Sarah Lloyd

Joys of the Cottage : Labourers’ Houses, Hovels and Huts in Britain and the British Colonies, 1770-1830

When the Board of Agriculture systematised its enquiries into the state of British farming during the 1790s, it instructed its county surveyors to investigate local housing, specifically cottages.1 Arthur Young, who had decided views on the importance of land management as a means to improve the lot of agricultural labourers, increase productivity and enhance national prosperity and security, yoked the two issues together in his study of Lincolnshire. He reported that Sir John Sheffield, member of the Board of Agriculture and advocate of enclosure, had kept rents down and let dwellings directly to the poor, by-passing those tenant farmers who might manipulate housing to oppress their labourers. Young remarked that such indulgence ‘has no ill effect; they are very clean in everything; remarkably well cloathed; no children in rags; their beds and furniture good; are very sober, and attentive to church’. Pigs and children were numerous and poor rates low; with only one pub in twenty square miles, inhabitants kept to their own hearths, conserving time, energy and money.2 And since security of tenure depended on good behaviour, employers were guaranteed a supply of industrious and uncomplaining labour. By the end of his account, Young had recommended a general extension of Lincolnshire’s cottage system to deliver the ultimate political goal: the poor ‘inevitably’ felt committed to their country when they were able to ‘partake thus in the property of it’.3 Land and dwellings were both an economic resource and imbued with meanings.

Pauper Policies: Poor Law Practice in England, 1780–1850

the book is frustrating. While all the essays connect (with more or less clarity) to Walter’s work, each essay is largely isolated from the others: the ways they draw on and extend Walter’s work does not provide intellectual coherence. In addition, the essays are short – most less than 20 pages including notes – so the book feels choppy. And because they are brief, they do not go as deeply into the subject as the reader would like. While this collection falls short as a book, its fine essays offer stimulating ways to think in new ways about the early modern period. Furthermore, they provide an excellent reminder of the range and significance of the work that John Walter has done over the last 40 years.