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From: "Michael Steer" <>
Subject: [STEER] 19th century Devon demographics
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 17:50:05 +1100

From: Stanes, R. (2000). A history of Devon. Chichester: Phillimore & Co Ltd. pp. 122-123
ISBN 1 86077 092 4

" Some favoured areas were enabled by the railways to cash in on horticulture. Strawberry growing flourished in the Tamar valley from the 1870's, supplementing the already abundant cherries. Later, narcissi were introduced for the London market. Dawlish grew 'Devon violets"; Coombe Martin grew strawberries for Ilfracombe; Newton Poppleford early peas, and Alphington, gooseberries.
Such prosperity as there was did not filter through to the farm labourer until the last two decades of the century. In the 1860's when farm rents were at their highest, Devon farm workers' wages were only three quarters of the penurious national wage. Labourers were appallingly housed, worse educated and partly stupefied by abundant 'free' cider, which in fact formed part of their wages. It was these conditions which prompted Canon Girdlestone, vicar of Halberton near Tiverton, to harangue the farmers from his pulpit and in the press, and to organise the movement of labourers to better jobs in the north and overseas. He was horrified at the apathy of this 'beaten' class, but even he was reluctant to support the formation of a branch of Joseph Arch's farmworker's union.
The response of Devon country folk to their miserable conditions was to leave. Village populations reached their peak around 1850, wages their lowest level relatively in the 1860s. Between 1851 and 1901, some 371,000 folk, more or less the total population of the county in 1801, left Devon to find work elsewhere. Of these, 126,000 left England altogether. The population of most inland villages was halved. A village of 500 souls might have seen 350 leave in 60 years. These migration figures are higher than for other English rural areas, and higher even than the figures for southern Ireland between 1860 and 1880, after the famine. Economically perhaps, this migration was desirable; there was a need for labour elsewhere; but the human cost was immense. Of those who stayed, many were old and infirm, and the workhouses of Devon, the hated 'Bastilles", had relatively more 'aged and impotent' residents than in other parts of the country.
In contrast, some parts of the county, and some towns grew during this period. Plymouth's population grew from 43,000 in 1801 to 186,000 in 1901. By the latter date nearly a third of the population of Devon lived in Plymouth; in 1801 it had been one-seventh. In 1911 two thirds of the population lived in a few growing towns, or along the coast; in 1801 the figure had been one third. No less than 156,000 folk moved into Devon between 1850 and 1900, almost entirely to those growing towns and particularly Plymouth".

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