PAP 028

The Poet and The Paupers

VI.028


Now, “occupied” could mean that he kept these acres as parkland for his own leisurely pursuits; or it could mean that he actually farmed them, which would have been untypical for a gentleman, since the landed gentry usually rented most of their lands to farmers. Perhaps if T. Day Esquire did farm, it amounted to little more than leaning on the proverbial gate to poke the proverbial pig whilst others trudged round in the mud and mucked out the sheds. On the other hand, he was an active member of the Chiddingly Vestry and even took his turn at performing his social duty as an Assistant Overseer of the Poor, which was also most unusual for a gentleman. It seems likely, then, that Thomas Day Esquire was one of that new breed of farmer which had emerged by the 1820’s: men who had become rich, especially through the high wartime food prices, and who aspired to rise in the social scale. Contemporary satirists lampooned them as thick-set, red-necked clods who set their daughters to learn the piano rather than winnowing wheat or milking cows and who developed in their farmhouses highly ornamented, genteel parlours. The other side of the coin was that labourers no longer ate in the farmhouse kitchen nor were considered as part of the farmer’s household, as had been the tradition for centuries. “The great advance in the price of provisions has apparently contributed to diminish the number of domestic servants,” wrote T. Batchelor in 1815, and the Rector of Whatfield in Suffolk told the Poor Law Commission in 1832 that “It is cheaper to hire labourers by the day… than to maintain Servants in the House, especially as they are always sent home on a rainy day.” William Cobbett in The Political Register in 1825 put it bluntly: “Why do not farmers now feed and lodge their workpeople, as they did formerly? Because they cannot keep them upon so little as they give them in wages.” By 1821 Thomas Day had acquired his “Esquire”. Richard Lower was punctilious in suffixing it to his name when it occurred in the Vestry Minutes; but he could be touchy over its use, either from a Dissenter’s dislike of title or from its misapplication. A correspondent who wrote to him at Muddles Green as “Richard Lower Esquire” received the following cutting rebuke: Treat me as one possess’d of common sense, And give the titled honor where ‘tis due; With what elates a coxcomb I dispense; Thus spare me, Sir, the pompous E.S.Q.!

Now, “occupied” could mean that he kept these acres as parkland for his own leisurely pursuits; or it could mean that he actually farmed them, which would have been untypical for a gentleman, since the landed gentry usually rented most of their lands to farmers. Perhaps if T. Day Esquire did farm, it amounted to little more than leaning on the proverbial gate to poke the proverbial pig whilst others trudged round in the mud and mucked out the sheds. On the other hand, he was an active member of the Chiddingly Vestry and even took his turn at performing his social duty as an Assistant Overseer of the Poor, which was also most unusual for a gentleman. It seems likely, then, that Thomas Day Esquire was one of that new breed of farmer which had emerged by the 1820’s: men who had become rich, especially through the high wartime food prices, and who aspired to rise in the social scale. Contemporary satirists lampooned them as thick-set, red-necked clods who set their daughters to learn the piano rather than winnowing wheat or milking cows and who developed in their farmhouses highly ornamented, genteel parlours. The other side of the coin was that labourers no longer ate in the farmhouse kitchen nor were considered as part of the farmer’s household, as had been the tradition for centuries.

“The great advance in the price of provisions has apparently contributed to diminish the number of domestic servants,” wrote T. Batchelor in 1815, and the Rector of Whatfield in Suffolk told the Poor Law Commission in 1832 that “It is cheaper to hire labourers by the day… than to maintain Servants in the House, especially as they are always sent home on a rainy day.” William Cobbett in The Political Register in 1825 put it bluntly: “Why do not farmers now feed and lodge their workpeople, as they did formerly? Because they cannot keep them upon so little as they give them in wages.”

By 1821 Thomas Day had acquired his “Esquire”. Richard Lower was punctilious in suffixing it to his name when it occurred in the Vestry Minutes; but he could be touchy over its use, either from a Dissenter’s dislike of title or from its misapplication. A correspondent who wrote to him at Muddles Green as “Richard Lower Esquire” received the following cutting rebuke:

Treat me as one possess’d of common sense,
And give the titled honor where ‘tis due;
With what elates a coxcomb I dispense;
Thus spare me, Sir, the pompous E.S.Q.!

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