Agricultural Labourers In The 19th Century

Changes within the East Anglian Agricultural Labourers’ community 1815-1850.

The early nineteenth century saw many changes in Suffolk within the agricultural community. These changes along with many others were detrimental to the agricultural labourer, and therefore could have been the fuse which encouraged discontent. The enclosure of the common land was one of the major contenders for the causes of the agricultural labourers’ protests. To be able to look at the way in which enclosure affected the agricultural community in Suffolk during the nineteenth century we first need to examine what was happening within the agricultural community before the emergence of enclosure. Most agricultural land in Suffolk had been enclosed by the early eighteenth

The soil type of Suffolk was a pivotal factor for the farmer when selecting which crops to grow. Arthur Young in his book General view of the agriculture of the county of Suffolk [1813] states that: ‘There is not, perhaps a county in the kingdom which contains a greater diversity of soil, or more clearly discriminated. A strong loam, on a clay-marl bottom, predominates through the greatest part of the county.’ It was these farms that had been created by the large landowners through enclosure that provided the agricultural labourers with employment. It can be suggested then that there would have been many agricultural labourers and their families living in the villages surrounding the farms. This evidence suggests that with so many agricultural labourers living in close proximity there is the potential for the labourers to join together and rise up against the farmers and large landowners in

The Large landowners with the emergence of the enclosure movement started to extend the parks attached to their stately homes. This led to the strict preservation of game such as pheasant, partridge, rabbit and hare. It was in effect illegal for anyone to take an animal or bird for their ‘pot’ unless permission from the landowner had been granted. This permission was never given. The farmers and labourers however, did not believe poaching to be a crime: ‘Game, in their opinion, was made for the poor as well as for the rich, a view justified in the Bible. God put man ‘in command of the fishes in the sea, and all that flies through the air.’ Therefore the farmers and labourers saw nothing wrong in taking something that God had created. The Game Laws were reformed in 1831 to allow a larger selection of people the privilege of shooting. However, in reality the farmers and labourers did not benefit from this purely cosmetic exercise in reform. It can be suggested that many farmers and labourers would be only too ready to take a hare or a pheasant if it prevented their family from starving, even though the Night Poaching Act 1816 made it an offence punishable by transportation. This indicates how desperate the agricultural labourers became when faced with the starvation of themselves and their family. It is therefore no wonder their