8.
Watercress Girl
years old but had lost all childish way and was in thoughts and
manner a woman.
11
"I always give mother my money, she's so very good to me. She's very poor and goes out cleaning rooms sometimes. When I gets home after selling cresses. I stops at home. I puts the room to rights; mother don't make me do it, I does it myself. I ain't a child and I shan't be a woman till I'm 20, but I'm past 8 I am.
AGRICULTURAL WORKERS
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Schooling was often something that only happened in the winter time when the ground was too hard to work on. Work came first. Where schooling was available, the Laws were often such as to allow children to do work before and after school.
"The poorer parents with large families think it hard if they cannot keep home their elder children 3 or 4 days a week to earn a little more to support the family generally.
Though in most agricultural regions there was a general demand for children's and women's labour throughout the year, there were obviously agricultural calenders peculiar to various parts of the country which required specific kinds of field labour at specific times - the common denominator being that during the period of each harvest school attendance dropped drastically.
Country children were not needed to be fragile, helpless beings at an early age they were thrust out into the world of the open fields - their homes were overcrowded hovels.
In all regions, besides working at the local specialities; children were engaged in more general and common forms of agricultural work as well, according to the season.
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Some work was peculiarly that of children who would be hired individually by farmers for such obs as bird scaring, the tending of cattle and sheep, helping with threshing machines and the feeding of cattle.
Labour was often hired on a family basis - families were advertised for, the more hands the better, for the faster they finished one stint the sooner they could move on to another and
the greater the eventual earnings - so children were indispensable and it was accepted that schooling took second place.
The "Gang System" in the 1850's was most firmly established in East Anglia but also elsewhere- Essex Kent,
etc. This was used in areas where labour was very scarce and labour to work the land had to be brought in, often in the form of travelling gangs, who went from farm to farm to perform specific tasks.
Children were also engaged in rural industries e.g. brick making, lace-making, handicrafts. Wages paid to the farm labourer were too low for him to be the sole provider for his family: women and children had to sell their labour too, in order to survive. 1860's -general ovement of opinion towards the need to educate the children of the working classes. Agricultutal Gangs Act of 1857 made it illegal for a child under eight to work in gangs but it was not until mechanisation took over labour that they performer that children felt the effects of compulsory education.
T
working
Many girls went on to be servants in 'respectable' houses long hours for little money, vulnerable to the whims and fancies of their employers.
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