The Cottiers lot, and their homes

jonniebgood1

I am hoping it might be interesting to look at the life of the cottiers in Irish history. The main purpose is to see what their life entailed on a day to day basis and an area of particular interest to me, their homes and conditions of same. I would think this could also look at how the traditional irish home developed from 1700-1900 approximately leading up to the CDB houses and standards that we are more familiar with today. A massive amount of people lived in basic types of housing in this period, many of which would have been cottiers.

A census taken in 1841, showed that 40% of the population of Ireland were living in one roomed mud-walled cabins. Many of those 3,500,000 people may not have shared our romantic ideas of comfortable warm Irish cottages. For many, the conditions must have been cold, damp and insecure. That insecurity came from the inability to own their own homes and the threat of eviction that hung over many a thatched Irish cottage. Sometimes that threat came from a landlord but very often the threat came from the larger farmers on whose property the cottage dwellers or cottiers lived. Rent was usually paid by labour on the farm and when times were bad and there was no work in the fields, they had to rely on the benevolence of the famers. Along with the Irish cottages went an acre of ground and it was possible to keep a cow on the acre and grow enough potatoes to feed the family for an entire year.
http://www.ballybegvillage.com/irish_cottages.html

The traditional irish cottage image is one suited to the irish climate in many ways in the same way as all native homes are perfectly designed for their climates. Descriptions of the cottiers mud houses however seem to be harsh to say the least. This is a description from 1833

Some how or other, the squalidness of our Irish dwelling-places is peculiarly distressing and unseemly, for there is no people on earth that require more comfortable homes—the singular wetness of our climate, its constant rains and fogs, require that our shelter should be good; and if the poor labourer who has been working all the day long under an incessant fall of rain, is obliged to come home with his clothing soaked through, to find a wet floor on which to sit—wet turf with which to back his fire—wet coming down through the roof on the damp bed on which he is to sleep—why, here is the very perfection of discomfort; and you are induced to philosophize and admire the astonishing power of adaptation in the human frame, that can fit it for the vicissitudes of all climates, and the variations of countless hardships.

The cottiers usually had a bond with a farmer or landlord- what were the terms of this bond?
And what were conditions like in the mud houses?
What was the daytime life of a cottier?

who the fug

As late as 1910 there was an old woman living in one of these mud huts near us.

Very small building and right by the river so she must have been flooded about 4 or 5 times a year

In the ditch outside of the house is hollow which is where she kept the pig by all accounts.

Only mud house in the area to my knowledge

JR79

I am very interested in this.
My ancestors included in the Census of Elphin 1749 were listed as cottiers

jonniebgood1

JR79 wrote: »

I am very interested in this.
My ancestors included in the Census of Elphin 1749 were listed as cottiers

The thread comes out of some of the posts on different thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=72865976#post72865976 where CDfm posted on conditions in rural homes. I would like to look at these homes and the people in them in more detail here rather than hijacking that thread given it is a different subject. If we look to NI there are examples of restored cottiers houses. The houses seemed to be fairly similar in layout to one another.

Cottiers were landless peasants who survived precariously close to the bottom of the social scale. They only became numerically important in the middle of the 18th century due to population growth and increased pressure for land. Cottiers rented a house, usually a one-roomed cabin built of sods, with an attached garden plot and they earned their livelihood from any work that was available. The garden provided land to grow a crop of potatoes which formed a major part of their diet, and possibly somewhere to keep a pig which could be sold to raise the necessary cash to pay the rent.

The house was occupied by the Clyde family. Miss Margaret Clyde, a spinster dressmaker (the third generation of the family) was the last member of the family to live in the house. She moved out in the early 1950s when old age compelled her to move to sheltered accommodation.

The building is structurally interesting, its most notable feature being the roof. This is supported by cruck trusses rather than by the front and rear walls, which may be a throw-back to an earlier building tradition. The house was originally thatched with marram grass, or 'bent', the coarse grass which grows on the sand dunes of the Magilligan peninsula. http://www.nmni.com/uftm/Collections/buildings/Rural-Buildings/Duncrun-Cottiers-House

And another one in Co. Down. This one is stone built which would seem to be unusual as most were built out of mud and wattle, a material that I hope to look at more.

