3-028-233 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches from Ireland: Meath lads on their garden plot at Crossakeel, 1870. 'We gathered from talk with the people that the field in which we were was rented by a middleman...they complained bitterly of nearly all the land in the county being devoted to pasture. A man could do no good there, they said; so that everyone emigrated to America the moment he had the chance. Wages were 2s. [ie shillings] a day just at present; but a farm servant, engaged all the year round, only received 6s. a week; sometimes a cabin was thrown in; but this was rare. Beef they never tasted. "You put me in stock, there," replied one of them, when I asked him the price of butchers' meat; " I haven't tasted a bit these seven years. At Christmas we managed a morsel of bacon; all the rest of the year we live on potatoes. We burn turf in winter, as it is cheaper than coal; it is 15d. to 16d. the gaze, and there are five gazes in the ton, while coals cost 22s. Of course turf does not go so far; still, it is a good deal the cheapest. Not half the men in this field can read - it is only the young ones; we all send our children to school now; we know it's the best thing we can do for them'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.