¹ Chambers, J. D., “Enclosure and the Labour Supply in the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review, 5 (No. 3, 1953), pp. 319–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² Ibid., p. 117.

³ Crafts, N. F. R., “Enclosure and the Labour Supply Revisited,” Explorations in Economic History, 15 (04 1978), pp. 172–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lazonick, W., “Karl Marx and Enclosures in England,” Review of Radical Political Economics, 6, pt. 2 (Summer 1974), pp. 1–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Turner, M. E., “Parliamentary Enclosure and Landownership Change in Buckinghamshire,” Economic History Review, 28 (11 1975), pp. 563–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yelling, J. A., Common Field and Enclosure in England, 1450–1850 (London, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, K. D. M., Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allen, Robert C., “The Growth of Labor Productivity in Early Modern English Agriculture,” Explorations in Economic History, 25 (06 1988), pp. 117–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allen, Robert C., “Agrarian Fundamentalism and English Agricultural Development,” paper presented at the Harvard Economic Workshop, 10 6, 1989.Google Scholar

⁴ “Since they [cottage labourers with customary useage of the commons] had no proprietary rights they do not appear in the enclosure award or land tax returns…” (Chambers, “Enclosure,” p. 104)Google Scholar; see also Clapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain, vol. I: The Early Railway Age (Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

⁵ Clapham, Economic History, p. 113Google Scholar; Tilly, C., “Demographic Origins of the European Proletariat,” in Levine, David, ed., Proletarianization and Family History (London, 1984), pp. 1–85Google Scholar; Levine, D., “Production, Reproduction and the Proletarian Family in England, 1500–1851,” in Levine, ed., Proletarianization, pp. 87–128.Google Scholar

⁶ These estimates and the quotation are from Tilly, “Demographic Origins,” p. 8; see also Snell, Annals, p. 168; Lazonick, “Karl Marx,” p. 87.Google Scholar

⁷ Sometimes even sympathetic authorities choose to emphasize the ideological or sociological implications of the loss of the commons. The Orwins' emphasis on the erosion of collective responsibility, Thirsk's on the boost given to individualism, and Mill's on the reduced sense of independence, although raising important points, obscure evidence that working people suffered specific economic injuries.Google Scholar See Orwin, C. S. and Orwin, C. S., The Open Fields (Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar; Thirsk, Joan, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar; Mills, Dennis R., “The Nineteenth Century Peasant at Melboum, Cambridgeshire,” in Smith, Richard M., ed., Land, Kinship and Life Cycle (Cambridge, 1984).Google Scholar

⁸ Malcolmson, R. W., “Ways of Getting a Living in Eighteenth Century England,” in Pahl, R. E., ed., On Work (Oxford, 1988), p. 51.Google Scholar Similarly, Martin, J. M. emphasizes the prevalence of common rights among cottagers and small-scale landowners in the Feldon of Warwickshire, and June Sheppard stresses the universality of access to the wastes for all established households in the Yorkshire townships which she surveyed.Google Scholar See Martin, J. M., “Village Traders and the Emergence of a Proletariat in South Warwickshire,” Agricultural History Review, 32, pt. 2 (1984), pp. 179–88Google Scholar; and Sheppard, June A., “Field Systems of Yorkshire,” in Baker, A. R. H. and Butlin, R. A., eds., Studies of Field Systems in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 145–87.Google Scholar For the classic view of a pre-enclosure democratic pattern of ownership, see Slater, G. E., The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields (New York, 1968). And for a qualified view, which still includes beneficiaries whose common rights were legally insecure, “the cottager with little or no land who none the less kept a cow remained as an important figure in the late eighteenth century common field community,”Google Scholar see Yelling, Common Field, p. 229.Google Scholar

