Introduction

Rural poverty affected Greater Westover as it did other parts of the country during the early Victorian period. The defined area of ‘Greater Westover’ consisted of villages lying just to the west of the Stour river as well as the fledgling settlement at Bournemouth. Most of these villages fell within the orbit of the Stour and Avon Agricultural Society. Its members consisted of local landowners and substantial tenants. Their annual agricultural practices’ competition represented an attempt to address local rural poverty. Details of their actions and attitudes emerge from speeches given at their AGM.

Rural poverty: everyone’s constant problem

The threats that rural poverty might pose to social order had long attracted legislature. Law makers (i.e., property owners) feared that ‘sturdy beggars’ might translate hardship into revolt. In the early Victorian period, legislation produced changes in institutional handling of paupers. As a result, new unions, centred on a workhouse, covered areas consisting of several parishes. In time, the Christchurch Union would absorb rural Greater Westover’s parishes. As part of this process, they would remove outdoor relief, compelling paupers to remove to the workhouse. Forcible relocation would have affected local social continuity, perhaps mixing disquiet with hardship. Incidences of fire appear to have occurred in rural Greater Westover and its vicinity during this period. The press identified a Swing rioter or rural terrorist behind each reported blaze, seeing only contrivance not carelessness. In short, such copy could help increase circulation amongst nervous, property-owning readers.

Local agricultural employers grasped poverty’s nettle

Census analysis suggests that rural Greater Westover’s poverty level perhaps increased during the 1840s and 1850s. According to the 1851 Census, one in ten of Greater Westover’s population aged 20+ qualified as a pauper. A special study of 19 parishes in western Dorset suggested a much lower poverty level. Relocation of paupers from rural parishes to a workhouse would, by definition, reduce measured poverty in the villages. Some, however, might see it as juggling the books, transferring it offshore from the local social balance sheet. Relocation provided cure not prevention. Some local proprietors and tenant farmers understood this. Further, they used their Stour and Avon Farming Society to address the issue. At their annual rural practices’ competition they awarded prizes. In addition to craft skills, however, they rewarded successful lifestyles, for example length of service. Prizes went also to men with large families who avoided parish relief, except during illness.

Stour and Avon farmers on show at their AGM

During the early Victorian period, activities on the society’s AGM fell into two sections: agricultural practices’ competition and dinner, often held at Humby’s Hotel in Christchurch. The hotel’s hospitality did the members proud, although the competitors perhaps did not attend. Speeches followed dinner. The senior proprietor, the Earl of Malmesbury, often took the chair, leading the speeches as a result. The Earl’s younger brother, elected M.P. for Christchurch during this period, would also attend. In some instances, the press would provide an apparent verbatim report of the speeches. The Earl’s speeches, given to his fellow members, often had a larger intended audience, for he would address the country on important issues, as if speaking in the House of Lords. He attacked efforts to repeal the Corn Laws and complained how manufacturers and other sectors of the economy did not fund the Poor Rates. On occasion, though, he addressed rural poverty.

The moral imperative: husbanding and husbandry

In 1848, Malmesbury outlined the Society’s purpose: ‘not so much to improve agriculture, by raising good farming crops and encouraging experiments, as it was to encourage the skill, good behaviour, and faithful servitude of the labourers’. Last year’s chairman also said this. He had said that by ‘making the labouring men better workmen, they were also improving them morally, making better fathers, better husbands, and better persons, than most probably, under other circumstances, they might have become’. The Society’s members therefore laboured to ‘improve’ their workforce’s morality much as they would look to improve their land. One led to the other. Through the lifestyle prizes they invested in this belief. At almost two centuries’ distance, one perspective might see this policy as self-serving. Prizes for long service emphasised social stability. Managing large families without requiring parish relief took pressure off the poor rate. Some then saw it otherwise.

Mettle or metal?

It seems that clever urban commentators derided these small prizes as having little relevance to such macro-economic issues as rural poverty. The Earl gave them short shrift. His response used an emotive image: the Waterloo medal. The crown had awarded these to the battle’s participants, celebrating their success. The Earl used this image to tilt the balance away from metal towards mettle. ‘The Waterloo medal was not worth more than a dollar, yet how much was it prized!’ Cheered by the day and soothed by their after-dinner port, his members might have warmed to the noble lord’s rhetorical device. Such an idea would have appealed to his members and London’s editors, but would have had little value amongst his labourers. They did want the balance to tilt the other way. They needed coins not concepts. Concepts could not buy food or heat a cottage full of shivering children.

The Earl plays with fire

Not just officers but other ranks received the Waterloo medal. This silver sliver therefore bridged the social divide: a latent symbol of social equality. If some yeomen farmers had once stood in the fields beside their labourers, many soon chose separation, enlarging their houses, building chimneys to signal wealth. Social levelling attempts during the Civil War reminded men of property that distance brought safety. The same medal given to officers and ranks could have set off alarm bells: all men are equal. Peterloo and the Swing Riots, the machine-breaking and the arson illustrated the dangers of uncontrolled sans-culottes. The Stour and Avon members needed deference, not defiance. They did not need a moral imperative, but one consisting of high prices, low wages and minimal poor rate. Nor did they need a media-rich idea that raised the spectre of social equality. With arson widespread, the Earl’s imagery played with fire.

The medal winners’ perspective

Tentative identification for some winners of the ‘social achievement’ prizes emerges from other sources. Stephen Plowman won in 1847, shown by the 1841 Census to have eight children. John French’s family doubled between 1841 and 1851, six children in the latter, another winner for 1847. The 1851 Census recorded eight and six children respectively for Onesimus Barrow and Anthony Brent (1848, 1849). Spare a thought for Mary Plowman, Elizabeth French, Maria Barrow and Eliza Brent, their wives. Their joint reality consisted of having to feed 28 mouths (plus adults). Few, if any, would have wanted a workhouse life. Conditions there did not constitute an improvement. Relocation represented social failure, peer-group shame. The moral argument, therefore, did have relevance, but to these women a foreign battle perhaps had little meaning. Larger prizes they would have liked. Better still, an increase in wages would have enabled them to win their battle.

Takeaway

The proprietors and farmers who belonged to the Stour and Avon Agricultural Society may have felt sincere in giving token prizes to edge their labourers towards moral perfection as a way to ease rural poverty. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it seems not a solution to the problem as much as a failure to address its real causes.

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References

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