Rural Overcrowding in the late 19th century – ‘PIGGING TOGETHER’

Material sourced by Colin Burbidge

Overcrowding of families in unsuitable dwellings was a continuous problem in the late Nineteenth century for the forerunners of today’s local authorities. This was a national problem, not confined to city slums, but also common in rural areas - people on low wages with large families suffered most. Unsurprisingly a small hamlet like Murchington did not escape altogether. Murchington came under the wing of Okehampton Guardians and their Rural Sanitary Board.

On 5 January 1881 the “Western Times” newspaper reported a typical case. A labourer from Murchington was summoned for overcrowding by Mr. Yeo, Inspector of Nuisances for Okehampton Guardians, under the Public Health Act. On a previous visit on 16 July 1880, he  had been told by the labourer’s wife that there were 7 in the family, herself, and husband, 2 grown up sons, aged 20 and 17, a grown daughter and 2 children. They all slept in one bedroom, which was 14 feet by 12 feet and 7ft 3inches high.

It was a serious case, but far from unique. On 14 March 1884, the “Western Times” reported another severe case of overcrowding presented to the Sanitary Board by Mr. Yeo involving a limestone quarryman who occupied a cottage at Meldon. The cottage had one living room and one bedroom in which slept the quarryman, his wife, sons aged 23, 21, 19, and 18, 2 more sons aged 10 and 8 and another daughter aged 6. The bedroom measured 12 ft by 12ft 3inches and had no proper ceiling. There were 3 beds in which to sleep all 9 people. The cubic measure was 165 cubic feet per person, very much below the proper amount for a sleeping room.

The Board called on their Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Bennett, to visit and report.  Additionally, there was a second cottage at Meldon which had a large hole in its thatched roof through which the rain came freely. The ceiling would very soon fall in if not attended to. The Sanitary Board ordered steps to be taken to stop the overcrowding at Meldon, closing both cottages as uninhabitable. The newspapers do not comment on the fate of the Meldon families thereby displaced.

A fortnight later, on 28 March 1884, the “Western Times” carried an editorial prompted by the quarryman’s predicament, which strongly echoed the sensational language of Andrew Mearns’s pamphlet The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, then grabbing headlines nationwide:

“While on local matters we regret to have to draw attention to the condition of some dwellings of the poor in rural districts. The case is referred to on our 2nd page by the Okehampton Guardians. In a 2-room cottage where father, mother, 6 sons, from 22 years old downwards, and a 6-year-old daughter all sleeping in one room, a bed had lately been made up for a daughter of 17 in the lower room, to give birth to an illegitimate child.

When the poor are huddled together in this way modesty is an undeveloped sentiment.

The habits of “a savage’s life” would give a girl a better chance of acquiring the safeguard of her sex than this “pigging” which the Sanitary Authority of Okehampton have now under their eye at Meldon Quarries.

The Prince of Wales is a member of the Royal Commission which is charged with enquiry as to the dwellings of the poor. We hope his Royal Highness will not imagine that the rural districts are in a satisfactory state in this respect”

THE MURCHINGTON RUNAWAYS (Part 2)

by Colin Burbidge

To have one runaway Robert Northcott might consider himself unfortunate, but in 1846 it happened again at Murchington:  

(Western Times 6th April 1846)

 The Throwleigh Apprentices Register shows that James Bond, was assigned to Mr. Northcott on December 3rd, 1835. No parental names were registered.

On November 18th, 1846,  a report was published in the same newspaper: “Reports received by the Poor Law Board on Vagrancy”, in it a Dr. Boase classified vagrants by age group.

“The young English vagabond, probably runaway apprentices, these are from

17 to 23 years old, they defy authority, refuse work, and break windows.

To them gaol in winter is desirable retreat. These are the most disorderly and debauched of all.”

Runaway apprentices suffered a variety of punishments if caught. The Western Times reported some as follows:

May 31st, 1828: “Three apprentices ran off from their master and engaged themselves at Plymouth on board a vessel bound for Van Diemen’s Land. One of them having received severe chastisement from the ships master with a rope end, he contrived to escape on shore and returned to his master begging pardon for his offence and promised never more to offend”

May 24th, 1845: “Mr.W.H. Woodman was summoned by his apprentice Ellis, for ill usage

He had beaten him with a stick and left several contusions on his arm. There appeared to be fault on both sides, and as Mr. Woodman promised the Bench he would treat the lad better in future, no fine was inflicted.”