⁹ Confutation of this view has been based on the stability of size distributions of farms before and after enclosure; see Chambers, J. D., “Enclosures and the Small Landowner,” Economic History Review, 10 (11 1940), pp. 118–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mingay, G. E., Enclosure and the Small Farmer in the Age of the Industrial Revolution: Studies in Economic History (London, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collins, K., “Marx on the English Agricultural Revolution: Theory and Evidence,” History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History, 6 (No. 3, 1967), pp. 351–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar But Michael Turner's investigation of several Buckinghamshire villages suggests that after enclosure many independent smallholders were replaced by tradespeople, professionals, and petty rentiers from the towns. Their influx left the distribution of holdings unchanged, but “on the other hand the personal constitution of landownership was sometimes restructured completely”; see Turner, “Parliamentary Enclosure,” p. 569.Google ScholarMartin's, J. M. documentation of extensive traffic in common rights before enclosure and in allotments after enclosure provides supporting evidence from WarwickshireGoogle Scholar; see Martin, “The Small Landowner and Parliamentary Enclosure in Warwickshire,” Economic History Review, 32 (08 1979), pp. 328–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ Gonner, E. C. K., Common Land and Enclosures (London, 1912), p. 365Google Scholar; Yelling, Common Field, p. 230.Google Scholar

¹¹ Annals of Agriculture, 16 (1791), p. 483Google Scholar; for other examples see Snell, Annals, pp. 190–91; Martin detects “a distinct decline in generosity over time” in the compensation meted out to the village poor by enclosure commissioners, see “Village Traders,” p. 185.Google Scholar

¹² Gonner, Common Land, p. 367Google Scholar; Giles, P. M., “The Enclosure of Common Lands in Stockport,” Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 62 (1950–1951), pp. 73–110, details how apparently unusually disinterested burghers enclosed and sold local commons allegedly to finance the construction of a prison and workhouse, but then belies this picture of public-spirited generosity with evidence of subsequent misappropriation of the proceeds.Google Scholar

¹³ Parkinson, R., A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Huntingdon (London, 1813), p. 256Google Scholar; Bailey, J. and Culley, G., A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Northumberland (London, 1813), p. 36.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Hammond, J. L. and Hammond, B., The Village Labourer, 1760–1832 (London, 1919)Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, E. J. and Rude, G., Captain Swing (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Snell, AnnalsGoogle Scholar; Neeson, J. M., “The Opponents of Enclosure in Eighteenth Century Northamptonshire,” Past and Present, 105 (11 1984), pp. 114–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Thirsk, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, pp. 10–13, 204, 403Google Scholar; Wrightson, K., English Society, 1580–1680 (London, 1982), pp. 126–27.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Young, A., General Report on Enclosures (London, 1808), p. 12.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Bailey and Culley, Northumberland, p. 263.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Annals of Agriculture, 16 (1791), p. 502.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Young, A., “An Inquiry into the Propriety of Applying Wastes to the Better Maintenance and Support of the Poor,” Annals of Agriculture, 36 (1801), p. 515Google Scholar; Hunt, E. P., Arthur Young on Industry and Economics (Bryn Mawr, 1926).Google Scholar

²⁰ Plymley, J., A General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire (London, 1813), p. 145.Google Scholar

²¹ Ibid.

²² Pringle, A., A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Westmoreland (London, 1813), p. 354Google Scholar; Young, General Report, p. 12.Google Scholar

²³ Davis, Thomas, A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Wiltshire (London, 1813), p. 40.Google Scholar

²⁴ Parliamentary Papers, 5 (1844)Google Scholar; for an excellent summary of the modern treatment of rent increases as a motive to enclose, see Turner, Michael, English Parliamentary Enclosure: Its Historical Geography and Economic History (London, 1980), p. 98 ff. and references cited therein.Google Scholar

²⁵ Young, “An Inquiry,” p. 515Google Scholar; here Young anticipates the framework and conclusions, if not the method, of a recent comment on the welfare implications of enclosure. Nick von Tunzelmann's use of dynamic optimization to evaluate actual and feasible time paths of consumption per head for industrializing Britain suggests that a less brutal pace of enclosure would not have retarded growth significantly, see his “The Standard of Living Debate and Optimal Economic Growth,” in Mokyr, Joel, ed., The Economics of the Industrial Revolution (London, 1985).Google Scholar

²⁶ Young, General Report, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

²⁷ Ibid., pp. 6–7.

