Unquiet Country: Voices of the Rural Poor, 1820-1880We rarely hear the past voices of the rural poor - the laborers dependent on casual employment, the workhouse inmates, the dispossessed. This book lets them tell their own story. It is, frequently, a story of bitterness and resentment, and one that bursts occasionally into outright rebellion. To many who occupied the early-Victorian countryside, injustice seemed part of the landscape. Robert Lee draws on a remarkable set of historical sources from Norfolk which show how the experience of poverty could lead people into social transgression and political resistance. Using dramatizations of contemporary accounts he presents a series of disturbing true stories, and goes on to assess what each one can tell us about the reality of nineteenth-century rural society. Insurrection, riot, execution, witchcraft, seduction - Unquiet Country visits the dark side of the Age of Improvement. |
Contents
Seems we have a Revolution on our Hands II | 11 |
Lady Catherine and the Arch Fiend | 25 |
Countdown to Riot | 45 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
agricultural labourer April Ashill Astley Attleborough Banningham Barker Benjamin Pulleyne Boileau Bradfield Captain Swing Catherine Boileau charity church Clippesby Cobel Corpusty CP.CP Crabbe crime December Depwade door East Anglian Eastoe Elizabeth Rudd enclosure farm farmers February Folklore manuscripts Francklin Freebridge Lynn Gressenhall Hagon hands Hastings Henry Burrell Heydon Holt Lows inmates January Lady Catherine land Law Union Guardians letter lives London magistrates Massingham Mitford & Launditch Mumford never Norfolk Chronicle Norfolk Record Office NORFOLK RURAL North Walsham Norwich Mercury November outdoor relief parish paupers poacher poaching political Poor Law Board Poor Law Union Pulleyne rabbits Record Office C/GP Record Office MS4322 rector Reepham relieving officer Richard Nockolds Rider Haggard riot Robert Bradfield Rudd's ruling class RURAL LIFE MUSEUM Scraggs seems Shipdham social Swanton Abbott things Thursford Tillett tithe Trustees village Walsham Walsingham Ward window witchcraft witches woman women workhouse