In the 1841 Census of Ireland, County Down had the highest standard of housing of all the counties of Ireland, yet about a quarter of all its houses were small one-roomed dwellings, often referred to as cabins. While this later example is of stone, cabins were more usually built of sods. Local unproved tradition maintains that this house was built in the 1880s as accommodation for a widow related to the family living across the road (the townland boundary) from the Cruckaclady farmhouse.

Houses of this type had no land apart from a small garden plot on which the family could grow potatoes, a major part of their diet.

In 1807, the poet Andrew McKenzie of Ballywalter, County Down, writing under his pen-name of Philip McClabber, described his life in such a house as this:
"My mansion is a clay-built cot,
My whole domain a garden plot.
….
So little straw defends the roof
Against the rain it is not proof."

McKenzie, his wife and "six naked children" lived on a diet largely comprised of potatoes and water, and for this each 1st May he paid a rent of thirty shillings (£1.50), which in 1807 would have been a small fortune. With living conditions such as these, and frequently worse, it is little wonder that the repeated failure of the potato crop in the 1840s had such a devastating effect on the Irish countryside.
http://www.nmni.com/uftm/Collections/buildings/Rural-Buildings/Meenagarragh-Cottiers-House

jonniebgood1

There are some great insights into the cottiers lot in a parliamentary paper on labourers and cottiers in the Omagh area. The cottiers are described by an interviewee as follows:

H. JACKSON explained the meaning he attached to the word "cottier" thus : " Any man who has a house and garden is a cottier; cottiers have no land but a bit of a garden." In reply to the inquiry whether they ever kept cows or goats ? CONNOLLY replied, " A cottier cannot afford to keep a cow or a goat. Cottiers are always scrambling into debt, and out of debt. Cottiers always pay their rent in work ; the usual thing is to give a day in every week. The same witness, being asked , whether a farmer would not forgive a cottier these days, in case of sickness for some weeks, replied, " By no means, he should make them up."

Many aspects of the cottiers life, which seems quite bleak with little opportunity of improving his circumstances are well described further into this paper

" A cottier," here, is understood to be a labourer who gives the first four days' labour out of every week throughout the year to a farmer, for which he receives from the farmer the following payment. He gets a cabin, and from 15 to 20 square perches of manured land for his potatoes ; he also gets as much land as will be sufficient for sowing two pecks of flax, and likewise permission to cut as much turf as two men can cut with spades in a day, which turf is brought home for him by the farmer. In some cases' he gets a little ground, perhaps half a rood, for oats. All these, the cottier's privileges, are valued at £4 4s., which sum will be accepted by the farmer, if the cottier prefer paying in money, — a thing very seldom done. The cottier is dieted by the farmer on the days he works with him; in this way his wages amount to 4Jd. a-day and his diet, for four days in the week : the remaining two days are considered necessary for the cultivation of his own little crop. This, then, is the condition of the Tyrone cottier. He labours two-thirds of his life to pay £4 4 viz the rent of a cabin, a little turf, and a spot of ground in no case exceeding two-thirds of an acre, and the remaining portion of his time is devoted to the cultivation of this spot, out of which he is to clothe himself and his family, to feed that family all the year round, and himself three days out of every seven. This difficult task he is enabled to perform chiefly by the industry of his family in the dressing and sale of his flax, and by rearing a pig. Out of this lowly condition it is evident no exertion can raise him. The Assistant Commissioners asked the farmers if they knew any instance of a cottier rising in the world ; and their answer was, that they never knew one whom his own exertions raised, but that a few have risen who had grown-up families of industrious habits, and whose sons at service with farmers had saved some money, and thus enabled their father to take a little farm. It was also stated that when a cottier grows old, and unable to work as the farmer wishes, he must go out and beg, unless his family are able to pay the rent for him ; and begging in their old age was said to be the lot of many cottiers. Such is his case in health, but if he gets sick he becomes, of course, able to work, and his little crop is seized, and perhaps sold ; and, even if the farmer is kind enough to leave him his crop, his labour is due for a still longer period, and he is obliged to make up the deficiant time. Such is the condition of one, and the most general kind of cottiers, in the county of Tyrone. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cotyroneireland/occupations/Labourers-Cottiers.html

If the cottier could not fulfill his debt to their employer he was liable to have his pig or even his dungheap confiscated

