The employment of women and children in agriculture: a reassessment of agricultural gangs in nineteenth-century Norfolk.

This article examines one of the most infamous forms of rural labour in nineteenth-century No rfolk: the agricultural gang. Using Parliamentary Papers as its source, the paper argues that some previous interpretations of this form of organized labour have both exaggerated the scale of ganging in the county, and misrepresented the composition of agricultural gangs. It will be shown that, far from exploiting the cheap labour of young children and adult women across Norfolk, by the 186os, agricultural gangs mainly consisted of a youthful workforce and were regionally concentrated in the west of the county. It calls for a more considered approach to using Parliamentary Papers to prevent the perpetuation of generalizations concerning female and child labour in the nineteenth-century countryside. In recent years research on the employment of female and child labourers in British agriculture in the period after 175o has expanded significantly. The potentially substantial, even vital role women's and children's earnings played in family subsistence is now generally recognized. Despite this, our knowledge of the position of women and children in rural society is still far from complete: in too many instances consideration of female or childhood issues is still subject to generalization and marginalization. The current state of research on women's farm labour in the early industrial period from 17oo to 185o has been highlighted by Pamela Sharpe in a recent article for this Review. She argues that historians' knowledge of female employment in, this period is still sketchy, a situation that can only be rectified by 'exploration of the regional context of women's work' to 'provide a fuller and more nuanced picture'. 1 Recent detailed research on a number of English counties has begun to reveal the complex regional diversity of rural women's work in agriculture. Judy Gielgud has shown that in Northumberland, women remained a vital component of the agricukural workforce into the twentieth century, whilst Celia Miller and Helen Speechley demonstrate that even in parts of the south-west, substantial numbers of women (and children) were employed as part of the agricultural day labour force well into the nineteenth century. 2 Joyce Burnette on the other hand argues work Pamela Sharpe, 'The female labour market in English agriculture during the Industrial Revolution: expansion or contraction, v, AgHR 47 (1999), p. 162. 2 Iudy Gielgud, 'Nineteenth-century farm women in Northumberland and Cumbria: the neglected workforce' (D.Phil thesis, University of Sussex, 199z); Celia Miller, 'The hidden workforce. Female fieldworkers in Gloucestershire, 187o-19o1', Southern Hist., 6 (1984), pp. 139-161; Helen V. Speechley, 'Female and child agricultural day labourers in Somerset, c. 1685-187o' (University of Exeter Ph.D thesis, 1999). AgHR 49, I, pp. 41-55 41