CHAPTER II. MORAL AND SOCIAL DEGRADATION OF THE INHABITANTS. Their DEGRADED THEY WERE, WITH A WITNESS. hovels, for the most part, consisted of only one groundfloor, and one bed-room close under the naked thatch, the walls unplastered; the ground-floor was just as nature made it. The whole family (which sometimes consisted of ten persons, some grown to manhood) all sleeping in one room, I wish I could not add in some cases something far worse. You may judge of the size and value of the said hovels, by those which were afterwards purchased by the parish, some of which cost five, some ten pounds; I have seen the conveyances. I had floors put to some of them and built privies for them. I knew of one where the horse and family all lived in one room; the bed-room was the hay-loft: I saw the owner of it on his dying bed (partly straw) laid on the floor; the staircase was a ladder. woman is now living (1850) there, who states that she was one of six children, who all slept on nothing but the broom cut on the common, nightly laid on the dirt floor. A I was one of the parish officers who were one day called upon to visit a poor family resident at the Common, reported to be in deplorable circumstances. On entering the cottage, we found some ragged, filthy children, without shoes or stockings, sitting on the ground-floor endeavouring to cook some dirty potatoes over a fire on the hearth, which they said was all the food their father had left them; their mother was dead. When we attempted to mount the staircase, it was with the utmost difficulty that we could accomplish it, it was so feeble that the whole fabric trembled: in the bed-room we found that all the children slept together on some old sacks on the floor, which appeared never to be cleaned. There was but one bedstead, no bed or bedding thereon, a few sacks were spread to lie on; the head of the bedstead was directly under the frame of a window which had not a particle of glass in it; it was a southern aspect, so that whenever there was a driving rain, whoever slept thereon must be sure of plenty of air and moisture. No part of the family could read; none of them had ever attended any school or went to a place of worship. Out of pity, we put them all into the workhouse; a few days after, their father came and insulted us for meddling with his children, took them out of the workhouse, and said that they were very well off. There The following, I had from an aged widow now (1850) living, a native of Warminster Common :— "I am upwards of seventy years of age, I do not know my true age; all I know is, that I was a little girl when the men were hanged on Sutton Common: none of our family ever knew their ages. were ten children, we could none of us read, we never heard the Lord's prayer or anything else on religion all the while we lived with our parents; there never was any book kept in the house, we were never told of a Bible, we never went to any place of worship, we were never baptized; we wore no shoes or stockings, our clothing was chiefly ragged linsey, when it wanted washing mother did wash it while we were in bed and dry it against the next morning. We all slept in one bed-room, father, mother, and ten children lying together like pigs; our cottage, which was very small, had no plaster on the walls, no ceiling, no ground-floor, except the natural earth. It abounded with vermin; there were no 'privies' in any of the gardens in those days; scarcely anybody in the Common ever went to church: Sunday was always spent in all sorts of gaming, drunkenness, filthy conversation, backsword-playing, fighting, &c.; the men lying in groups under the hedges in all their filthy working apparel, as ignorant of all good as the beasts that perish. Years after I left my father's house, whenever I went to see my parents I was sure to carry-away plenty of vermin. All the filth of the house and family was placed in front, near the entrance of the cottage, the liquid part thereof always ran across the road, into the spring-water of which we all drank." The beautiful stream of water alluded to was corrupted throughout in the following way;-Their houses, which in general ran nearly parallel with it, stand about six or seven yards distant, on a rising ground; in the intervening space they always placed the manure which they could collect during the year, and which was designed at the proper season to be removed to their distant gardens; this manure consisted of every species of filth, the fouler the better: observe, they had no privies in general; I knew the man who said that he could remember when there were but three in the whole village. The drainings of these accumulated and corrupted masses naturally ran into the said spring-water, and so did all the waste water and washings of the workhouse, which generally contained one hundred inmates. The upper part thereof leading to Rehobath (about three hundred yards in length) ran over the whole surface of the highway, so that cattle and all travellers, always of necessity passed through it. The consequence of the putrid exhalations of their dung-heaps, especially in summer, just at their doors --their bad roads, never cleaned or mended—their bad clothing-foul water-filthy houses and persons -intemperate habits-crowded sleeping-rooms-and deep poverty, was, that they were never long free from the dreadful ravages of the typhus fever: twice do I remember its taking-off twenty-eight to thirty adults in one month. I visited a cottage where two died in a fortnight. In another instance a father, mother, and eldest son, were buried at one time. And when in addition thereto, the small-pox or measles appeared, which was very often, the mortality was truly awful. To add to their misery, very few indeed of the respectable inhabitants of the town would ever venture themselves where insult, filth, ignorance, disease, and wretchedness, so abounded. And their moral state was equally bad. By far the greater part of them could neither read nor write, very few could correctly state their ages, or spell their names. Their sports or pastimes consisted plentifully of bull and badger baiting, boxing, wrestling, cudgel-playing, cock-fighting, and poaching.The principal manager of the cock-fighting department was little Sampson Min stature not more than three-and-a-half feet: when a bacchanalian feast or revel was held, Sampson was generally set in a chair on a table, to sing and make sport. The cudgel-playing was always headed by some of the gentlemen (so called) of the town. I never heard of any Reverend of this town taking active part therein. For some time I hesitated as to whether I should record the following or not:-One day I was summoned to attend a coroner's jury at the Common; the deceased had hanged himself in the staircase of his own house. The following facts will give sad specimens of some of the depravity then existing.His eldest daughter, at the same time that the corpse. of her father was lying in the house, actually admitted some of the most abandoned characters in the place, to associate with her, then and there indulging the whole night in the worst kind of drunkenness, dissipation and debauchery. Not long after this, (1827), in my official capacity, I had to commence legal proceedings against a man who had committed incest with his own daughter, she having thereby recently become a mother. One of the churchwardens and myself also turned out of one of the parish cottages, a full-grown young man, who, as it had been recently discovered, had always slept in the same bed with his unmarried mother. to They were notorious for drunkenness, debauchery, stealing, sabbath-breaking,- Whenever robberies occurred, which was very often, whether they deserved it or not, the Commoners were sure have the credit of it: in such cases, it was all but impossible to convict them, for want of credible witnesses. Not one adult out of forty ever attended any public religious service on the Lord's day; they then generally associated at a place called "The Drove," near Butler's Coomb, or strolled on the common, or lay under the hedges at the sides of the roads, in groups, in all their filthy working apparel,-drinking, swearing, or witnessing or partaking of some ungodly games or sports. I know a person who on the same sabbath witnessed badgerbaiting and a pitched-battle between a man and a woman. If any sober should chance to pass that way, he was sure to be insulted: if a solitary individual wished to get to a place of worship, he must do it by a circuitous route, or be ridiculed or persecuted. Observe, also, there were no sabbathschools in those days: the children were out in the lanes, fields, or woods-filthy, ragged, without shoes, or stockings, or hats; swearing, playing, stealing, fighting, or doing mischief, all the sabbath-day, no one gainsaying. Truly might it be said of them, with very few exceptions, person "See where o'er desert wastes they err, Nor fold, nor place of refuge near, Wild, as the untaught Indian's brood, Strangers, yea enemies to God, They make thee spill thy blood in vain.” And their wretched fame had spread throughout the length and breadth of the land. It was very rare, if not impossible, for a female servant, who was known to have ever lived at Warminster Common, to obtain a situation in any respectable family. Their grown-up daughters generally worked in the fields C |