May 1847: “Francis Legg an apprentice of Mr. J. Smallridge was apprehended by Inspector Fulford for deserting his master. This being the second offence, he was committed for 14 days hard labour, and the master solicited their worships to cancel the indenture, which was done.”

Feb 21st, 1857 “At Exeter Guildhall John Thomas Spry aged 18 was charged by John Rich his master with absconding on January 2nd. Defendant said he was kept without a breakfast on the morning he left, and that generally his food was insufficient. This was contradicted by the complainant. Defendant was fined £1.1s with £1 6d costs which was forthwith paid by his friends. Complainant then offered to give up the defendant’s indenture if he were paid £9. The defendant’s friends paid the money, and the indenture was accordingly cancelled.”

 What of our two Murchington runaways?  Despite a search of the following two decades in the British Newspaper Archives, their names do not appear again in print after the runaway notices. Recaptured and punished, or free and on the run, we cannot know.

The Ancient Cross at St. Olaves Murchington

by Colin Burbidge

For a good many years in the grounds of St. Olaves Murchington stood an old Cross. It was still marked there on the 1886 and 1890 Ordnance Survey map.

 John Chudleigh’s book “Devonshire Antiquities” published in 1893 has an illustration of this cross as it stood against a wall at Murchington, showing a square tenon at the lower end of the shaft.

It was also mentioned in this extract from a small book “The Ancient Stone Crosses of Dartmoor”.

“A few years ago, in the garden of St. Olave's, a pleasantly situated residence,

then belonging to the Rev. W. T. A. Radford, rector of Down St. Mary,

was a fine old cross. It was not a Dartmoor cross, having been brought

from the parish of Bow, which is many miles distant. This was done,

I have been informed, by the Rev. J. Ingle, a former owner of the property.

About three years ago Mr. Radford sold St. Olave's to the Rev. A. G. Barker

 and shortly afterwards, the rector of Down St. Mary, saying that Mr. Radford

had authorized him to remove the cross, took it away, to his own parish

and placed it in the churchyard there, where it now is.

There seems, however, to have been a misunderstanding somewhere,

as Mr. Barker afterwards ascertained that no permission to remove it had been given”.

This account is not entirely accurate. In 1896 the Rev. W.T.A. Radford died and was succeeded as Rector of Down St. Mary by the former missionary Bishop of Madagascar, Robert Kestell-Cornish.

In his Will Rev. Radford left his estate (gross value £15,000) and any property to his remaining son, who was also named William Tucker Arundel Radford.

Ancient Cross at Down St. Mary

In late August 1897 Rev. Kestell-Cornish officiated at the marriage of young Mr. William Radford to Mary Baker, daughter of Commander Robert Baker R.N.

By this time William Radford and his bride were living at St. Olaves Murchington. The Rev. Kestell-Cornish would have been familiar with St. Olaves and the ancient cross that was there. Rev. Kestell-Cornish had asked permission from William Radford (the younger) if he could acquire the ancient cross. To clarify the matter following the first inaccurate account Rev. Kestell- Cornish wrote to the periodical “Devon Notes & Queries”, with reference to the dubious circumstances connected with the removal of this cross from St. Olave's to the churchyard of Down St. Mary.

THE BOW - DOWN ST. MARY CROSS (Ancient Stone Crosses of Dartmoor, etc., D. N. & Q., p. 134.) where Bishop Kestell-Cornish is the Rector, the Bishop writes us:

 “I see in the July number of Devon Notes and Queries an account of the removal of an old cross from St. Olave's, Murchington, to the churchyard of Down St. Mary.

This account is not quite accurate and implies that on a quasi-authority from Mr. Radford I removed the cross from St. Olave's and placed it in Down St. Mary Churchyard without any reference to Mr. Barker. But this is precisely what I did not do. I had been informed by a mutual friend that Mr. Radford would allow me to have the cross, but that I must remove it before a certain date, because on that day the property would pass out of his hands, and I felt that it would not be fitting or courteous to take any steps without consulting the prospective owner

This led to my sending a letter to Mr. Barker, who answered me most kindly, and at his invitation I drove over to St. Olave's for luncheon, and it was then and there agreed that I should send for the cross, which I should receive from Mr. Barker. This was done, and after some delay, owing to the remissness of the man employed to make the base, it was placed where it now stands. You will see, therefore, that I was most careful not to act upon Mr. Radford's kind offer of the cross without the full concurrence of the Rev. A. G. Barker.

