ABSTRACT
From a poem by Felicia Hemans Francis George Heath, writing on British Rural Life and Labour in 1911, entitled one of the chapters of his book 'Romance and reality'. Nearly forty years before, in 1873, he had tramped the west country 'pencil and notebook in hand' to investigate the condition of the rural labourer, and he recalled an episode when one day he stumbled by chance on an idyllic scene:
But unlike Mrs Hemans, Heath penetrated inside one of 'the cottage
homes of England'. At No. 1 lived a carter, his wife, his bedridden mother, and his family of five children, only one of whom, at nine-and-a-half, was old enough to work. The carter earned 10s a week, less £3 5s Od a year for the rent of a tiny potato ground,less 10s a year for rates - which included a gas rate for the adjoining parish. The oldest boy earned 5d a day and a pint of cider. The family existed in abject poverty and misery. The roof leaked and there were broken panes in the windows. In the two bedrooms, heaps of rags served as bedclothes. Some of the children had no shoes.2
