In message <1da.4afd2339.30f8117d@aol.com>, Carolgriff@aol.com writes >Hi >I watched who do you think you are on tv last night and was amazed at the >way a family moved up north. > >Basically if you were poor then a company would "recruit" you and your >family, send you to london then on a barge to eg a cotton mill in lancs. Often >the >younger children would be left behind as they were too young to work in the >mills and so the mill owners wouldnt recruit the family. > >The programme was about Suffolk but I wondered if this would have happened >in Beds as my family moved from Beds The organised migrations to the mills were a feature of life in the impoverished rural counties. The bottom dropped out of agriculture, what with the effects of enclosure, since the new cultivation system needed fewer labourers, and the 10 years' bad harvests of the Hungry Forties. There was a simple choice - stay and starve or move to a job waiting for you, incredibly well paid. At first, much of the work was in smallish mills, but being inside all day, working 12-14 hours was a great culture shock to people used to the fresh air (and cold and wet, not idyllic). The mills were crying out for workers, (females preferred, but some men for the heavy stuff)and the early schemes were well policed, both by the Poor Law Commissioners and in Beds, by individual clergymen, who visited their distant flock and checked on their conditions. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

Eve McLaughlin wrote: >impoverished rural counties. The bottom dropped out of agriculture, what with the effects of enclosure, since the new cultivation system needed fewer labourers, and the 10 years' bad harvests of the Hungry Forties. There was a simple choice - stay and starve or move to a job waiting for you, incredibly well paid. > There's a delightful folk song, 'A Dalesman's Litany', which, though set in Yorkshire, tells much the same story. In this case, the Squire on whose estate the singer works refuses to keep him on if he marries, so he and his beloved have to go and work in the cities. There's a kind of refrain that runs through the song: 'From Hull and Halifax and Hell, Good Lord deliver me.' It's only when they retire that they can move back to the country. Lila. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * An Fhirinne in aghaidh an tSaoil - The Truth Against the World