Clay Workers 

The following article appeared in THE FARMER MAGAZINE in 1850.

It tells of the wages and living conditions of Clay workers and labourers in Purbeck 

The nature of the arrangement between them is such, that beyond seeing that the work is not wholly neglected, the employers exercise little or no control over the men employed. They lay down some general rules which must be observed by all, such as no liquor shall be taken to the works, for the infraction of which they invariably discharge the transgressor. But the men may choose their own hours of working, provided they supply their employers with sufficient produce to meet the demand upon them. I have known work in the mines suspended at two o’clock . The wages are all paid weekly, the accounts being kept with different parties at work. According to the quantity of work done, the sum earned is handed over to the head of the party, who divides it with his comrades in proportion to the amount of work done by each, As each works for all, and all for each, they keep a sharp look-out upon each other when actually at work. The proportion which each is to receive is, therefore, entirely regulated by the time for which he has been at work during the week. If he has been absent for a day, half a day, or two days, a deduction pro tanto is made from his share of the common earnings. I was very courteously permitted by Messers. Pike to inspect their books, and found that, whilst the miners generally earned from a pound to a guinea a week, the pitmen averaged sometimes from 3s. to 3s. 6d., and at others from 2s. 6d. to 3s. per day. The average earnings of the latter were from 2s. 6d. to 2s. 9d. a day. It is obvious how so large a demand for a particular species of labour at so high a price must affect the general rate of wages in the district.
To the stone-works at Swanage I shall have occasion hereafter to refer. These, together with Lord Eldon’s improvements, have also a favourable effect upon wages in the neighbourhood of Wareham . The latter have not benefited the district as much as they mighy have done, inasmuch as they are being partly affected by imported labour. They have nevertheless, afforded considerable employment to the resident population in the neighbourhood of Encombe, the only drawback to which is, that it has been to some extent casual instead of continuous. The works are in the hands of contractors, who of course, look less to the employment of the labour of the district than to procuring the labour most adapted to their purposes.
        The bargemen employed in carrying the clay from Wareham to Poole get 1s a ton for a ton for the quantity carried. They have not steady employment, but their wages, when they earn them, are good, and exhibit a comparatively high average throughout the year.
        It is by the demand for labour to which these different occupations give rise, that the value of agricultural labour is favourably affected in the neighbourhood of Wareham . But even here the wages of the farm-labourer are, after all, as already said, only comparatively high. Except to carters, who receive 9s., the maximum paid is only 8s. a week. With this, some of them, but not all, have a free house. In most cases they have their fuel in addition. This consists of turf, which they themselves cut, but which is carted to their houses by the farmers, who claim the ashes as sufficient compensation for their trouble, which is very little, seeing that the heath where the turf is cut is generally hard by the labourer’s hut. I regret to say that this is the most favourable report which I have to make as regards the wages and condition of the day-labourer on the farm in Dorset . Standing on this, then, as the highest point in the scene, the reader will have to contemplate a dreary level of misery and privation around him.
         In inquiring into the condition of the labourer is the neighbourhood of Wareham , I first directed my attention to the district lying immediately south of the town, known as the Isle of Purbeck. This district varies much in its surface and general cha­racter, some of it being high and fertile, and other portions low, heathy, and irreclaimable. Close to the town, and between it and the arm of the sea into which the Frome discharges itself, a portion of the low-lying lands has been reclaimed from the waste, end now extends in one dreary and monotonous level of damp meadow land. The greater portion of its surface is but little elevated above high water mark; and during the night it is generally overspread with noxious malaria, which commences to rise from it with the setting of almost every sun. Yet in this ungenial spot are several cottages, containing in all nearly 100 human beings. I examined several of them, and will describe a few, taking their inmates as I found them, bargemen, claypit men, and farm labourers together.
      The first that I visited was a cottage, occupied by a family of the name of Galton. The family consists of six persons-the father and mother, a son, and two daughters, and a grandchild, the illegitimate offspring of one of the daughters. When I entered, the only persons at home were the mother and the younger daughter. The mother in­formed me that her husband had steady work from Farmer Boyt, at 8s. a week, with a cottage free, and turf carried in.   On the whole, the wages might be taken as amounting to about 9s. 6d. a week. They kept a pig which they intended to kill at Christmas, and to which they looked as the only animal food which they were likely to have for the season.
            An open ditch, which served as a sluggish drain for the meadow, after touching one of the back corners of the house, which was a thatched mud hut, turned at a right angle, and extended along the back of it, right under the wall. The character of this ditch was indicated by the vegetation which thickly incrusted its stagnant contents. A little in front was another ditch, filthy in the extreme, though not quite so bad as the other. In front of the house was an ash-heap, where it would remain until the farmer chose to carry it away. The pigstye was behind, leaning against the wall of the fuel-house, which formed part of the building. So low was the hovel situated, that whenever it rained heavily it was completely inundated. Some time ago, after a heavy thunder-storm, the intrusive waters took possession of the whole floor, invaded the cupboard of the dresser, and rose, in an inner room, "half way up the legs of the bed." It was a long time afterwards ere the house got dry--indeed, it was not thoroughly so ere it was again flooded.  It was about three years since the family had entered the house, They had all had ague shortly after doing so. The youngest daughter, the one then at home, had never got rid of it. Her sunken check, languid motions, and jaundiced complexion, all but too well attested the presence of the disease. The smells, I was further told, were sometimes very bad, but they were neither so numerous nor so offensive as those to which they had been accustomed at Newton, some miles off, where they formerly lived. There they had occupied a house from which the ague was never absent. Such was the domicile which they got rent free, instead of an extra shilling in the shape of money wages. But had they had two extra shillings, the poor creatures knew not where to get a better house, for there was none vacant in the district.

There is more to come when I have time to type it out.