²⁸ Ibid., pp. 12–13.

²⁹ Young, “An Inquiry,” p. 510Google Scholar; Levine, D., Reproducing Families: The Political Economy of English Population History (London, 1987), p. 67.Google Scholar

³⁰ “…setting the profit of the calf against the loss sustained when the cow is dry”; Mr. Kent's estimate appears as a footnote in SirSinclair, John, “Observations on the Means of Enabling a Cottager to Keep A Cow,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 4 (1805), pp. 358–69.Google Scholar

³¹ Clapham, An Economic History, p. 496.Google Scholar

³² Davies, David, The Case of Laborers in Husbandry (New Brunswick, 1977)Google Scholar; Eden, Frederic Morton, The State of the Poor (London, 1928).Google Scholar See also the historians of diet: Drummond, J. C. and Wilbraham, A., The Englishman's Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet (London, 1950)Google Scholar; Oddy, D. J. and Miller, D. S., eds., The Making of the British Diet (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Burnett, John, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day (London, 1966).Google Scholar

³³ Burnett, Plenty, pp. 254–55; Drummond and Wilbraham, The Englishman's Food, p. 245.Google Scholar

³⁴ Burnett, Plenty, pp. 254–55; Drummond and Wilbraham, The Englishman's Food, pp. 247–48.Google Scholar

³⁵ Davis, Wiltshire, p. 41; “An Account of the Produce of Milk and Butter from a Cow, the Property of William Cramp of Lewes in the County of Sussex,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 5 (1801), pp. 122–25.Google Scholar

³⁶ Mr. Barker (to Lord Winchilsea), reported in Winchilsea, Lord, “Cottages,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 1 (1797), p. 80.Google Scholar

³⁷ Winchilsea, Lord, “Cottages,” p. 81.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Bailey and Cully, Northumberland, p. 236; Plymley, Shropshire, pp. 224–25.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Pringle, Westmoreland, p. 322; Giles, “Enclosure in Stockport,” pp. 87–88Google Scholar; this is not to deny that population growth put pressure on stint agreements, see Turner, English Parliamentary Enclosure, chap. 6.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Brownlow, Lord, “Queries Concerning Cottagers,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 1 (1797), p. 85.Google Scholar

⁴² Ibid.; for other evidence of the lucrative hiring out of common rights, see Pringle, Westmoreland, p. 321.Google Scholar

⁴³ Arbuthnot, , quoted in Kussmaul, Ann, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Brownlow, “Queries,” p. 86.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Collins, E. J. T., “Labour Supply and Demand in European Agriculture, 1800–1880,” in Jones, E. L. and Woolf, S. J., eds., Agrarian Change and Economic Development: The Historical Problems (London, 1969), pp. 61–94Google Scholar; Parliamentary Papers, 21–22 (1861).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Levine, Reproducing Families, p. 67.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ For a modern orthodox perspective on the efficiency of open field agriculture, see McCloskey, D. N., “The Enclosure of Open Fields: Preface to a Study of its Impact on the Efficiency of English Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century,” this JOURNAL, 32 (03 1972), pp. 15–35Google Scholar; but Havinden, M. A., “Agricultural Progress in Open Field Oxfordshire,” Agricultural History Review, 4 (1961), pp. 73–83, demonstrates that enclosure was not a necessary condition for progressive farmingGoogle Scholar; the link between the commons and the discipline of agricultural labor is a major theme in Snell, Annals, p. 170 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Sinclair, “Observations,” pp. 358–59.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Winchilsea, “Cottages,” p. 80.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ In SirSinclair's, John scheme the cow was maintained by arable farming, which “requires unquestionably more labour on the part of the cottager, and of his family: at the same time, the occupation of so great an extent of ground is not so necessary …,” “Observations,” p. 358.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ibid., p. 367.

