Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (48 page)

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Canal Boating in the UK and Europe, at www.canals.com/biwaterway.htm, is another fantastic online source for locating heritage pages and societies for canals across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

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The GENUKI website has some localized indexes to canal and railway workers, such as a surname index for boatpeople of Wolverhampton compiled from baptism and marriage registers. Check the page for the county in which your ancestor worked for similar transcriptions. The Occupations page also has sections dedicated to Canal People, Railwaymen and Postal Workers where you can find useful links for researching these jobs.

Suggestions for further reading:

•  Railway Ancestors: A Guide to the Staff Records of the Railway Companies of England and Wales 1822–1947
by David T. Hawkings (Alan Sutton, 1995)

•  Was Your Grandfather a Railwayman? A Directory of Railway Archive Sources for Family Historians
by Tom Richards (Federation of Family History Societies, 4th edition, 2002)

•  Railway Records: A Guide to Sources
by Cliff Edwards (Public Records Office Publications, 2001)

•  The Canal Boatman, 1760–1914
by Harry Hanson (Sutton, 1984)

•  Transport in the Industrial Revolution
edited by Derek Howard Aldcroft and Michael J. Freeman (Manchester University Press, 1983)

•  Transport and Economy: The Turnpike Roads of Eighteenth Century Britain
by Eric Pawson (Academic Press, 1977)

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The National Archives Research Guides, numbers 69, 75, 82, 83 and 97
.

In addition to the publications mentioned, there are plenty of websites run by enthusiasts to give you a quick idea of the general history of transport in Britain. These are often very helpful because they draw upon a number of secondary and primary sources, though you should always verify any information you intend to use as part of your own research.

The Industrial Revolution and The Railway System at www. mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/ind_rev/index.html presents a wide variety of information on the nineteenth-century railway system. General histories about canals and inland waterways can be found on the Waterways History website at www.jim-shead.com/waterways/ History.htm maintained by Jim Shead. Mike Stevens has put online the Inland Waterways of England and Wales: Their History in Maps from 1750 to 1950, found at www.mike-stevens.co.uk/maps/index.htm. Canal Junction organizes holidays on canal boats but its website also has some great links to heritage sites, at www.canaljunction.com/ canal/heritage.htm. These are great starting places to give you a taste of the world in which your ancestors found themselves.

For centuries, agricultural labourers and small tenant farmers made up the vast bulk of the working classes in society, until the Industrial Revolution changed the face of Britain forever. Many of these individuals lived seasonal itinerant lives, moving from estate to estate in the hope of gaining work at key times of the year, especially during the harvest season. Traditionally, they left fewer traces in official records – yet this chapter outlines ways in which you can unearth information about any relatives who lived off the land.

Family historians, more often than not, write the agricultural labourer off as ‘boring' (with a long sigh) whenever he's found on a census return. Yet you will probably be surprised at just how little you understand of his struggles and the impact he had on the developing modern world. Perhaps your great-great-great-grandfather was thrown off the land his family had farmed for decades by the General Inclosure Act of 1801, or maybe his son was one of the ‘Swing Rioters' executed in the 1830s. The life of an agricultural labourer was dictated by the harvests and if there was a bad one he and his family were condemned not only to unemployment but also to starvation. The Great Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, which lasted five consecutive years, had such devastating effects that they were felt well into the next century.

‘
When we find ‘agricultural labourer' on a census return we assume that's the end of our hunt
.'

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Britain underwent an agricultural revolution largely overlooked now because the huge technological advances of the Industrial Revolution have overshadowed it. The Agrarian Revolution was a product of several factors: the increased use of technology in farming such as the seed-drill, the development of the four-field crop-rotation system, the enclosure of common land into fields, the selective breeding of livestock, and a population boom that provided more labour and spurred an increase in food production. The increased mechanization of farming forced many agricultural labourers to find work in urban centres, fuelling the Industrial Revolution, yet without mechanization the farms would not have been capable of meeting the demands for food from the increasing numbers of people in the towns. The general consensus among historians is that the Agrarian Revolution had a negative effect on the lives of agricultural labourers, rendering large numbers of them unemployed and forcing them to find work in the polluted towns. Nevertheless, it was necessary for economic advancement.