Cottiers are almost always in debt to their employers ; the former seldom has recourse to legal proceedings to enforce payment. If the debt be too considerable to be repaid by work he will take the cottier's pig, his heap of manure, or any other property he can find on the premises.

jonniebgood1

They had a tough life in financial terms with alot of work to pay off the rent to the landowner/ farmer. Were they paying rich upper class landlords or just ordinary Irish farmers? And what exactly were their homes like? There is some information on them here from From the Dublin Penny Journal, Volume 1, Number 40, March 30, 1833

Some how or other, the squalidness of our Irish dwelling-places is peculiarly distressing and unseemly, for there is no people on earth that require more comfortable homes—the singular wetness of our climate, its constant rains and fogs, require that our shelter should be good; and if the poor labourer who has been working all the day long under an incessant fall of rain, is obliged to come home with his clothing soaked through, to find a wet floor on which to sit—wet turf with which to back his fire—wet coming down through the roof on the damp bed on which he is to sleep—why, here is the very perfection of discomfort;http://www.libraryireland.com/articles/Irish-Mud-Cabins/index.php

Quite bleak.

Improved layout- note no windows.

jonniebgood1

Mud was a common building material with many advantages. These were things such as its availiability, its relative inexpensiveness and its insulation properties. The mud houses usually had a stone plinth at their base as the equivilent of our dry lining. The mud was then built on top of the plinth in layers of 1-2 feet and allowed to dry out. When dryed properly the walls could withstand the worst of conditions for years. Turf and sods were also built into the walls. When complete the walls were limewashed for additional weathering.


(info from 'Irish countryside buildings' by Patrick and Maura Shaffrey)

convert

As with most history, unfortunately there's not a huge amount of information on the lower classes, including cottiers, but it is possible to glean information from sources such as leases, legal documents, etc.

Most cottiers would have sublet from tenant farmers, who either leased land directly from the main landlord or from a large farmer, so for the most part they wouldn't have had direct dealings with the land owner. Most cottiers wouldn't have had leases, instead just renting on oral agreements. The rent they paid depended on their financial position - some would have paid a small sum of money, while others would have paid some rent, combined with either working for their immediate landlord, or providing them with turf, or maybe a turkey at Christmas. Others would have paid their rent solely in kind.

jonniebgood1

convert wrote: »

As with most history, unfortunately there's not a huge amount of information on the lower classes, including cottiers, but it is possible to glean information from sources such as leases, legal documents, etc.

Most cottiers would have sublet from tenant farmers, who either leased land directly from the main landlord or from a large farmer, so for the most part they wouldn't have had direct dealings with the land owner. Most cottiers wouldn't have had leases, instead just renting on oral agreements.

I believe that this system refered to was known as conacre

conacre was the name given to the system whereby land was let not for a number of years, but rather for a single season, usually one year. The land was let for a specific purpose - the taking of a single crop of potatoes, corn or grazing. It was a form of subletting used by landowners and farmers to rent to those who had insufficient or no land of their own to secure the basic food supply needed for their families to survive. Designating all holders of less than five acres as being cottiers or laborers, this class comprised between thirty and thirty-five percent of the total number of tenants in rural areas. Conacre was also used by small farmers as a means of wage payment in lieu of cash and by resident landlords as a source for a cheap labor force. http://www.deliapublications.com/Conacre.htm

According to same article the Farmer- cotttier relationship was often strained. Seems a bit like the sub-contractors getting burnt around the country by builders nowadays

Since the farmer himself was a tenant, failure to pay his own rent was occasionally followed by "distraint", that is, the seizure of his possessions and provisions until he paid his rent or even the same of these items for the payment of the delinquent rent. If his farm was distrained, the conacre produce was liable to be seized as rent by the landlord, even though the cottier or laborer might have already paid the farmer. The conacre holder was caught in the middle and faced ruin.

