Ch. 17: Old Wiltshire Days--continued

An old Wiltshire woman's memories--Her home--Work on a farm--A little
bird-scarer--Housekeeping--The agricultural labourers' rising--Villagers
out of work--Relief work--A game of ball with barley
bannocks--Sheep-stealing--A poor man hanged--Temptations to steal--A
sheep-stealing shepherd--A sheep-stealing farmer--Story of Ebenezer
Garlick--A sheep-stealer at Chitterne--The law and the judges--A "human
devil" in a black cap--How the revolting labourers were punished--A last
scene at Salisbury Court House--Inquest on a murdered man--Policy of the
farmers

The story of her early life told by my old friend Joan, aged
ninety-four, will serve to give some idea of the extreme poverty and
hard suffering life of the agricultural labourers during the thirties of
last century, at a time when farmers were exceedingly prosperous and
landlords drawing high rents.

She was three years old when her mother died, after the birth of a boy,
the last of eleven children. There was a dame's school in their little
village of Fonthill Abbey, but the poverty of the family would have made
it impossible for Joan to attend had it not been for an unselfish person
residing there, a Mr. King, who was anxious that every child should be
taught its letters. He paid for little Joan's schooling from the age of
four to eight; and now, in the evening of her life, when she sits by the
fire with her book, she blesses the memory of the man, dead these
seventy or eighty years, who made this solace possible for her.

After the age of eight there could be no more school, for now all the
older children had gone out into the world to make their own poor
living, the boys to work on distant farms, the girls to service or to be
wives, and Joan was wanted at home to keep house for her father, to do
the washing, mending, cleaning, cooking, and to be mother to her little
brother as well.

Her father was a ploughman, at seven shillings a week; but when Joan was
ten he met with a dreadful accident when ploughing with a couple of
young or intractable oxen; in trying to stop them he got entangled in
the ropes and one of his legs badly broken by the plough. As a result it
was six months before he could leave his cottage. The overseer of the
parish, a prosperous farmer who had a large farm a couple of miles away,
came to inquire into the matter and see what was to be done. His
decision was that the man would receive three shillings a week until
able to start work again, and as that would just serve to keep him, the
children must go out to work. Meanwhile, one of the married daughters
had come to look after her father in the cottage, and that set the
little ones free.

The overseer said he would give them work on his farm and pay