 The Cross can still be seen in Down St. Mary churchyard.

Reverend James George Dangar and the Economy of the Beehive

by Colin Burbidge

View over Higher Murchington farm with Fairview beyond

Murchington Chapel - now a holiday home

The Reverend James George Dangar was a very prominent landowner at Murchington His estate included “St. Johns”, “Woodlands”, “North Down” and “Higher Murchington” farms, 2 small holdings “Fairview” and “Woodlands Farm “in all, a total of 225 acres. In 1890 he also donated land for the building of Murchington chapel.

 Dangar was keenly interested in nature, horticulture, and science. On March 24th `1893 he gave a lecture to the Exeter Literary Society which was subsequently reported in the Western Times.

 Lecture on the Economy of the Beehive

He illustrated his remarks throughout by means of diagrams thrown on the screen, explaining most clearly actions of the bees, their constitutional habits, and the structure of their hive. In passing he humorously remarked that if people would exercise patience when stung by a bee, the insect would presently remove its sting itself. Instead of so restraining themselves, however people invariably brushed the bee away, killing it and affording themselves considerable trouble extracting the sting. Scientific beekeeping is no longer the occult art that it was only a few years ago; cottagers, as well as others, are now entering more than ever into the economy of the beehive, and with improvements which have been made of late years in apicultural apparatus, and instructions issued in simple leaflets on the subject, there can be no doubt that the move which has been already made will gain in power. In conclusion, he remarked that beekeeping should naturally be preceded by a careful study, not only of the anatomy but also the habits of the bee. An elementary knowledge of Botany was also most useful to enable one to grow the flowers most suitable. Beekeeping, however, was a pursuit, which was most difficult to follow in a large town; for there were not enough hedges, flowers, or orchards to feed the bees. Dr. Dangar also expressed the hope that the time had gone by for the destruction of the bees at the close of the year. Smoking the bees out was not only a most brutal; it was also a most wasteful process—(applause). Dr. Dangar invited the audience to inspect a beehive which he had on the platform with him.

On the motion of Mr. J.  Jerman the chairman, Dr. Dangar was heartily thanked for his lecture.

 Dr. Dangar’s Beekeeping lectures were much in demand for example, at the Crediton Technical Movement, as Honorary Secretary of the Devon & Exeter Beekeepers Association he gave a course of 5 lectures in Crediton Town Hall, in December 1894 and January 1895, and again in May 1895.         

In October 1906 Dr. Dangar retired after 38 years as Principal of Exeter Diocesan Training College (later Saint Luke’s, which is now part of Exeter University).

Three-and-a-half Murchington sisters: Mary, Louisa, Catherine…and little Annie

It’s very likely that at some point when he was leaving or arriving at St Olaves, in the early 1870s, the Rev John Ingle would have noticed the three little girls who lived in a nearby Murchington farmhouse - the three Dicker sisters. Mary, the eldest was born in April 1862, Louisa was just eighteen months younger and born in November 1863 and the little one, Catherine, was born two years later in October 1865.

They are all recorded as living in Murchington in the 1871 census, and we might imagine them in the spring of 1871 skipping along the lane together, Mary aged nine, Louisa aged seven and Catherine aged five.

Perhaps they walked with their father, William Dicker, through Providence and Forder and along Deave Lane to the church in Throwleigh. Or more likely they got dressed up in their Sunday best and had a horse and cart, to take them along the narrow lanes to Church.

Sadly their mother Susan Litton Dicker (née Nickels) had died of consumption in January 1869, she was only 36 years old. William and Susan had married just seven years and one month earlier in Throwleigh Church, on Christmas Day 1861.

Throwleigh Church - Spring 2020

By using the enumerator’s records from the decennial population census we can get some fascinating glimpses into these girls’ lives. We know that in 1871 they lived not just with their father William (age 33) but also with their grandparents John Dicker (age 73 ) and Johanna Dicker (age 66), all born in the parish of Throwleigh. In addition there were two boys lodging with the family – Robert Cann (14) and Alfred Leamann (10) who helped with the farm.

