Living conditions of the poor

About half the people in England were poor. They seldom had enough to eat, and sometimes starved. Their clothes were second-hand, and a lot of poor children had no shoes. In the villages, their homes were simple shacks, with clay or wooden walls, thatched roofs, and no glass in the windows. They had no chimneys, just a hole in the roof. A chest, a bench, and a trestle table would be their only furniture.

The poor in the countryside were farm labourers and their families. The men's wages were low, and their wives helped out by making cheese and spinning wool. As soon as they were able, children had to work. The girls helped their mothers at home, and the boys earned a few pence minding sheep or scaring birds from the fields.

Even so, farm workers were well off in some respects. They had gardens, where they grew cabbages, peas, and beans. And they could keep a cow and some sheep on the common. So they had butter, cheese and wool to sell. They needed the money to pay the rent and buy their bread.

But when common land was enclosed, the poor suffered. The land was carved up into fields, and there was nowhere for their animals to graze. As a result, they had nothing to sell, and became even poorer.

Labourers in towns had to buy all their food. Their wages were poor, if they could get jobs at all. They lived in crowded, dirty hovels. In parts of London the poor were crammed fifteen or twenty to a room. And there were some with no homes at all.

Walter Robson: Crown, Parliament and People; Oxford University Press, 1992/2002, page 79