ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the nineteenth century most of the population of England and Wales lived in the countryside: only a quarter lived in towns. By 1851 half lived in each, and by 1900 over three-quarters were town dwellers. In the 1801 Census, one third of families were allocated to agriculture, two thirds to manufactures and commerce. Throughout the century the village community consisted not only of farmers and landless labourers but also of craftsmen such as farriers, carpenters, thatchers and shoemakers. The very poor in the early nineteenth-century countryside were isolated, hidden, inarticulate, and this was especially true of the wives. Women at home saw only their own families, occasionally a neighbour who came to ask for or give help, the village midwife and the parish officials when they applied for relief.