The conacre system eventually died out after the famine. Was this due to loss of population or land acts?

jonniebgood1

A class system developed in the early 1800s that to me seems similar to that which is well known in Britain in that there was 3 distinctions. 2 of them are well explained in 'Davitt: Irish Patriot and Father of the Land League' By Bernard O'Hara. 1 was english speaking protestant landlords who were direct ancestors of the plantations whose families received the confiscated land. the second was the Catholic tenant farmers with the cottiers and landless labourers the hardest doneby in 3rd (2nd and 3rd class are often combined). The tenant farmers resented the landlords for obvious reasons (plantation). It was not at this time a major issue though as most tenant farmers could make a decent living and if they had enough land they could under the conacre system mentioned in earlier post they could often exploit the situation of the cottier. The tenant farmers had there own groups to try and protect their interests against landlords who would regularly evict them mid season. When this happened the cottier who had been working for the farmer while growing crops for his family on the cornacre letting could have his crop and other belongings seized as he had no agreement with the landlord.

jonniebgood1

From the 'labourers friend' publication (from late 1830's) there is a detailed description of the types of homes that labourers lived in and the conditions that they had. The homes are called 'cabins of labourers'.

CDfm

Great thread jonnie.

I often wonder too about the landlord system on rents

like on with all the renting and subletting and agents ,how much money reached the landlord and how much hovered elsewhere

slowburner

This image from the NLI collection is of a labourer's hut in Gweeedore, c. 1880

jonniebgood1

CDfm wrote: »

I often wonder too about the landlord system on rents
like on with all the renting and subletting and agents ,how much money reached the landlord and how much hovered elsewhere

The role of the agent is interesting. Given that the landlord did'nt seem to bothered with his tenants as he didnt have to deal with them personally the agent seems to have been very significant.

the new landlords were generally linked to their tenants only by economic ties, and in most parts of Ireland, they were separated from them by language (English), religion (Anglican), origin (English and Scots), and culture (English). http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Landlordism

The agents allowed for this separation as their role was to take from the poor and give to the rich (Robin hood in reverse!).

The 1870 figures reveal that about 49% of landlords were usually absent, but that 36% merely lived away from their estates, elsewhere in Ireland. As a result, landlords employed the often detested land agents and sub-agents. These managed the estates, set the rents, and if necessary moved in the bailiffs and the police to evict tenants. Ireland’s landlords differed greatly in wealth and attitudes and their numbers changed over time. As elsewhere in ancien regime Europe, landlords were a small elite that derived enormous economic, social, and political authority from their virtual monopoly of landownership. http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Landlordism

The landlord is though a different element of life to the cottier. As far as I see the cottier would not have had any dealing with the landlord or his agent. A farmer rented land from the landlord and then sub-let small parcels to the cottier in return for labour. A good decription summary here http://www.jstor.org/pss/20522162

CDfm

The reason I am asking is that I was out with a local estate agent recently and someone made a comment about some local land and he seemed quite certain from reading property deeds that the rent a landlord had recieved on land was measured in pence and not pounds.

He said it was a question he never saw written about.

Now thats anecdotal but it got me thinking about it and the returns on investment etc in cold hard cash.

I just wonder if anyone did a study on it.

There is a landed estates database

http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie:8080/LandedEstates/jsp/

jonniebgood1

A sample would be interesting but it would of course depend on the size of the land parcel and the length of time in the rent (weekly, monthly or annual). The poor inquiry of 1835 might have something on it. I am trying to find it online unsuccessfully so far.

Nitochris

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

A sample would be interesting but it would of course depend on the size of the land parcel and the length of time in the rent (weekly, monthly or annual). The poor inquiry of 1835 might have something on it. I am trying to find it online unsuccessfully so far.

I don't have the exact link but it is on eppi in a number of pdf files http://www.southampton.ac.uk/library/ldu/projects.html, the site can be difficult to navigate.

jonniebgood1

There is an interesting description of the state of the general population in Kerry from A Tour in Ireland, by Arthur Young (1779). The link is from this post by Marchdub on another thread. The blame for an unsatisfactory situation is put on the landlords for not adequately protecting those within their lands.

The state of the poor in the whole county of Kerry represented as exceedingly miserable, and owing to the conduct of men of property, who are apt to lay the blame on what they call land pirates, or men who offer the highest rent, and who, in order to pay this rent, must and do re-let all the cabin lands at an extravagant rise, which is assigning over all the cabins to be devoured by one farmer. The cottars on a farm cannot go from one to another, in order to find a good master, as in England; for all the country is in the same system, and no redress to be found. Such being the case, the farmers are enabled to charge the price of labour as low as they please, and rate the land as high as they like. This is an evil which oppresses them cruelly, and certainly has its origin in its landlords when they set their farms, setting all the cabins with p. 113them, instead of keeping them tenants to themselves. The oppression is, the farmer valuing the labour of the poor at fourpence or fivepence a day, and paying that in land rated much above its value. Owing to this the poor are depressed; they live upon potatoes and sour milk, and the poorest of them only salt and water to them, with now and then a herring. Their milk is bought; for very few keep cows, scarce any pigs, but a few poultry. Their circumstances are incomparably worse than they were twenty years ago; for they had all cows, but then they wore no linen: all now have a little flax. To these evils have been owing emigrations, which have been considerable. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22387/22387-h/22387-h.htm

