Such a man might earn a bit extra at harvest-time and he probably had produce from his own garden to feed on in summer-time, but meat is noticeably absent from the list. Bread and small beer were the standard diet of most Sussex agricultural labourers. Moreover, poor people increasingly complained that they could not find waste land enough on which to build even a small wattle-and-daub cottage with a bit of garden in which to grow vegetables, for during the 18^th century vast areas of previously common land had been enclosed as private property (e.g. The Dicker in Chiddingly).

The typical wage of 8s. per week had not increased by 1821. Indeed to anticipate slightly the events of 1830, in that latter year the men of Ringmer, just along the turnpike from Chiddingly, were demanding 9s. per week as a significant increase in wages. Such incomes left no reserve for periods of sickness, unemployment or severe winters, whilst the addition of children to a labourer’s family swiftly pushed him towards pauperism.

In Chiddingly in 1821 sixty-four heads of households were described as “labourers” – which meant “agricultural labourers”. Between them they had two hundred and fifty-nine dependants, not including those children out as servants in other households. Nor do these figures include the three or four men who received no occupational description because, it seems, they were simply permanently unemployed paupers. The three families which lived in The Old School House – previously the residence of Richard Lower’s predecessor as the village schoolmaster – exemplify the differences between having a skilled trade and having a large family.

This house either belonged to or was rented by Richard Guy, a carpenter. He was 39 years old and his wife Charlotte was 44. They had no children and it must have been because of this they could afford a servant, not a little pauper girl like Richard Lower’s Mary Pinney but 20-year old Frances Reed. Presumably, however, the Old School House was too large for their own needs and so they sub-let to two other families. One was headed by Edward Deacon (47) and his wife Elizabeth (48). They had seven children under the age of eleven still living at home and it seems certain that Richard Lower’s Elizabeth Deacon – the eldest daughter called after her mother – Thomas Guy’s Frances Deacon were two more of their children. There may have been others who had died or moved away, as Elizabeth seems to have done since 1812 as there is no mention of her in the 1821 Census, unless she married and changed her surname. No occupation is given for Edward Deacon and it seems certain that he was one of the permanent paupers, dragged down by the size of his family, and that John Ellis, who headed the third family in the house, was another such. He was 40, his wife Harriet was 35, they had six children and John had no occupation.