While the fruit-harvest is in progress, travellers through the western outskirts of London will doubtless have noticed the numerous gangs of women employed in gathering and packing fruit and vegetables for market; the railway in that district running for several miles through market-gardens and orchards. The peculiar dress of these women—consisting of a large calico sun-bonnet, brightly coloured neckerchief, short skirts reaching scarcely below the knee, and large holland aprons—is alone sufficient to attract attention, even in the momentary glimpse one obtains of them as the train sweeps past. Daily, in sunshine and rain, these women are busy collecting the fruit and vegetables which are nightly conveyed to the London markets; and as some knowledge of their manner of life and the amount of their earnings may prove interesting, we offer to our readers the substance of a conversation held with a member of one of the gangs during the earlier part of the season.
'Do we get pretty good wages? Well, you see, sir, it all depends on the season. Just now, when strawberries are in and peas, we can earn as much as thirty shillings a week—some weeks more. Raspberries and beans we do pretty well with, but gooseberries and currants ain't so good: eight-and-twenty shillings a week is as much as we can make at those, working hard and long for that. Of course we have to work long hours, beginning at four or five o'clock in the morning, and keeping at it till eight and sometimes later at night, generally taking about an hour's rest at dinner-time. But as we gather all the fruit by piece-work, and so to speak, our time is our own, what dinner-time we take depends on what sort of a morning's work we've made—sometimes longer and sometimes shorter. You see, this is how we work. In my gang there's six of us, that have always worked together for a good many years now. We get one on each side of a row of strawberries or raspberries or peas, or what not; and when one basket is full, we puts a few handfuls in our apron, always managing so as to take in all the baskets full together; and then at night, when our work is counted up, we share it equally amongst us. We always know every night how much we have made, but only get paid once a week, on Saturdays: Saturday, you know, being an easy day with us, on account of there being no market on Sunday. Our missis is very good that way: every Saturday, afore twelve o'clock, there is our money, much or little; though there is some of the masters as think nothing of keeping their women waiting about till six or seven o'clock at night before they pay them, and perhaps then only gives 'em a part of it; which comes hard on folks as live from hand to mouth, as we have to do; the shop at which we deal only giving one week's credit—pay up one Saturday night, and run on as much as you like till the next; or if you don't pay up, no more credit till you does.
'Apples and pears and such-like fruit we have nothing to do with—men gather them in. In fact as often as not the master sells the fruit as it stands on the tree, and the buyer has to get his own men to pluck it. But there's always some sort of fruit or vegetables to be gathered from the beginning of spring till the end of summer as we can do by piecework; and then the potatoes come in, which we pick up after they've been turned out of the ground by men or by a machine; but that we does by day-work, getting one-and-sixpence a day when we work from six to six; and one-and-twopence when we work from eight till dark. In winter-time there's always something to be done dibbing in cabbage-plants, weeding, and such-like; but what with sharp frosts and heavy snows, we don't earn much then, perhaps doing three or four days' work in a week. Of course if we haven't had the sense to put by some of the money we make in the good times of summer, times come cruel hard on us in the winter; and very few of us like to apply to the parish if we can anyhow help it. Not but what our missis is good to us in that way, often finding us a day's work when it ain't needed, and always giving us a half-pint of beer at the end of the day; which we can't claim, you know.
'We don't take much count of rain either winter or summer, because, you see, people will have their fruit and vegetables fresh gathered; and so we wrap ourselves well up and make the best of it. As I said before, Saturday we don't do much; but then we have to make up for it on Sundays, so as to send the fruit fresh to Monday's market.
'Don't we suffer from rheumatics? Well, you mightn't think so, but it ain't often any of us ails much. You see, being out in all weathers, we get hardened to it; and besides, we always take good care to keep our feet warm and dry—that's why we wear such heavy boots; and that's the chief thing to look after, if you don't want to catch cold; so people say. There ain't many of us but what is on the wrong side of thirty; four out of my gang being widows this many a year, with grown-up sons and daughters; and it's the same in most gangs. Sometimes we have young women amongst us; but there's not many of 'em stays at it after they are married; not all the year through, I mean; perhaps coming for a day or two at the busiest times; but even then it hardly pays them, if they have a young family about 'em. The gangs of young women as you sometimes see, we don't count as belonging to us; they only coming up from Shropshire mostly—for a month or six weeks at the busiest part of the season. Children we never have working with us, I suppose because they wouldn't be careful enough about not crushing the fruit; which as you know, it would never pay to send crushed fruit into market. For my part, I'm very glad as there is no children allowed amongst us, as though it ain't very hard work, it's terribly tedious and back-aching. When our children is old enough, we send the girls out to service somewhere; and there's always plenty of work for the lads, of some sort, about the farms; which is a good deal better than breaking their backs at our work.