His tour saw him investigate the conditions in several areas and he seems to give an honest appraisal, despite his fraternising with many of the landlords he is quite critical of them in cases.

In conversation with Lord Longford I made many inquiries concerning the state of the lower classes, and found that in some respects they were in good circumstances, in others indifferent; they have, generally speaking, such plenty of potatoes as always to p. 25command a bellyful; they have flax enough for all their linen, most of them have a cow, and some two, and spin wool enough for their clothes; all a pig, and numbers of poultry, and in general the complete family of cows, calves, hogs, poultry, and children pig together in the cabin; fuel they have in the utmost plenty. Great numbers of families are also supported by the neighbouring lakes, which abound prodigiously with fish. A child with a packthread and a crooked pin will catch perch enough in an hour for the family to live on the whole day, and his lordship has seen five hundred children fishing at the same time, there being no tenaciousness in the proprietors of the lands about a right to the fish. Besides perch, there is pike upwards of five feet long, bream, tench, trout of ten pounds, and as red as salmon, and fine eels. All these are favourable circumstances, and are very conspicuous in the numerous and healthy families among them.

Reverse the medal: they are ill clothed, and make a wretched appearance, and what is worse, are much oppressed by many who make them pay too dear for keeping a cow, horse, etc. They have a practice also of keeping accounts with the labourers, contriving by that means to let the poor wretches have very little cash for their year’s work. This is a great oppression, farmers and gentlemen keeping accounts with the poor is a cruel abuse: so many days’ work for a cabin; so many for a potato garden; so many for keeping a p. 26horse, and so many for a cow, are clear accounts which a poor man can understand well, but farther it ought never to go; and when he has worked out what he has of this sort, the rest of his work ought punctually to be paid him every Saturday night. Another circumstance mentioned was the excessive practice they have in general of pilfering. They steal everything they can lay their hands on, and I should remark, that this is an account which has been very generally given me: all sorts of iron hinges, chains, locks, keys, etc.; gates will be cut in pieces, and conveyed away in many places as fast as built; trees as big as a man’s body, and that would require ten men to move, gone in a night. Lord Longford has had the new wheels of a car stolen as soon as made. Good stones out of a wall will be taken for a fire-hearth, etc., though a breach is made to get at them. In short, everything, and even such as are apparently of no use to them; nor is it easy to catch them, for they never carry their stolen goods home, but to some bog-hole. Turnips are stolen by car-loads, and two acres of wheat plucked off in a night. In short, their pilfering and stealing is a perfect nuisance. How far it is owing to the oppression of laws aimed solely at the religion of these people, how far to the conduct of the gentlemen and farmers, and how far to the mischievous disposition of the people themselves, it is impossible for a passing traveller to ascertain. I am apt to believe that a better system of law and p. 27management would have good effects. They are much worse treated than the poor in England, are talked to in more opprobrious terms, and otherwise very much oppressed. (Pg 25-27)

Anyone from Mullingar may be interested in his views of there!!!

July 5. Left Mullingar, which is a dirty ugly town (pg 28)

The landlord of an Irish estate, inhabited by Roman Catholics, is a sort of despot who yields obedience, in whatever concerns the poor, to no law but that of his will. To discover what the liberty of the people is, we must live among them, and not look for it in the statutes of the realm: the language of written law may be that of liberty, but the situation of the poor may speak no language but that of slavery. There is too much of this contradiction in Ireland; a long series of oppressions, aided by many very ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an almost unlimited submission: speaking a language that is despised, professing a religion that is abhorred and being disarmed, the poor find themselves in many cases slaves even in the bosom of written liberty. Landlords that have resided much abroad are usually humane in their ideas, but the habit of tyranny naturally contracts the mind, so that even in this polished age there are instances of a severe carriage towards the poor, which is quite unknown in England. (Pg. 166)

