The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-12-12 00:00:00

hired

'andlord, and if it is not his pleasure to provide corn-
fortalde dwellings, the labouring mom has no choke bat
to creep into the first miserable hot which lieoomes
vacant, or to eliare in a coufined cottage with his owe or
wife's parent:, the scanty ewe which had not been
sufficient for the purposes of health, decency, and
cleanliness. I endoree these sentiu:euts. Well, gentle-
men, you all want your carter near your homestead, his
place is with his horses the list thing at night, and the
first thing in the m3rning. It is equally important
that your shepherd should live near his flock, he cannot
leave them during the lambing season, and yet it is
frequently the IMO that you have not a cottage on your
farm for hint. And why should your other labourers
have to trudge a mile or two morning ard evening, to
and from their work. I might enumerate scores of
reasons why the people of the farm should reside where
they are employed, but first and foremost their work is
there, your property is there, and they should be there
to protect it, but now he has to go to his village to
rent what ho can get ' • he passes, on his way to
his poor, ill-ventilated, comfortless home, the
cheerful-looking village ale-house. We will suppose it
winter; he kuows there is little fire at home, but the
glowing fire of the pot-house shows through the
window; he has a solitary coin, enters, takes his
place ei'h worthless beings always t 3 be found
there ; spends what his family badly want; and,
what is more, I have known men rob their master's
granaries to pay their beer scores at these pests to the
village--the low pot shops. Had you but comfortahle
cottages on your farms, there would be far lease misery
caused by drunkenness. But again, were your work•
people resident on your own farms you might conduce
materially to their comforts, and alleviate their suffer-
ings in sickness and affliction. The farmer's wife should
never be above entering the sick chamber of her depen-
dents; itia her ahristian duty to visit her own poor in
their misfortunes, and by doing so her sympathies are of
more service to the sufferer than scores of anxious in-
quiries or meeeages by a domestic servant. And now I
mast speak of some of the abodes of the poor: lam
proud to Fay that there are in Dorsetshire some of the
beet cottages for the agricultural labourers that can be
found in England. Mr. Stott first commenced the good
work of cottage improvement at Tineleton is 1843, and
his example WM quickly followed by the Marquis of
Westiuinster on his large estates, the Duke of Bedford
at Swyre, Lord Portman et Pimperne and Durweston,
the Earl of Ilchester at Evershot and Abbotsbury, Lord
Dighy at Minterne, Lord Shaftesbury, Mrs. Mitchell,
Sir It. P. Glyn, and many others. I know of no cot-
tages in any county more comfortable, or better adapted
for health and oleenliness, than those I have named, but
I can reverse the picture. I know wretched huts in
sountry villages where the poor and herded together in •
manner altogetherdisgusting (ca mural mind, and almost
too bad to name with any feeling of decency or respect.
I visited a house—did I say a house? Nay a hovel—an
abiding-place; a little low room about ten feet by nine,
with a s mall pantry adjoining, over these were two rooms,
parted by a thin board partition, a place being left for a
door, but the door apparently never was there; and yet
in this place resided the father, mother, and eight small
children. What a happy, healthy home I And this in
Dorset; but is Dorset worse than other counties in this
respect? No. I have with me now a book written by
Mr. E. W. Moore, and speaking of a village in Oxford-
shire, near our greatest seat of closeted lore and
modern refinement, he say thore are in it 60 cottages,
and 29 of these have only one room up and one down,
In oattage A a man and three children, two men lodgers,
and one woman all sleep is one room. In cottage B man
and wife, grown up son, and a daughter with four illegi-
timate children all sleep in the game room. In cottage
o a man, his wife, and eight children, all slept in one
room, in which one child was also lying dead. But let
us look a little further—into Norfolk, that county of
high wages, high farming, and the abode of royalty. In
one place a man, his wife, and seven children occupy a
mall place not large enough to be called a room—
thildren's Well, 20, 16, 13, 11, 8,6, 5; the only Yentas.
sion being afforded by one square of glass eleven inches by
nine inches—a dilapidated old cottage unfit for human
habitation—a disgraceful place used as a privy, without
any doors, windows stuffed with rags. Again, in
Shropshire (I quote from the Royal Agricultural
Sooiety's Journal), "The cottages for farm labourers
are very few, and habits of cleanliness cannot be en-
couraged in them, nor can even the rules of decency be
observed in the majority of these cottages." Here, too,
similar scenes are recorded as I have before named. I
might, from statistics, record similar scenes to other
counties, but I have said enough to show that not only
in Dorset, but throughout England, the lack of good
cottages for the poor is a great and sad evil. And this
leads um to • subject quite painful to me,

