Hopping 2 (1899)

Post date: Jun 17, 2012 7:42:46 PM

Extract from Manchester Evening News of 20th September 1899

STRINGENT SANITARY REFORM NEEDED IN KENT.

A correspondent of the " Daily Chronicle" -writes:

— I have just returned from spending a few days in exploring the hop district of Kent at picking time. A state of things prevails there which is positively appalling. Outsiders can have no idea of it. How the Health Department of the Kent County Council tolerates it, I am at a loss to understand. For the benefit of those who understand little about this business, I may explain that the principal portion of the hop-picking district lies between Maidstone and Paddock Wood. The normal population of this area is only small, but at the hop-picking season there are drafted into it at a rough computation about 20,000 persons. For the most part they come from the East End of London, and are oftentimes men, women, and children who have some kind of employment at home, and make a holiday of the hopping season, which extends from about the third week m August to the middle of September. It is the rule for whole families, even down to babies in arms, to swarm to tho hopfields. A steady, hard-working man or woman can earn six or seven shillings a day. On an average the majority make little more than half that sum. Still it is a lot of money to them. Now these people, despite what is said to the contrary, aro generally speaking an uneducated and intemperate lot. They are cast loose into the district with not half the restraint upon them to which they have been accustomed. The hop farmers find them accommodation—such as it is. Many live in tents, but thousands of others in simple hop houses, which are erections of the rudest character: small, low, and unlighted, except by the open doorway. There is no furniture in them, and nothing but straw to lie upon. The most necessary precautions in regard to cleanliness are neglected, with the result that before the end of the season filth accumulates to a horrifying extent. I saw a man and his wife and five children living in one of these places, which did not measure more than 10ft. square. I went into what was apparently a barn or a shippon, but which bad been converted into a temporary home for several families of hoppers. The sight presented beggars description. With the noonday sun blazing outside, dirty women and dirtier children were laying lazily in semi-darkness upon the straw; and in one corner was a young woman in the throes of a severe if not dangerous illness. No wonder ! A foul stench offended the nostrils, and an examination of the place made it too plain that this again was due to the gross and indecent neglect of the hoppers.

For the last two or three years missionary agencies have been actively at work. The Church of England—with Canon Carter at the helm, and all the district clergy, and with the assistance also of such born missionaries as the Rev. Richard Wilson (who leaves his parish in the East-end each year to go among the hoppers)—is doing excellent work. So are other bodies and it has come about in the course of that work that for the last two seasons small hospitals have been established for the relief of sickness. There are three or four of them in different parts of the district, and usually there are two trained nurses to each. These hospitals are managed by the clergy and missionary agents. One of these hospitals was recently opened at Merryworth, and in the first four days no fewer than 220 outpatients were treated ! There have been deaths — how many I don't exactly know. A child had died the night before I called at one of the hospitals, and I was told that there had been other cases. Now is it not high time that the Kent County Council struck at the root of the matter, and appointed special sanitary inspectors, with strict instructions to condemn all these filthy hovels? I know what the reply is—that hop-farming is a most precarious business, and that the farmer can do no more than he is doing. Must affairs be allowed to rest at this.

There are other evils. Excursion trams are run down from London on Sundays during the season, taking large crowds of the hoppers' friends. Last Sunday afternoon, as I proceeded from Wateringbury to East Peckham, I found any number of men—and some women sleeping by the roadside in the worst state of drunkenness. The previous Sunday there was such a fight between two women at Yalding as is seldom seen in the East End. The publicans are not to blame—the drunkenness is brought about off their premises. The police can do nothing. The excursions should be stopped; and it would be a glorious thing, too, if all the public-houses in the district were granted six-day licences only. The circumstances are exceptional.