And finally a cutting summary

A better treatment of the poor in Ireland is a very material point of the welfare of the whole British Empire. Events may happen which may convince us fatally of this truth; if not, oppression must have broken all the spirit and resentment of men. By what policy the Government of England can for so many years have permitted such an absurd system to be matured in Ireland is beyond the power of plain sense to discover. (Pg 169)

jonniebgood1

OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF IRELAND, by J. C. Curwen records the authors views on his visit to a cottiers cabin in Killcullen firstly and then Navan.
Killcullen:

Hospitality throws widely open every door in
Ireland ! An apology is scarcely necessary on
entering any abode the stranger is received
with kindness, and made heartily welcome to
the best fare that can be afforded. In the first
cabin I reached, which was constructed of mi-
serable clay daubing, I found the family ga-
thered round a stool at breakfast ; some of the
party were seated, others on their knees ; all
applying to a wooden bowl placed on the stool
filled with potatoes in their skins; but neither
salt nor butter-milk attended the repast ! The
family consisted of a mother, three small chil-
dren, and a girl about fifteen years of age.
Their dress, and the interior of the cabin, be-
spoke the extreme of poverty. The poor wo-
man informed me her husband was a laborer ;
that during the busy season of the year, whilst
work was to be had, they fared tolerably well ;
and when they could afford butter-milk with
their potatoes, they were quite content. Bread
they seldom partook of; and as to meat, some
of them had never tasted it ; even salt, they had
not always the means to procure. These me-
lancholy facts were recited with a simplicity so
natural, that it was evident not the least con-
sciousness existed of the effect they were cal-
culated to produce. Habit had reconciled the

poor mother to her condition, and its con-
sequent privations ; but the daughter, who held
down her head, seemed ashamed that their
wretched state should thus be exposed to a
stranger. My heart sympathized in their suf-
feringstheir miseries, poor creatures, were too
legibly written on the characters of all, to admit
the reality being questioned, or to furnish a sus-
picion of their having arisen out of any fault or
crime imputable to themselves ; but, that they
were the general lot of their community, arising
out of the unfortunate situation of the country.
I hastened to the next cabin with no hope,
though with a sincere wish, of finding less to
deplore. The good woman was at the door,
encouraging a fine little naked boy of five years
old to persevere in chasing a pig ; whether
from the cold, or some mixture of shame, I
know not, but it required both persuasion and
authority, to induce the little one's obedience.
The woman, I presume, observed by my coun-
tenance that I was surprised at her admonitions,
and apologized by saying, " This, Sir, is the way
we take to harden our children against winter,
for fuel here is a scarce article. I had seen enough to be convinced of the
melancholy consequences attendant on a re- dundant population, and an insufficient capital to provide the individuals of it, with employment.

Sufficiently agonized with these scenes of dis-
tress, I made the best of my way to Killcullen,
where our fellow-traveller became affected by
the relation of what I had seen. Use blunts
the feelings of humanity, when daily accustomed
to sights of misery, and renders the great bulk of
mankind insensible and regardless of what may
be passing around them ; while ignorance, in-
terest, or prejudice, too frequently mislead the
well disposed. I could not help exclaiming in
the emphatical words of our acquaintance at
Castlebar, " Are not the people rung by the
nose, &c. ? " The gentleman had the candour
to acknowledge, he believed their case to be
grievous and distressing.
(pg97 - 99) http://www.archive.org/stream/observationsonst02curwuoft/observationsonst02curwuoft_djvu.txt

Navan (from letter):

We visited a cabin in the neighbourhood of
Navan, about four o'clock, and found the family
at dinner. The party consisted of a man, his
wife, and seven children. Potatoes, their only
fare, were served in a wooden bowl on a stool ;
the elder children ate with their parents, the
younger feasted out of an iron pot on the floor.
Appetite seemed to give a relish to the food,
while a small jug of butter-milk was -reserved
to crown and complete the repast. In reply
to some inquiries I made as to his wages, the
poor fellow observed, " Our fare is well enough,
and satisfies us all ; my only concern is, that )
cannot earn sufficient to cover the nakedness oi
these poor children ; could I clothe them, I
should be happy !" The whole family, it is true,
was indeed in a most ragged condition pity it
should be so ! It is not in appearance only they
suffer, but real misery must be endured by
each individual, from the severity of cold. By
the aid of his pig, and what manure the chil-
dren could collect from the road, he was an-
nually enabled to plant about a rood of po-
tatoes, for which he paid after the rate of five
pounds an acre for the land j but when ma-
nure is furnished by the landlord, the rent is
doubled.

