Nine Shillings a Week and Eight in a Family.
The wife of a Stebbing laborer has written to an Essex paper drawing a picture of how the poor of her class live, or perhaps we should say how they die, from day to day. Eight m a family, all told, is the sum of the Stebbing laborer's household—eight mouths that have somehow to be fed out of the bread winner's wages, which are nine shillings a week as a rule, but "often no more than seven." Nine shillings, we a»e reminded, " comes to a half-penny each a meal, and barely two shillings over," leaving two shillings for coal and all the other things that are wanted, even m the poorest man's home. %<Sir," says this humble letter-writer, " my husband has to go to work with his feet wet nearly every day, and but a very little to take with him; and my children have to go to school the same." Well may the Stebbing laborer's wife exclaim, '' They find fault with the work-houses ; but they live better than I do, and h»ve good shoes." Perhaps if the Allotment Act had been, as Audrey says, "a true thing," it might have fared a trifle better m this Essex household ; it could hardly fare worse.
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Nine Shillings a Week and Eight in a Family., Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2480, 1 August 1890
Nine Shillings a Week and Eight in a Family. Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2480, 1 August 1890
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