Hello Paul I believe that migration to towns was far more complex than poor people being attracted by promises of wealth. Of course, I realise that there were poor people in the countryside too but one of the reasons for migration into the towns was surely not just poverty. The new industry there promised better wages and more prosperous living and different opportunities for all sorts of activities. However, where there are greater concentrations of population you are bound to get larger numbers of every sort, including paupers. You have only to look at the size of the London workhouses compared with the country ones to see that a place like the Isle of Skye was less likely to produce large numbers of pauper apprentices. That is why I was suprised to notice that it was one of the main sources for my local mill together with London's East Enders. One of the main selling points when a mill was advertising for investors was the accommodation for workers and the work force it could attract and rely upon. However, you don't have to be poor in order to work there. When cotton spinning mills were developed, they required a workforce they could put out to for handloom weaving, a skilled occupation. These weavers became quite prosperous. It wasn't until weaving was mechanised that handloom weavers became desperately poor, turned to Luddism and questions were asked in Parliament. The early cotton mills were mostly in rural places where they could take advantage of water power. Their poverty had little to do with the countryside and was more a problem of newer industrial development supplanting old. My other grandfather had a perfectly good job in Lewes but found that he could earn better money and develop his career in London and so migrated there. As far as I can tell, he was never one of the rural poor. He just wanted to better himself. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Prescott" <[email protected]> To: "Norman Lee" <[email protected]>; <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, August 05, 2006 7:26 PM Subject: Re: [OEL] missing baptisms > Audrey: > >> When Paul talks of Dickens' descriptions of London life and its >> deprivations, >> suggesting that there was plenty of work to be had where men could earn >> reasonable wages and poverty was not so prevalent as he, Dickens, showed >> in >> his novels, he may be right to a certain extent. > > I don't claim that poverty was not as prevalent as Dickens says. I do > claim that, however bad it was in the towns, it was even worse in the > countryside. And my evidence is that people moved voluntarily from the > countryside to the towns in vast numbers. > >> However, my family history >> tells tales that could have come straight from one of Dickens' novels. > > Mine too; and well into the 20th century too. > > Best wishes > > Paul Prescott > > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.7/409 - Release Date: 04/08/2006 > >