The lane from Murchington to Providence

It is tempting to imagine the girls walking down the hill and up again to the small school at Providence, which can be seen so clearly now from the lane that leads from Higher Murchington to Blackaton Brook and Blackaton House. However, this school was not built until 1877 so it is more likely that the three girls were taught in the school room, added to the Providence Chapel in 1869, or perhaps at one of the other small ‘dame schools’ operating in the area before the 1870 Education Act began the shift to universal elementary education. 

It is difficult to piece together the fragments of these three sisters’ childhoods, but we do know that their father married again in March 1872 (to Mary-Ann Clarke), and on the 1st May 1876 their new baby sister was born – Annie Dicker. By the time of the 1881 census William and Mary-Ann were still living in Murchington, but William’s father John had died in 1874. Louisa (17) and little Annie (4) were still with the couple, and they also had two farm lads (William and Arthur Perriman) living there. But by spring 1881, Mary was nearly 19 and working as a governess in Bury Barton near Crediton and Down St Mary. Fifteen year old Catherine Dicker also seems to have been living away, possibly at a boarding school (this would be consistent with her occupation recorded in 1891 and her older sister being employed as a governess – a responsible position that could not be secured without more formal education than provided at a local elementary school). By the time of the 1891 census Catherine Dicker is back living at home in Murchington (with her father and step-mother, her older sister Louisa and Annie). In 1891 Catherine is described as an Ex-Schoolmistress, while Louisa as a ‘farmer’s assistant’.

Violets and Primroses in a Murchington garden

It is tempting to wonder whether the three Dicker daughters welcomed their new step-mother and whether they were pleased to have a little sister to play with. The Dickers were a well-established farming family with deep roots in the parish, but they would not have been so wealthy that the girls were exempt from helping out on the farm. It is likely they would have played a full part in important rituals like churning butter, and they might also have helped with milking, feeding and other daily chores of a Devon hill farm. They would have needed to learn such farming skills to ‘marry well’ in this remote community, but equally they would probably have escaped the hardest labours as the daughters of a well-to-do farmer. Perhaps they had enough free time to do well in their school work, and even to wander the Dartmoor lanes enjoying the wild flowers and the bird song. 

Wildflowers in Murchington hedgerows

Murchington

Hand-tinted postcard of Murchington’s main street, c. 1910 showing Woodland Farm and the Anglican Chapel

The hamlet of Murchington lies just outside the parish of Chagford, which is bounded on its northern edge by the course of the River Teign. But though it lies within the parish of Throwleigh, the pull of the larger, and much nearer settlement of Chagford must always have ruled here. Even before Chagford Bridge was first built at the bottom of Walland Hill (probably in the early thirteenth century), the Teign was no real barrier as it could be forded at various points hereabouts.

1884 OS 6-inch map showing Murchington and the course of the River Teign

For much of the nineteenth century, Murchington was also significantly more populous than the village of Throwleigh, thanks in part to its proximity to the small town of Chagford with its textile factories and growing tourist business. In 1841 there were 158 people living in Murchington, compared with just sixty in Throwleigh. Those passing through Murchington on their way to Gidleigh might be surprised (then and now) that the handful of homes on each side of the road could house so many people. Much of Murchington is slightly hidden from the incurious traveller who sticks to the road. Besides the main farm there have long been a cluster of dwellings at Higher Murchington, to the north of the main Gidleigh road, and the narrow lane that disappears beyond the post box in the centre of the hamlet leads to a further group of cottages: St Olaves―a hamlet within a hamlet. Until the late 1860s there were even more cottages here.

The front of St Olaves in c.1910 - the extension to the left was finished in 1906.

In addition, we can see from census records that households were much bigger in the mid-nineteenth century than they are today. In 1841 farm labourer George Dicker, 55, headed a household of nine. This included his wife and their son and three daughters aged between 15 and 20, an older couple (another farm labourer and his wife) and a 5 year old child with a different surname (possibly a grandchild born out of wedlock). Next door, local farmer John Dicker aged 40 (possibly a relation) headed a household of seven including his wife Johanna, their three children and two farm hands. John Dicker’s three-year-old son William lived and farmed in Murchington for the rest of his life. He went on to have four daughters by two wives and in 1909 was buried in Throwleigh Churchyard next to his first wife Susan Litton Nichols, who had died in 1869.

