Labour and the Poor Volume VI: The Rural Districts (The Morning Chronicle’s Labour and the Poor Book 6) by Alexander MacKay

Rural life in 1850. On the ground reporting in Victorian England—with personal accounts from the labouring poor. In this volume Alexander Mackay and Shirley Brooks investigate the rural districts, traversing the South Eastern, South Western, and Eastern counties of England. We enter the dilapidated homes of the agricultural labourers and descend the mines of Cornwall. We hear accounts from labourers ending their days in the workhouse and explore incendiarism in Suffolk. We visit the Herring fishermen of Yarmouth and expose the workings of the “death” clubs in Essex. This and much more. “Labour and the Poor”, the acclaimed investigation into the poor of England and Wales, was undertaken from 1849 to 1851 by The Morning Chronicle , a leading London-based newspaper of the period. This remarkable series will take you into the cities, towns, and villages, into the mills, the factories, and the mines, hearing from the people themselves about their lives, their occupations, and their struggles for survival amidst the overwhelming poverty of the period. Brought to you in its entirety, for the very first time, this extraordinary and unsurpassed investigation will show what life was really like in the mid-19th century—on the ground reporting at its very best. In this
“No one who has even casually glanced over the admirable series of letters on the state of ‘Labour and the Poor in the Metropolitan, Rural, and Manufacturing Districts of England and Wales,’ which have for several weeks past appeared in the columns of The Morning Chronicle, can resist the conviction that a more complete exposition of the real condition of the labouring population throughout the kingdom has never been given to the world.”— The Sunday Times, February 3, 1850.