Mardler April 18 Final

Local History
Some unscrupulous farmers deliberately paid their workers low
wages knowing that the local tax payer would top up their wages.
Inevitably workers, who were being paid by the parish, did not feel
very committed to the work they were doing and worked
unenthusiastically, feeding the prejudices against ‘the undeserving
poor’ as lazy wastrels.
In April 1835, Brockdish parish poor law overseers made “an
agreement” with the parishioners that 6 farmers, land ‘occupiers’,
William Smith, James Burgess, R Leaper, Levi Welton, Mr Walne (at
the Grove) and Mr Brigham (Brockdish Hall) would keep in
employment one man per 25 acres of land at 8 shillings a week and
in addition could hire unemployed men at the parish labour rate on
the roundsman system, paid for by the parish. The system was
maintained until the harshest winters put everyone out of work for
months and gradually after the late 1840s, when the worst, most
punitive excesses of the new poor law were being criticised and in
many places reviewed, the roundsman system was dropped.
In the last half of the 19 th century the main reasons for ending up in
the workhouse were frailty in old age, orphaned or abandoned
children or being unable to work because of mental or physical
disability. But there were always the overly optimistic, the feckless,
the poor planner, the gambler and the simply unlucky. Let’s look at
two very typical cases:-
Sam Marriott Brockdish.
Sam was admitted to Depwade Union Workhouse at the age of 12
in late 1854 after his mother Amy died at the young age of 40. He
was called ‘an imbecile’, in other words he had profound learning
disabilities. His father, also Samuel, was considerably older and
there were two other children, one Eliza, stayed at home with her
father, and an older boy had left home to find work. It is clear that
Sam was being looked after by his mother but when she died the
family could not cope with poor Sam anymore and there was
nowhere else for him to go. Sam was cared for in the workhouse
until he died in 1915 age 72.
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