The hopeless despondency which seemed to
pervade the hearts of this poor family, spoke in
most emphatic, though painful language, to our
feelings deeply is their lot to be lamented,
and the more- as it arises out of circumstances
they have neither ability to correct, nor power
to control, and which there is little reason to
hope can be easily remedied.

It has been the fashion to impute all evil to
the state, and to look for all good from that
source. Doubtless there is much to condemn
in the mistaken policy by which this country
has been so long governed ; yet, a great part
of the evils so justly complained of, spring from
the encouragement given by the proprietors to
the increase of an excessive population, in par-
celling out their estates into such small allot-
ments. The facility of procuring food does not,
ultimately, here prove to be a blessing ; if any
means could be devised for checking this ex-
traordinary advance of the population in Ire-
land, it would be highly beneficial ; but how
and when this check is to be made to operate
seems a difficult problem. In almost every dis-
trict, the cabins seem to be multiplying; the
necessary consequence of increasing inhabit-
ants ; the evil is thus hourly becoming greater,
and daily less remediable. Any hasty innova-
tion would involve in so much misery a great
part of the laborious orders, and bring so much
embarrassment on their superiors, that J almost
despair of seeing any general substantial me-
lioration afforded to the former, because I can-
not perceive any advantage likely to be derived
by the latter ; few of whom could command
capital sufficient to consolidate their estatei
into such farms as would tempt parties with
competent means to become their tenants, were
there no other difficulty to be surmounted.
(Pg 162) http://www.archive.org/stream/observ...wuoft_djvu.txt

CDfm

Am I right to think of cottiers like serfs.

In England the emancipation of serfs coincided with the Black Death c 1350.(circa 450 years before Young published). Shortage of labour meant serfs went Lord shopping and were not sent back as was the convention.

According to Young cottiers did not really have mobility and the penal laws effectively restricted them in other ways -just like serfs.

I also read that conditions were worse than for Eastern European serfs . Is that true. ?

jonniebgood1

CDfm wrote: »

Am I right to think of cottiers like serfs.

In England the emancipation of serfs coincided with the Black Death c 1350.(circa 450 years before Young published). Shortage of labour meant serfs went Lord shopping and were not sent back as was the convention.

According to Young cottiers did not really have mobility and the penal laws effectively restricted them in other ways -just like serfs.

I also read that conditions were worse than for Eastern European serfs . Is that true. ?

To get a collection of descriptions about the conditions for serfs in eastern Europe and Russia may be more difficult as we would be relying on early sources (as with the travel accounts above) being translated. More general accounts support your comparison in many ways.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Russia saw an intensification of serfdom. After the expulsion of the Mongols, the Russian nobles, with the consent and assistance of the central government, gained almost exclusive ownership of the land. When new conquests were added to the Russian empire, serfdom was extended. By 1800, half of the peasantry was enserfed to the nobility, the other half to the state. An act of 1649 made the status of serfdom hereditary. In much of Russia, the condition of serfdom approached slavery.

Eastern Europe also adopted a coercive labor system based on serfdom. Coerced labor supported the dependent agricultural economy of eastern Europe within the global commercial network dominated by the West. In Russia and most of eastern Europe, it was possible for landlords to sell whole villages of serfs as manufacturing laborers. Serfs were not quite slaves. They remained free to manage their village governments, but they were subject to taxation, owed labor services to lords and the government, and were subject to landlords' jurisdiction. The onerous conditions produced occasional rebellions, such as the Pugachev revolt of the 1770s http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/stearns_awl/chapter24/objectives/deluxe-content.html

Peasants resented the overweening authority of their landlords, and rebellions were frequent. Both intellectual and peasant dissatisfaction engendered repressive measures on the part of the government. Russia's total dependence on serfdom as a source of labor produced an inflexible economy that eventually challenged the country's political and social stability.

So there existed a ruling class that was dependant on the labourers work. It was hereditery so you could not rise out of it. Serf laws were reformed on a continuous basis but they had very little rights. Of course given the era slavery was still a part of life in many states including southern US states.