servant or vagabond to be marked with a hot iron on the breast with the mark of V, and adjudge him to be slave to the same person that brought him, for two years after; who shall take the said slave and give him bread, water or small drink, and refuse him meat, and cause him to work, by beating, chaining or otherwise, in such work as he shall put him unto, be it never so vile; and if he shall absent himself from his said master, by the space of fourteen days, then he shall be adjudged by two justices of the peace to be marked on the forehead, or the ball of the cheek, with a hot iron, with a sign of an S, and further shall be adjudged to be slave to his said master for ever." Professor Rogers tells us that in 1835 six Dorsetshire labourers were convicted of the offence of combining for the purpose of raising wages. They were sentenced to transportation, and were practically sold as slaves for the term of their transportation to an Australian planter. The act for which they were punished was a perfectly innocent one, and even a legal one, for, after a stir had been made about the sentence, the men were pardoned, though considerable difficulties were made in getting them back to England. At this time the wages of the working people and their general condition was stated to be, on the whole, worse than it has ever been in recorded history; and that the factory hand and the peasant were worse off than the artisan. They seem to have been driven to the barest subsistence. The wages of the artisan averaged 18s. a week, and the farm labourer about IOS. The prices of things consumed by the labourer, taken one with another, were nearly double what they are now. In 1840 Mr. Slaney informed the public that “In Liverpool, in 1839, there were 7,860 cellars used as dwellings, inhabited by 39,000 people, or oneseventh of the population of the town. In Manchester and Salford also a considerable portion of the population inhabited cellars. Out of 37,000 habitations which were examined, no less than 18,400 were ill furnished and 10,400 altogether without furniture. In Bury, the population of which is 20,000, the dwellings of 3,000 families were visited. In 773 of them the families slept three and four in a bed; in 200, four and five slept in a bed; in 67, five and six slept in a bed; and in 15, six and seven slept in a bed. In Newcastle-on-Tyne the residences of 26,000 poor persons were examined, and those who saw them gave a most appalling account of the misery, filth and want of air which prevailed." Mr. Sharman Crawford, M.P. for Rochdale, said That in that town there were 136 persons living on 6d. per week, 200 on rod., 508 on Is., 855 on Is. 6d., and 1,500 on Is. Iod. Of these five-sixths had scarcely a blanket among them. 85 families had no blanket, and 46 had only chaff beds, without any covering at all." Mr. P. Stewart, in 1841, quoted a letter from Johnstone, in Scotland, which said: "I could tell you of mothers dividing a farthing and a halfpenny worth of potatoes among a family of seven; of others mixing sawdust with oatmeal in making their porridge, to enable them each to have a mouthful; and for families living for ten days on beans and peas, and ears of wheat stolen by the children from the neighbouring fields." Many people living in Leigh to-day can tell us of the constant round of oatmeal porridge and water for dinner. One weaver told the writer that he became so tired of the porridge that one day, when it was sent to him at the mill where he worked, he threw it out of the window, and was without dinner altogether. Tea, or so-called tea, was often made out of black currant leaves, balm leaves, and others taken from the gardens. Mr. Cobden, in June, 1842, said: "In Stockport 29 large concerns were closed." Dr. Bowring declared that at Bolton "one-third only of the rated property was paying the poor rates, and there were 10,000 persons who had not is. each a week to live upon." Mr. Joseph Hulme, M.P., said--in July, 1842—that what the people complained of was that food was high and wages were low, whilst thousands and tens of thousands had no wages at all." Here is an extract from a speech of the cool-headed and accurate Richard Cobden, delivered also in July, 1842, in the House of Commons :— At "I see the hon. member for Leeds in his place, and I challenge him to say whether the condition of Leeds at this moment is not worse than that of Stockport. We have not 40,000 utterly unemployed; our poor rates are not so high. His borough must be one vast poorhouse. Hinckley there are 1,500 stocking frames, and only 21 fully employed. What is the state of the mines in Staffordshire? There are 25,000 utterly destitute of employment. I know at this time a place where 100 wedding rings were pawned in one week to provide the owners with bread. Men and women have subsisted upon boiled nettles; and in the neighbourhood with which I was originally connected in business-Burnley—the starving people dug up the putrid carcase of a cow, rather than die of hunger." We may fairly assume that the inhabitants of this district were in an equally deplorable condition, with those of the rest of the country, as portrayed in the foregoing. |