Yorkshire Almanac Painter Joseph Farington hears about corn speculation and the price of day labour from an intelligent farmer at Kirkbymoorside

7 September 1801: Painter Joseph Farington hears about corn speculation and the price of day labour from an intelligent farmer at Kirkbymoorside

Joseph Farington. 1923. The Farington Diary, Vol. 1 (July 13, 1793, to August 24, 1802). Ed. James Greig. London: Hutchinson and Co. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

September 7.—At Kirby Moor-side we found a most clean & comfortable country Inn where we had an excellent breakfast,—Here I met with a very intelligent farmer who gave me much information. He spoke as others have done of the Harvest being abundant & excellent & said the markets had been lowered in the proportion of from 16 & 18 shillings and even a guinea to which high prices they had been advanced to to shillings, but he added that He did not believe this would be permanent. He said it was at present owing to the little farmers being obliged in order to answer demands upon them to bring their Corn to Market, but when their sale is over the strong farmers, as He called them, those who hold £800 or £1000 a year in their hands, will keep back their stock & only deal it out at prices agreed upon among themselves.— He said Farmers of this description do now even purchase from the little farmers at the reduced prices with the above view.—The Country Banks He said will be the ruin of the Country for by their assistance the Farmers can carry into execution these speculations.—It is a great evil He observed that any farmer of so large an amount as £800 shd. be allowed by the Landlords, were they limited to £150 or £200 a year, the public would soon feel a sensible difference in many essential respects. The price of day labour at Kirby-Moor-Side is 1 shilling a day and find victuals or 2 shillings witht. victuals. Some work for Eighteen pence.— In Harvest time the labourers avail themselves of the necessity of the Farmers and have from 2s 6d to 5s a day.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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6 December 1794: London painter Joseph Farington gets gossip from a pupil about colleague William Hodges’ visit to Walter Fawkes at Farnley Hall, some years before Fawkes met Turner

20 June 1795: The London painter Joseph Farington hears from a solicitor the details of the slavery-financed will of Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood and builder of Harewood House

27 August 1801: The London painter Joseph Farington reconnoitres Leeds’s public cultural facilities

29 August 1801: Painter Joseph Farington visits Harewood House

29 August 1801: Painter Joseph Farington arrives at Harrogate

7 September 1801: Painter Joseph Farington feels overcharged by his Ripon landlord

18 August 1812: Lady Ludd leads bread rioters through the streets of Leeds

23 May 1793: The 14th Foot, predecessors of the West Yorkshire Regiment, chant a French Revolutionary song as they storm enemy trenches at Famars (Valenciennes)

28 April 1812: Luddites fatally wound the Marsden textile manufacturer William Horsfall on his way home from Huddersfield market

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That all four were Methodists is from Sydney Smith (Holland 1855): “Conceive the horror of fourteen men hung yesterday! And yet it is difficult to blame the Judges for it, though it would be some relief to be able to blame them.”

Modern accounts generally follow the colourful but substantially fabricated version by (George) Walter Thornbury, first published by Dickens (Thornbury 1867/05/11) and then under his own name (Thornbury 1870). First among them was local lad Frank Peel – frequently given as a source for Thornbury’s attribution to Horsfall of a probably fictitious “desire to ride up to the saddle girths in Luddite blood” (Peel 1888) – but see also e.g. Georgina Hutchinson’s Under the Canopy of Heaven, Geoffrey Bindman in The New Law Journal, and Wessyman. (Susanna Berger is good on Thornbury’s ground-breaking but misleading biography of J.M.W. Turner (Berger 2013).)

Kevin Binfield quotes from a letter to Huddersfield magistrate Joseph Radcliffe from Colonel Thomas Norton describing the behaviour of Luddites hanged at York Castle during the first
two weeks of 1812:

You know how the three Murderers died, and the five Men for Rawfold’s Mill died precisely the same. The Chaplain told them it was his Duty to entreat them to confess. They were silent. He then told them he should take their Silence as confessions. They were still Silent on that Subject, but spoke Generally of their Sins. Thus in Fact tacitly allowing their Guilt as to the Offence they died for, but not doing so in Words…. Nor was one Word said by their People. (Binfield 2004)

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