'We all of us in my gang live hereabouts, in those little cottages that you see yonder. Three shillings a week the rent of 'em is; but then there's a good piece of garden-ground at the back; and most of us has lodgers, young men what work on the farms and in the gardens mostly. Four rooms there is in my cottage; and I have three lodgers, sometimes four, two sleeping in one room. Good lads they are too. You see, as they get home before I do, I always lay my fire in the morning before I go out; and a neighbour of mine sets it alight in time for the kettle to be a-boiling when they come in to their tea at six o'clock; and they never misses leaving a potful of good strong tea for me to have when I get home; which you may be sure is all the more grateful through being the only hot drink I get all day, having only a drop of cold tea, which I carry in that can there, for my breakfast. And maybe if we are working near a public-house, we club up, and one of us goes and gets a drop of beer to drink with our dinners.
'If it wasn't for the lodgers, the gardens wouldn't be much use to us; but they generally take it in hand, and often comes to take a pride in it; so that we are never short of such vegetables as are in season; which helps a good way towards the rent. They also chop up my wood and fetch my water for me, and make themselves handy in a score of ways; indeed if I lost my lodgers, I don't know what I should do. It ain't much cooking I do in the week; but what there is to do I do after I come home. On Sunday the lads always look for a hot dinner; which when I'm at home, I cook for them; and when I'm at work I get all ready on Saturday night, and one of 'em takes it to the bakehouse to be baked. When we do work on Sundays, if we anyhow can manage it, we try to get done by three or four o'clock, so as we may be in time to dress and go to church; which as a rule we mostly do.
'I can't read nor yet write, and I don't suppose as there's a-many amongst the oldest of us as can. It wasn't much chance of schooling girls like us got in my time, as we was sent out to work at something or other when we was about nine or ten. I did go to school for a little while; but if I learnt anything I must have forgotten it again. The young ones are better off for the matter of that, and are always willing to read or write a letter for us when we want 'em.
'Nineteen years I've been at it regular now, sir; and though I was left a widow with seven children, the oldest of 'em only ten and one at the breast, I'm proud and thankful to say as we've never had any need to ask once for a loaf of bread even from the parish, and trust as we never shall. I ain't the only one either, for there's Mrs Amblin as lives next door to me was left with nine children, oldest only twelve, and has lived to see 'em all doing for themselves without being beholden to nobody for a crust of bread. Some years, when the fruit has been backward or scarce, we've had a very close push to make ends meet; but it has only taught us to be more careful when we have a good season, and to put by a little more towards a bad one. We don't use any bank, bless you! what little we can manage to put by, we generally likes to have handy where we can put our hand on it when we want it. Of course, there's no telling what may happen; but while I have my health and strength left me, I shall always be able to earn as much as I need; and if it should happen as they fail me, well, what with lodgers and the shilling or two my children will help me with, I daresay I shall struggle along somehow. Mostly, though our children don't come to be much more than field-hands and farm-labourers, when the time comes they don't begrudge what is due to their parents, and manage somehow to keep 'em out of the workhouse. Not but some of 'em goes to the bad, as might be expected, seeing the little schooling we can afford to give them, and the temptations there is for them nowadays; but it is only here and there one, and they generally finish up by listing for a soldier, which soon steadies 'em. One of my lads is away now in the East Indies; and though I don't often hear from him, he seems to be getting on quite as well as ever he'd ha' done at home. Our girls mostly gets acquainted with one or other of the men working about the place where they are at service, and get married, sooner perhaps than what we old folks think they ought to—about nineteen or twenty—and settle down near where their husbands work.