Page from the 1841 Census showing part of the return for Murchington including the two Dicker households

The local economy, like that of much of West Devon, was overwhelmingly agricultural, but the hamlet also boasted a pub, a blacksmiths and for a while a working quarry.  There was talk of Murchington being more unruly and irreligious than most Devon settlements, presumably because it lacked the powerful controlling influence of a big landowner or resident parson. But things began to change from the late 1860s with the arrival of a succession of wealthy, non-resident landowners attracted by the hamlet’s remote beauty and the sporting possibilities of its upland river and dense woodland.

First on the scene was the Reverend John Ingle, an Exeter-based Anglican priest associated with the High Church (opponents said ‘papist’) Oxford Movement. Ingle was the vicar of St Olave’s Church, a Saxon foundation in the medieval heart of Exeter, when, in 1868, he bought fifty acres of Murchington farmland, including farm buildings and three rows of labourers’ cottages. He renamed his new estate St Olave’s in honour of his parish church (this hamlet within a hamlet survives, but as ‘St Olaves’ having mysteriously lost the apostrophe).

A photograph believed to be of Rev John Ingle in the early 1860s

Ingle demolished many of the properties he acquired, presumably evicting the poor tenants, and renovated the finest cottages to provide a spacious country retreat (although according to the Chagford Parish Magazine of June 1868, his original plan had been to build ‘an elegant Elizabethan mansion … on a lovely site overlooking the vale of Holy Street’). The 1840 Throwleigh Tithe map records a range of properties called ‘Waste Houses Court’ on precisely this site―their swift demolition by Ingle may have been intended to facilitate his grand building plans. Ingle quarried stone from the site and used this to help build the enormous granite retaining walls that can still clearly be seen from the top of Nattadon or Meldon Hill. He also began planting specimen trees imported from around the world, starting the collection that now includes the stands of Giant and Coast Redwoods, Grand Firs and Douglas Firs that are equally visible from afar. Part of this collection of specimen trees can also still be seen in the adjacent Milfordleigh plantation, then part of the estate but now owned by the National Trust (see 1884 OS map above).

A section from the 1840 Tithe map of Throwleigh parish (Waste Houses Court is plot 207)

Ingle sold up within a decade, never realising his ambition to build a fine mansion. He was succeeded by a series of other rich clergymen who further developed the estate as a gentleman’s country retreat. They used their wealth and influence to strengthen the Church of England’s presence in the hamlet, including supporting the construction of Murchington’s small Anglican Chapel, finished in 1890. The Sutton family, who owned St Olaves from 1907 to 1960, were also strong supporters of Anglicanism―indeed Edmund Sutton bought the right to appoint Throwleigh’s clergy at the same time as he acquired his Murchington estate.

However, the family’s influence in the district waned considerably after Edmund’s son Ralph suffered a stroke in the early 1950s.  Between 1954 and 1971, the estate was gradually broken up, returning more or less to its original constituent parts. Milfordleigh plantation was sold off, Murchington Farm lost its land-holdings, the farm’s outbuildings became separate dwellings, and the various cottages and outbuildings that had formed the Suttons’ private residence were reconstructed as four separate properties.

A plan of the proposed Anglican Chapel for Murchington

Murchington Chapel also experienced a re-incarnation with the passing of the Suttons. In 1975 it was finally decommissioned as a place of worship and sold for redevelopment. Sympathetically restored, it is now a private residence and the only holiday let in the hamlet.

But if Murchington has not succumbed to the curse of second homes, it has nonetheless changed drastically in recent years. In the nineteenth century there were at least five separate farms in Murchington, mostly small-scale mixed farms of between twenty and seventy acres run by local families with deep roots in the area. There was also a pub and a small shop. Today there is only one working farm, and a small-holding – the other farms, along with the old pub, have become private residences for people drawn to the area by its beauty and relative tranquillity; just as Ingle, Radford and the Barkers had been in the nineteenth century.

Jon Lawrence

(drawing on research by Colin Burbidge and Judy Moss)