual income(best guesses)

Female annual income
as % of male earnings(pound)(pound)

745

9.2

28.9

32%

71

11.8

30.7

39%

3.6

130

9.4

29.3

32%

South East

3.3

329

8.6

29.9

29%

South West

3.5

215

9.0

26.3

34%

Source: BPP, 1834, vol. xxx.

Table 6 Job opportunities for women

England
North East
North WestSouth East
South WestN
851 100%
68 100%152 100%
386 100%
245 100%

Agricultural
542 64%58 85%
82 54%
250 65%
152 62%

Manufacture219 26%5 7%57 38%
66 17%
91 37%

Source: BPP, 1834, vol. xxx.

36

either or both
680 80%60 88%
124 82%290 75%206 84%none
171 20%8 12%
28 18%
96 25%
39 16%

Table 7 Annual family income (in pound)Maleannual income(best guesses)

FemaleAdjusted female
Adjusted annual
annual income
annual income
family income(weekly wage*52) (*job availability)

England28.9 (100)

9.2 (100)

7.3 (100)36.2 (100)North East

30.7 (106)11.8 (129)10.4 (142)41.2 (114)North West29.3 (101)

9.4 (102)

7.6 (104)36.9 (102)South East

29.9 (104)

8.6 ( 94)

6.5 ( 89)

36.4 (101)South West26.3 ( 91)

9.0 ( 98)

7.6 (103)33.9 ( 94)

Source: Tables 5 and 6.
Note: Indices are normalized to England (=100) and shown in parentheses.

37

Figure 1 Geographical distribution of observations; the 1834 Poor Law Reports

20

38

47
20

17

5
57
19

16

19

28

7
14

18

38

13
16

19
28

28

18

35

29
25
15

30

Source: BPP 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.

38

57

29
58

50

3

30

24

51

42

18

9

41

4

18

22

83

Figure 2 Wage level and agricultural practice in England and Wales proposed by Caird

Source: Caird (1852), frontispiece.
Note: The horizontal line shows the division between the high-wage north and low-wage south. The vertical line
divides the arable east and pastoral west.

39

Figure 3 Per capita Poor Law expenditure, 1833

6.3

6.8

5.5
9.7

11.9
5.6

8.8

4.4

6.3

s. / person

11.0

6.5

6.7
6.5

7.5

16.8

9.6

8.7

16.9
18.6
15.8

16.8
8.8
9.0

15.3

13.2

11.4

6.7

Source: BPP 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.

40

17.2

10.1
10.9

13.8

18.3

13.7

16.9

11.3
5.4

15.3

11.6 9.1

8.2

19.3

14.4

15
10
5

Figure 4 Survival of food provision, 1832

Source: BPP 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.

41

Figure 5 Percentage of parishes where drink allowance was available, 1832

11.1

0

2.9
5.9

7.7

50
36.1
20

23.1

17.6

33.3

40
88.9

80

62.5

73.3

85.7

16.1

33.3
40
53.3

80

33.3

78.9

58.8
66.7
52

52.2

81.3

30.4
66.7

66.7

Source: BPP 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.

42

55.8

33.3
26.8

30

89.5

94.4

18.9

55.9

75

33.9

(%)
80
60
40
20

Figure 6 Agricultural labourers’ wages in England (1833-45), estimated by Hunt (s. / week)

11.8

11.5

11.3
11.5

11.7

12
11.8
12.4

11.4

12.7

12.4

12
11.6

10.6

9.1

9.6

10.4

10.6

12.2
9.9

10.7

9.8
9.3

9.3

9.8
9.7
8.6

10.3

9.8
7.8

8.8

Source: Hunt (1986), Table 6, p. 965.
Note: Scotland and Wales are excluded. Wages are in s. per week.

43

10.3

12.3
11.3

8.6

8.8

10.1

10

9.5
8.4

11.3

12.5

12
11
10
9
8

Figure 7 Agricultural labourers’ wages in England (1832) based on the Poor Law Report (s./week)

11.5
(18)

12.2
(30)

10.3
(35)
11.4
(17)

10.8
(13)

11.9
(14)

9.9
(13)
13.9
(9)

11.1
(6)

10.5
(16)
9.8
(19)

9.7
(22)

8.7
(19)
9.4
(18)

13.3
(13)

12.7
(24)

12.0
(5)

9.5
(15)

9.1
(15)

13.8
(4)

11.8
(34)

11.0
(15)

10.8
(15)

11.5
(28)

10.8
(31)

12.3
(3)
13.4
(11)
10.5
(15)

10.2
(17)
10.7
(26)

10.9
(25)

12.1
(15)

8.9
(5)

9.3
(24)

Source: BPP, 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.
Note: The sample size is shown in parentheses.

44

11.3
(43)

13.4
(2)
12.9
(20)

11.2
(46)

10.3
(38)

11.1
(34)

12.6
(60)

13.7
(41)

12
11
10
9
8

Figure 8 Regional differences in wages and unemployment rates

12.19
1.0%
11.70
1.9%

10.01
3.4%

11.74
5.1%

Source: BPP 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.
Note: Wages are shown in s. per week. Unemployment rates are also presented in percentage.

45

12.0
11.5
11.0
10.5

Figure 9 Agricultural practice (arable and pastoral farming)

arable parishes
pastoral parishes
Source: BPP 1834, vols. xxx-xxxiv.

46

Figure 10 Social increase of county population, 1821-1831 (per 1000) 53

2.60

7.74

-4.63
-7.43

-8.68

-1.54
8.47
14.16

12.81

5.21

-1.06

-2.66

4.39
-1.68

1.52 -6.46

-3.03

-0.17

7.61

-1.04
1.41

-3.13

22.69

1.14

-2.39
-2.18
-2.90

-3.90
0.76

-0.50

-4.38

4.18

0.47

-1.36

-1.12

14.59
1.13

13.53
-3.08

5
0
-5

0.69

-2.91

-0.50

Source: 1831 Census, Enumeration Abstract and Parish Register Abstract, BPP 1833 vols. xxxvi-xxviii.
53

We do not have direct information on migration, which is useful for nation-wide and regionally detailed

analyses on this period. Because census enumerators’ books provide birthplace data, we can trace migration
history of individuals after 1841 to some extent. However, CEBs for the 1841 Census only provide‘whether born in the same county’ or not. After the 1851 Census, home parishes became identifiable.
Figure 3.2 shows net migration rates based on baptism and burial registers. The Parish Register Abstractof the 1831 Census Reports provide the numbers of baptisms, burials, and marriages in each parish. See
BPP 1833, vol. xxxviii. The rates of social increase are calculated as follows:
1830( Population1831 − Population1821 ) − ∑ ( Baptism i − Burial i )i =1821( Population1831 − Population1821 ) / 2

47

×1,000