THE UNION CHARGRABILITY ACT.
I know that some landlords have in small parishes
destroyed cottage:, and compelled farmers to hire their
labourers from other places; the result has been that
the worn out labourers became chargeable, not to the
parish where they laboured, but to that which found
them an abiding plaoe. In other plac,s, too, the rich
occupied one locality and would not suffer cottages to be
built there, and so had trifling poor's rates, whilst a
neighbouring parish had enormous rates, and not one
affluent person resident in it; this was particularly the
case in Belgrave and other London districts. Now,
what has been the result of this? A most iniquitous
act hae been passed called the Union Chargeability Act.
It has deprived parishes of their right of self-govern-
ment, and forced on us a scheme of oentralitation to
which I thought Britons never would have had to
submit. Well, it must be a consolation to those who
I would not have their own poor to dwell amongst them,
I that now they will have to support the poor of a whole
district, and without being justly rated either.
farmer with 400 acres employee, perhaps, 30 persons,
and is rated to the poor in £6oo—he haa little expensive
maohinery on his farm, perhaps his whole stock amounts
to .E 2,000. Now a mill-owner employs his 200 or 309
hands, and may berated at £3OO, he Groupies, it is true,
but a small area of land, but he has, it may be, several
thousand pounds' worth of machinery, several thousand
pounds' worth of raw and manufactured material, yet
though he employs ten times the number of people, and
will get ten times the number of paupers for relief, has
ten or even twenty times the amount of capital in his
business, yet he is rated lower than the farmer. This
must be allowed. But this system of centralization
would never have been adopted had all farmers and land-
owners acted honourably with the cottage syetem. But,
tell me, gentlemen, is it not really true, that whilst you
look moat anxiously to have good homesteads, good
stables for your horses, good dry sheds for your waggons
and implements, some have been too careless &bora the
homes of the labourers. Are you not too apt to con-
tent yourselves with the thought, "We hire these 1
labourers and pay them their wag's, and they must get
houses where they can, our landlord has not provided
for them, and we can't help it." But you have looked
out for your cattle, they are comfortably housed and
cared for, but it is nothing to you if the poor man is
driven from his doors by a smokey house, or gets fever
or rheumatism from draughts and wretohed ventilation.
I know you farmers would improve the condition of
your dependants' cottages if you could, but you
want so many improvements on your farm, you
can't ask for cottages yet ; but 0 I for the sake of
humanity, you who have not good cottages agitate,
agitate, till you get them. But what is said of farmers
and landlords equally applies to others. I know there
aro in many towns wretched, ill-ventilated, over-crowded
houses. Manufacturers incream their f actories, increase
their number of work people, but other people must
find dwellings for them, and if only miserable things
can be got the poor people must have therm for they
can't be out of doors, I have dwelt really longer on
thiAthan I intended, I will only say that if farmers will
consent to pay 5 per cent, on the outlay, their landlords
ought to build them model cottages for their workfolks.
The cost would be about £l6 a-year for three cottages,
with two good rooms down stairs—one for living, the
other a scullery—three rooms upstairs, with offices, &0.,
in the bargain, and I fancy *hat every farmer who has
not cottageikwould gladly avail himself of the chance.