⁵² Winchilsea, “Cottages,” p. 80Google Scholar; Vavasour, Henry, “Reference to the Flemish Manner,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 4 (1805), p. 308.Google Scholar

⁵³ See also Barnett, D. C., “Allotments and the Problem of Rural Poverty, 1780–1840,” in Jones, E. L. and Mingay, G. E., eds., Land, Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1967), pp. 162–86.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Yelling, Common Field; Snell, Annals.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Snell, Annals; Barnett, “Allotments.” Note here too the farmers' apparent reluctance to encourage cowkeeping by selling hay to their laborers, a stance which MrBarclay, argued against on the grounds that a laborer who was dependent on a farmer for hay would “keep more closely by his work.”Google Scholar See Barclay, Robert, “On Labourers in Husbandry Renting Land,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 1 (1797), pp. 91–92.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Martin, “Village Traders.”Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Winchilsea, “Cottages,” p. 81.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Brownlow, “Queries,” p. 90.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Pringle, Westmoreland.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Everitt, Alan, “Farm Labourers,” in Thirsk, , ed., Agrarian History, pp. 396–465.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Stevenson, William, A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Surrey (London, 1813), p. 459.Google Scholar

⁶² In his Annals, Keith Snell gives £5.20, £6.87, and £7.87 as average female earnings in Surrey, Kent, Essex, and Hertfordshire in 1801–5, and 1806–10, and 1811–15. Of course, any one gathering activity would be unlikely to provide year-round employment, but different kinds of selfemployment, often including cottage industry, could be patched together and integrated with domestic work and childcare.Google Scholar

⁶³ Horn, Pamela, Labouring Life in the Victorian Countryside (Dublin, 1976).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Sinclair, “Observations,” p. 364.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Cobbett, William, Rural Rides (London, 1922)Google Scholar; Davidson, Caroline, A Woman's Work is Never Done: A History of Housework in the British Isles, 1650–1950 (London, 1982).Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Parliamentary Papers, Commons Inclosure, p. 55ff.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ibid., p. 71.

⁶⁸ Hammond and Hammond, Village Labourer, p. 107.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 129; Wrightson, English Society, p. 175.

⁷⁰ Parliamentary Papers, Commons Inclosure, p. 77.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Yelling, Common Field, p. 227; Martin, “Village Traders,” p. 183, quotes Homer to the effect that gleaning rights were a “special boon” to the cottagers precisely because the product did not vary with good or bad harvests and so was “most advantageous when most wanted to be so”.Google Scholar

⁷² Morgan, David H. notes that on some farms, laborers, particularly those with access to stocks, were prohibited from keeping pigs and poultryGoogle Scholar; see “The Place of Harvesters in Nineteenth-Century Village Life,” in Samuel, Raphael, ed., Village Life and Labour (London, 1975), pp. 27–72.Google Scholar

⁷³ Harries, E., “Letter,” Annals of Agriculture, 25 (1796), p. 488Google Scholar; Jennie Kitteringham, “Country Work Girls in Nineteenth-Century England,” in Samuel, ed., Villiage Life, pp. 73–139, also suggests that, with hard work, it was possible to glean enough to supply bread for a family during the winter months.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Eden, State of the Poor, p. 547.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Pinchbeck, Ivy, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Ibid.

⁷⁷ For an excellent survey of this debate, see Thomas, Janet, “Women and Capitalism: Oppression or Emancipation? A Review Article,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30 (1988), pp. 534–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁸ For the important references, see ibid.

