Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

highest percentage of non-agricultural labourers, (7%), which may reflect both its townlike
role and its quarrying industry. 48
Although unrest amongst labourers in this zone
was never as prevalent as in south-east England, there was an outbreak of rick-burning. 49
On the other hand schemes were in operation to make life easier for labouring families.
Pebworth’s 1841 census enumerator records that twenty-four men and twenty-six women
had come into the parish since 1831 ‘under the allotment scheme’. 50
The Arrow and the Avon enabled a few families to earn a meagre living from
fishing. Probate inventories of fishermen before 1760 suggest a standard of living similar
to that of a labourer. 51
In later periods riverside parishioners continued to fish, legally or
illegally. Several legal fishermen have come to light including members of the Gardiner
and Hatton families. 52
Fish was not the only food which locals were seeking illegally, as
is evident from the flurry of newspaper notices concerning new game laws in the late
eighteenth century. 53
48 See Appendix 7.
49 Berrow’s Worcester Journal 24 Dec. 1829. The manufacture of threshing machines in Welford may
have provoked incendiaries there and in neighbouring Binton.
50 T. Rudge, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Gloucester, (London, R. Phillips, 1807), pp.
64-5, had advocated allotments for poorer inhabitants.
51 WoRO, probate of Richard Bickerton, Broom, (Bidford), 1668, (no inventory, but very small bequests).
WoRO, probate of Robert Edkins, Bidford, fisherman, 1719, £16-0-0, indicates that he possessed only
‘small goods’ worth 13s. 4d.; the rest of his inventory value comprised his ‘chattell lease’ of £15-6-8.
GlosRO, probate of John Silvester, Weston, (no occupation given), 1727/8, £29-0-0, shows that he
combined fishing with carpentry to make ends meet. Carpenter’s tools, fish-nets and a boat were listed
among his scanty possessions at his three-room abode.
52 WoRO, QS552/57, concerns James Hatton bringing a case in 1798 against a labourer who was fishing
illegally. WoRO, probate of James Hatton, Bidford, victualler, 1826, records his wish to leave half his
boats and half his nets to his son, John. (Hatton kept the White Lion next to Bidford Bridge.) Something of
Hatton’s modus operandi can be ascertained from BWJ 13 April 1797 which reports that he and his men
had caught a very impressive 27 cwt. of fish with draughting nets. (He is erroneously referred to as
Hutton.) WaRO, Bidford 1851 census, lists Elizabeth Hatton of Bidford as a ‘fish-seller’.
53 Some asking for qualified gamekeepers and others warning of prosecution. Berrow’s Worcester Journal
28 Aug. 1783 carries a notice that a new ‘gamekeeper and free-warrener’ had been appointed at Bevington
(in Salford Priors parish) and that poachers would be prosecuted. For discussion of game certificates and
gamekeepers in this period see Chapter 7.
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