Prior to the Agricultural Revolution the countryside was run on a feudal system whereby landlords and squires owned large areas of countryside, which was worked on an open-field system with villagers cultivating their own strips of land and grazing livestock on areas of common land, such as the village green. The increased use of agricultural machinery made it more profitable for landowners to enclose these open fields, but until 1801 anyone wishing to do so needed to petition Parliament. In 1801 the first General Inclosure Act was passed, making it far easier to enclose open and common land in England and Wales with the consent of all those affected, but a subsequent Act in 1836 required the consent of just two thirds of those affected. Villagers were given minimal compensation for the loss of their livelihood, and with machinery doing their jobs far more productively many were forced to move to nearby industrializing towns to find work in the factories. Bear this in mind if you find that an urban set of ancestors had their roots in a more rural setting earlier in the nineteenth century.

In 1830 the effects of the Agricultural Revolution culminated in the ‘Swing Riots'. Agricultural labourers mainly from the south of England responded to unemployment and underemployment, low wages, low levels of relief and a generally low standard of living by rebelling against landowners. Harvests had been poor in the late 1820s, which meant a cut in wages and an increase in food prices. The purchase of new threshing machines by farmers also threatened the promise of hand-threshing work during the winter months, relied on by so many labourers. The riots began in the autumn of 1830, with protestors sending threatening letters to landlords signed with the pen name ‘Captain Swing'. Farmers' threshing machines were sabotaged and protestors petitioned employers for a wage increase. The labourers' pleas were met with little sympathy from the ruling classes. During the period from 1830 to 1832, around 600 rioters were imprisoned, 500 were transported and 19 people were executed, many of them being young men and boys. The Swing Rising is considered one of the most important for agricultural labourers since the thirteenth century, though like so many similar causes it inevitably lost the battle.

The agricultural community was subject to several bouts of depression aside from the hardships brought about by the Agricultural Revolution. When the price of food was raised it had disastrous consequences for agricultural workers, for example during the period around the Napoleonic Wars, when bad harvests caused labourers in many parts of England to revolt, with bands of women forcing market sellers to sell their goods at what they considered to be reasonable prices. Agricultural labourers were regularly dependent on parish relief, as work was not guaranteed. Their dependence on relief increased after the old village field systems were enclosed because they had less means to support themselves on the land and were more dependent on their wages, which were too low to survive on. We will look at the way government and local authorities dealt with the parish poor in
Chapter 24
.

Famine was the greatest threat to agricultural labourers from all parts of the British Isles. In the nineteenth century, as systems of agricultural production altered, the poorest classes relied heavily for their own subsistence on potato crops, which were easy to grow in large quantities on small plots and provided substantial meals. When phytophthora, a plant disease, infected potato crops in Western Europe in the mid-1840s it spread quickly to England, Ireland and Scotland where it had its most devastating effects among communities with the least support from the government and wealthy classes. Crofters in the Scottish Highlands had become dependent on potatoes since the Highland Clearances when the area of land they were allowed to cultivate was minimized, but they did not suffer complete starvation as famine relief programmes were organized and oatmeal rations provided. Agricultural communities in Ireland were not so fortunate, with approximately 2.5 million being left to starve, die from hunger-related disease, or emigrate to avoid starvation without any form of practical support from the British government, which was well aware of their plight. In fact landlords continued to export Irish grain and livestock for their own profit, while the export ban put in place during previous potato crop failures was not imposed.

Ireland's experiences of agricultural ‘improvement' had been similar to Scotland's as landlords kept the best pasture for rearing cattle so that beef could be exported to England. Labourers were left with the less fertile scraps of land that remained to produce their own food, causing them to rely heavily on potato crops. Two thirds of the Irish population depended on agricultural work and the majority of those workers received a very low wage from their landlords and would work the land in exchange for a small plot where they could grow barely enough to feed their own family. During the famine of the 1840s over half a million people were evicted from their homes because they could not pay the rent, and those who did not meet a grim end aboard the ‘famine ships' were left to rot in the workhouse. Barbara Windsor was deeply moved when she visited a mass grave of famine victims after finding out that her great-grandmother had fled from Cork to the East End of London between 1846 and 1851 to escape the same fate.

Scotland experienced an agricultural revolution around the same time as England but the consequences for ordinary labourers were far more severe compared to their southern counterparts. Raising rents to completely unpayable levels was just one method employed by landlords during the ‘Highland Clearances' as they became known. Other
landowners resorted to burning tenants out of their homes and several thousand Scottish labourers were forced to emigrate to Canada and North America, which has affected the resonance of Scottish culture ever since. The Scottish Highlands remain more or less deserted to this day, with the relics of stone cottages haunting the landscape.