⁷⁹ Richards, Eric, “Women in the British Economy since about 1700: An Interpretation,” History, 59 (10. 1974), pp. 337–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tilly, Louise A. and Scott, Joan W., Women, Work and Family (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Baines, D. C., “The Labour Supply and the Labour Market, 1860–1914,” in Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald, eds., The Economic History of Britain Since 1700 (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; Snell, K. D. M., “Agricultural Seasonal Unemployment, the Standard of Living and Women's Work in the South and East, 1690–1860,” Economic History Review, 34 (08. 1981), pp. 407–37Google Scholar; Joseph, George, Women at Work (Oxford, 1983).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ For example, Kitteringham, “Country Work Girls”; Kussmaul, Servants.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Snell, Annals.Google Scholar

⁸² Modem research confirms fragmentary historical evidence suggesting that in the absence of facilities for bottle-feeding, sterilization equipment, appropriate food, and pure water, breastfeeding was essential for infant survival, see UNICEF, The World's Children (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar; Brenner, Joanna and Ramas, Maria, “Rethinking Women's Oppression,” New Left Review, 144 (03–04. 1981), pp. 33–71Google Scholar; Jane Humphries, “The Sexual Division of Labour and Social Control: An Interpretation,” Review of Radical Political Economics (forthcoming).Google Scholar

⁸³ Eden, The State of the Poor; Davies, The Case of Labourers. Data for a group of families in Lincoinshire in 1868 also suggests that the harvest earnings of women represented about 7 percent of annual income. But these women were able to work for additional wages in the Sping, increasing their yearly contribution to 12 to 14 percent. Inclusion of the harvest earnings of children boosted the contribution of autumnal wages to around one-seventh of the whole livelihood:Google Scholar see Horn, Labouring Life in the Victorian Countryside. Recasting David Morgan's judgment in terms of rural families, not individual workers, such earnings could indeed be the key to survival, “The Place of Harvesters,” p. 38.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ “Report from his Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Operation of the Poor Laws in England and Wales: Appendix B I,” Parliamentary Papers, 30 (1834).Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Haden, C. T., Practical Observations on the Management and Disease of Children (London, 1827), pp. 24, 124.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Pinchbeck, Women; Kussmaul, Servants; Snell, Annals.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Hammond and Hammond, The Village Labourer; Hobsbawm and Rude, Captain Swing; Wrightson, English Society.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Morgan, “The Place of Harvesters,” p. 58.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Pinchbeck, Women.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Eyre, G. E. Briscoe, The New Forest, Its Common Rights and Cottage Stock-Keepers (Lyndhurst, 1883), pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Winchilsea, “Cottages,” p. 78; Pinchbeck, Women.Google Scholar

⁹² MrCrutchley, , “Answers to the Queries Respecting Cottagers Renting Land,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 1 (1797), p. 94.Google Scholar

⁹³ Thompson, Thomas, “Reasons for Giving Lands to Cottagers to Enable them to Keep Cows,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 4 (1805), p. 427.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Babington, Thomas, “Account of Some Cottagers,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture. 4 (1805), p. 394.Google ScholarSocial benefits significantly collapsed into benefits to ratepayers. The Board of Agriculture's schemes were intended to reduce applications for relief, and similarly Arthur Young's calculations of the costs and benefits were in terms of the impact on poor law expenditures. The logic was impeccable: if families' incomes were not to be supplemented from the rates, and if wages were not to increase, underemployed women and children had to be found work.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Pinchbeck, Women.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ SirPulteney, William, “Account of a Cottager,” Communications to the Board of Agriculture, 4 (1805), p. 344.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Kerr, Barbara, Bound to the Soil: A Social History of Dorset, 1750–1918 (London, 1968), pp. 80–81.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Norfolk Federation of Women's Institutes, Within Living Memory, quoted in Horn, Labouring Life, p. 30.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ See Davidson, Woman's Work.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Sturt, George, Change in the Village (London, 1912), p. 23.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Thompson, Flora, Lark Rise to Candleford (London, 1954), p. 14.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Plymley's views are typical: “the commons operates upon their minds as a sort of independence: this idea leads the man to lose many days work by which he gets a habit of indolence: a daughter kept at home to milk a poor half-starved cow, who being open to temptation soon turns harlot, and becomes a distressed ignorant mother instead of making a useful servant.”Google ScholarShropshire, p. 225.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Ibid., p. 225, his emphasis.