“Hard Times” is Dickens’
powerful description of the grim lives led by factory workers in a Lancashire mill town in the 1840s. During
the same period, life for farm workers in Suffolk could be equally grim and challenging. Poets may have waxed lyrical about a rural
idyll, but in reality, country life was frequently ‘nasty, brutish and
short.’ Chronic illness could make you
unfit for farm work and force you to become dependent on the 19th
century equivalent of social security: charity handouts, parish dole and the
dreaded workhouse.
Robert Kidby, a Felsham farm
labourer, was dogged by persistent ill-health and weakness all his working life.
He died young in 1848 at the age of thirty-five, and was buried in a pauper’s
grave in the local churchyard. During the
last few years of his life, he and his family were in receipt of parish
relief. We know this because they appear
in the official records of the overseers of the poor.
Robert was born in 1813 in a
small cottage at Mudlin End and started work on a farm at the age of
twelve. He had regular work to begin
with but eventually he ended up being a day labourer – employed only when work
was available.
In 1840, when he was 27 years
old, Robert married Esther Snelling in Felsham Church and soon after a son called Reuben was born. Then, about a year after their marriage,
Robert and his small family moved a few miles to the adjoining parish of
Cockfield.
In 1845, the family were
receiving help from the parish of Cockfield in the form of bread flour and
small amounts of cash. Clearly, Robert’s illness prevented him from providing
adequately for his family. In the same year, their four-year old son Reuben
died.
However, a year later, Esther
gave birth to a daughter, whom they named Caroline. The family were still on the bread-line and
receiving parish assistance but the time had now arrived for the family to be
legally deported to their “village of settlement” which was Felsham. Soon after his return to his village of
birth, Robert is reported as being treated for his illness in the workhouse at
Onehouse while his family is recorded as receiving “out-relief” from the
Felsham overseers of the poor.
After Robert’s death in 1848,
Esther and her two-year old daughter Caroline moved to Bradfield St
George. They were recorded in the Census
of 1851 but what happened to them after that we do not know.
(Oct 2012)
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A detailed description of the
life of Robert Kidby can be found in PART THREE of the illustrated booklet:
FARM LABOURERS AND THEIRFAMILIES IN A SUFFOLK VILLAGE ~ FELSHAM1830-50
Available from Felsham Post Office priced £3.50
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