The rural labour market in the early nineteenth century: women’s and children’s employment, family income, and the 1834 Poor Law Report

This article revisits a familiar source-the 1834 Poor Law Report-to provide a fresh overview of the regional map of female and child labour in the early nineteenth-century countryside. Patterns of employment in domestic industry and agricultural labour (particularly haymaking, weeding, and harvesting) are investigated alongside labourers’ contributions to the annual family income. The results indicate that orthodox accounts of rural employment and wage patterns should not be accepted uncritically. Adopting an empirical approach to the qualitative evidence contained in the report offers a blueprint for future analysis of similar contemporary printed sources.