"A Quantity of Rice having been provided by several gentlemen of this town who have generously offered to give up the same to the Parish at Prime cost; Resolved that the offer be accepted and that the same be paid for by the Overseers for the benefit of the Poor." A Committee was formed for dispensing the same.
At this time nearly the whole of the labouring population must have been upon the parish or next door to it, and the suffering rate-payers made one more appeal to the farmers, for in November, at a meeting on the subject—
"It was resolved that it be recommended to the Farmers of this Town to allow their Labourers such wages as may prevent them from becoming chargeable to the Parish, and it is also recommended that such Men as belong to the Parish be employed in Preference to others."
This feeling was apparently prompted by the knowledge of the fact that the farmers were reaping a harvest out of the famine, while other ratepayers, such as the small tradesmen, were suffering as well as the poor. It was not, however, every farmer who had any wheat to sell at the famine prices then ruling, and hence any uniform plan of raising wages became hopeless. The course taken by the farmers and others to whom these appeals were made, was, to say the least, unfortunate, and led to no end of trouble in after years. The parish was obliged to step in, and to save the people from starvation, fixed a kind of minimum scale of income upon which each family could subsist, according to the number in family and the price of bread, and simply made up the difference between the wages and the standard. The effect of this was to pauperise for the time the whole labouring population, and that the ratepayers, employing no labourers themselves, had to help to pay for those who did!
In the evidence collected by Sir Frederick Eden in 1795 as to the earnings and cost of maintenance of labourers' families, six families were taken from the parish of Hinxworth, representing Hertfordshire, and the earnings of each family averaged 12s. 6 1/2d., and their necessary expenditure exceeded their receipts by L22 3s. 6 1/2d., or about 9s. a week, which would have to be made up out of the rates.
Of the peculiar hardship which thus grew up a correspondent in the Farmers' Magazine, for 1800, says:—"The present period to this class (small shopkeeper, &c.) who has a cow, and while he has it cannot have relief, is truly distressing, but as for the labouring people, they are all on the parish funds." It was stated in Parliament that farmers were making 200 per cent. profit! The probability is, however, that the great majority of farmers had little or no corn left to sell. Here is a communication apparently from a farmer, to the same magazine, from a provincial market:—
"I am truly concerned to inform you that the price of grain advances every succeeding market day and that there is no prospect whatever of a fall. Wheat 23s. to 25s. per bushel. A number of principal fanners convened by the Mayor had agreed to sell their wheat at 21s. per bushel. Not long adhered to, for while I and others were selling at that price others were getting 28s., and so the matter dropped. Price of bread now almost out of reach of the poor; we have subscribed sums of money to purchase butcher's meat and potatoes for distribution, leaving them to buy bread with money received from the parish. As for rice as substitute, it, like everything else, has advanced to double the price. Herrings are strongly recommended by the Government."
Even barley bread was not easy to obtain, and we further learn that (by April, 1801) "the state of the poor cottager is now truly deplorable, for though barley may still be had it is at an enormous price, and it is impossible for labourers to provide for their families at such prices. It is to corn merchants and dealers in grain whose very existence they have been taught to curse and deprecate that the good people of this country must now look for near five months to come for subsistence." "If we have not an early harvest, God knows what will be the consequences," is another remark of a correspondent!
The old tales of "barley bread as black as your hat," which many persons living have heard their grandfathers speak of, were no mere tradition, but a stern hard fact, and whenever, in that terribly anxious spring time of 1801, the poor could get a scrap of bacon, a dish of tops of slinging nettles was by no means an uncommon resort to eke out the means of a precarious existence. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the harvest of 1801 was looked forward to with as great a degree of anxiety as ever the children of Israel looked for a sight of the Promised Land!
What the memorable year of scarcity really was in a locality like this is best understood by means of the poor rate.