The number of people employed in agricultural industries fell from the mid-nineteenth century as labourers migrated to the towns where more consistent employment could be found, machinery increasingly replaced labourers in the fields and more produce was imported from abroad. Corn Laws had kept the price of various types of grain artificially high to protect the interests of British producers since the Napoleonic Wars. This protectionist policy came to an end in 1846 when the Corn Laws were repealed, which made it easier to import foreign grain. The Central Agricultural Protection Society had been established in 1844 to campaign in favour of the Corn Laws, which were opposed by the manufacturing classes who wanted duty on wheat to be abolished so they could buy cheaper food in the towns. Despite the controversy surrounding the repeal of the Corn Laws and the
staunch opposition it received, the demands of industry were ranked higher than those of agriculture by the mid-nineteenth century. The number of agricultural labourers and farmers working in corn fields fell rapidly after 1846 as the cost of buying British grain exceeded that of importing it from abroad. By the end of the nineteenth century around 60 per cent of wheat was imported into Britain from America, leading to a severe agricultural depression that lasted from the late 1870s to the end of the century. The vivacity of British farming was not restored until the Second World War forced the nation to become self-sufficient as food imports were drastically reduced and rationing was enforced.

Why not visit the village your ancestor came from to see what signs are left that it was once a peaceful haven worked by ordinary folk? The village green and village pond or local common would have been of vital importance to your labouring ancestors' survival. It can be fascinating to go there prepared with a collection of old maps so you can see how hedges and fences now segregate the open fields once worked by your ancestors and their neighbours. There are a multitude of institutions you can visit to see the type of clothing your agricultural ancestors would have worn and the type of equipment they would have needed to do their job. Photographs of rural scenes and lyrics to the folk songs they would have known well will add to your picture of your ancestors' way of life
.

When most of us find ‘agricultural labourer' in the occupations description on our ancestor's census returns, generally we assume that's the end of our hunt for information for that person, but here we will explore the avenues you can follow to discover more about a humble way of life no longer visible in modern Britain.

The experiences of agricultural labourers would have varied according to where they lived and the period in which they lived. The term ‘agricultural labourer' covers a wide range of jobs, so it is necessary first of all to discover exactly what type of farming was prevalent in the area they were from before you can start to establish the type of work they would have been involved in. Then you can get digging to discover how and when nationwide changes such as the Agricultural Revolution, Inclosure Acts and shortages and famine affected their region.

Some rural history museums have their own libraries and archives where you can start your research into the agricultural history of the place where your ancestral roots grew. To find a rural museum local to your ancestor's village try the Rural Museums Network at www.ruralmuseumsnetwork.org.uk, which has information on national and regional rural museums across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL), founded by the University of Reading, is home to designated collections of national importance that record the changing face of rural life. Here you will find such treasures
as a beautifully embroidered smock sewn by a ferreter's wife for her husband who worked on Lord Hambledon's estate in Leigh, Kent, in the early nineteenth century. It is a major research centre and its archived collections of books, objects, documents, photographs, film and sound recordings can be searched by keyword, such as a place name, via the online database at www.reading.ac.uk/merl/the_collections/index.html. The archive also holds the records of the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution, established in 1860 to provide financial aid to farming families in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who were forced out of work by misfortune, old age or ill health.

The museum's library has an extensive collection of books, pamphlets, journals, essays and articles where you can read about all aspects of agriculture and learn about specific rural communities. The Rural History website is a fantastic resource with an Internet Farm and Countryside Explorer (INTERFACE) where you can read about the characteristics of a farm labourer and view digital images and photographs relating to the history of agricultural labourers. There is a specially compiled
Bibliography of British and Irish Rural History
and the online database will search this bibliography as well as the library, archives, photographs and objects held at the museum, providing detailed descriptions and images of some of the objects. An appointment can be made to visit the Reading Room at the University of Reading on Redlands Road by telephoning 0118 378 8660.

St Fagan's National History Museum in Cardiff (formerly the Museum of Welsh Life) is home to the Social and Cultural History Department and the National Agricultural Collection of tools, machinery and equipment. St Fagan's is an open-air museum where native breeds of livestock can be seen in the fields and farmyards and traditional Welsh buildings are used to explore the way Welsh people have lived off the land for the past 500 years. In addition to the museum's exhibitions and displays, the Social and Cultural History Department houses a manuscript archive, photographic archive, sound archive, film archive and library where you will find farmers' diaries and oral recordings taken in the 1950s from Welsh people who were born as early as 1858.