the eldest daughter of a family was always minding the baby, and never went to school; and boys were put to do what their mothers called 'keeping a few birds' when very small indeed, while other families were too rough to care about education so that the numbers were seldom over thirty.
There were no such people as trained mistresses then. The National Society had a school for masters, but they were expensive and could only be employed in large towns; so all that could be looked for was a kind, motherly, good person who could read and do needlework well. And the first mistress was Mrs. Creswick, a pleasant-looking person with a pale face and dark eyes, who had been a servant at Archdeacon Heathcote's, and had since had great troubles. She did teach the Catechism, reading, and work when the children were tolerably good and obeyed her, but boys were a great deal too much for her, and she had frail health, and such a bad leg that she never could walk down the lane to the old Church. So, after Sunday School, the children used to straggle down to Church without anyone to look after them, and sit on the benches in the aisle and do pretty much what they pleased, except when admonished by Master Oxford's stick.
Mr. Shuckburgh had by this time come to reside in the parish, in the house which is now the post-office, and there was at last a double Service on the Sunday.
The next thing was to consider what was to be done about the boys, who could not be made to mind Mrs. Creswick. A row of the biggest sat at the back of the school, with their heels to the wall, and by constant kicking had almost knocked a hole through the mud wall; so the Vicar, who was now the Archdeacon's son, the Rev. Gilbert Wall Heathcote, gave permission for the putting up another mud and rough cast school house near the old Church, for the boys, in an empty part of the Churchyard to the north- east, where no one had ever been buried.
However, there Master Oxford was installed as schoolmaster, coming all the way down from his house on the hill (a pretty-timbered cottage, now pulled down). He and his boys had a long way to walk to their school, but he taught them all he knew and set them a good example. The boys were all supposed to go to him at six years old, and most were proud of the promotion. One little fellow was known to go to bed an hour or two earlier that he might be six years old the sooner! But some dreaded the good order enforced by the stick. There was one boy in particular, who had outgrown the girls' school, and was very troublesome there. He would not go to the boys', and his mother would not make him, saying she feared he would fall into the water. 'Well,' said Mrs. Bargus, who was a most bright, kindly old lady of eighty, 'I'll make him go.' So she took a large piece of yellow glazed calico intended for furniture lining, walked up to school, and held it up to the little boy. She said she heard that he would only go to the girls' school, and, since everybody went there in petticoats, she had brought some stuff to make him a petticoat too! The young man got up and walked straight off to the boys' school.
Here are some verses, written by Mrs. Yonge in 1838, on one of the sights that met her eye in the old Churchyard:-
While on the ear the solemn note
Of prayer and praises heavenward float,
A butterfly with brilliant wings
A lesson full of meaning brings,
A sermon to the eye.
There on an infant's grave it stands,
For it hath burst the shroud's dull bands,
Its vile worm's body there is left,
Of gross earth's habits now bereft
It soars into the sky.
Thus when the grave her dead shall give
The little form below shall live,
Clothed in a robe of dazzling white
Shall spring aloft on wings of light,
To realms above shall fly!
Changes were setting in all this time. The rick-burnings, in which so many foolish persons indulged, was going on in 1831 in many parts of Hampshire. They were caused partly by dislike to the threshing machines that were beginning to be used, and partly by the notion that such disturbances would lead to the passing of the Reform Bill, which ignorant men believed would give every poor man a fat pig in his stye. There was no rick-burning here, though some of the villagers joined the bands of men who wandered about the country demanding money and arms at the large houses. But, happily, none of them were actually engaged in any violence, and none of them swelled the calendar of the Special Assize that took place at Winchester for the trial of the rioters.
One poor maid-servant in the parish, from the North of Hampshire, had, however, two brothers, who were intelligent men of some education, and who, having been ringleaders, were both sentenced to death. The sentence was, however, commuted to transportation for life. At Sydney, being of a very different class from the ordinary convict, they prospered greatly, and their letters were very interesting. They were wonderful feats of penmanship, for postage from Australia was ruinously expensive, and they filled sheets of paper with writing that could hardly be read without a microscope. If we had those letters now they would be curious records of the early days of the Colony, but all now recollected is the account of a little kangaroo jumping into a hunter's open shirt, thinking it was his mother's pouch.
The Reform Bill, after all, when passed made no present difference in Otterbourne life-nothing like the difference that a measure a few years after effected, namely, the Poor-law Amendment Bill. Not many people here remember the days of the old Poor-law, when whatever a pauper family wanted was supplied from the rates, and thus an idle man often lived more at his ease on other people's money than an industrious man on his own earnings. It was held that if wages were small they might be helped out of the rates, and thus the ratepayers were often ruined. In the midst of the street stood the old Poorhouse. It had no governor nor anyone to see that order was kept or work done there, and everybody that was homeless, or lazy, or disreputable, drifted in there. They went in and out as they pleased, and had a weekly allowance of money. Now and then there was a great row among them. One room was inhabited by an old man named Strong, who was considered a wonder because he ate adders cut up like eels and stewed with a bit of bacon. Every now and then a message would come in that old Strong had got a couple of nice adders and wanted a bit of bacon to cook with them. Then there was a large family whose father never worked for any one long together, and lived in the Workhouse, with a wife and six or seven children, supported by the parish. These people were pursuaded to go to Manchester, where there was sure to be work in the factories for all their many girls. The men in receipt of parish pay were supposed to have work found for them on the roads, but there was not much of this to employ them, and as they were paid all the same whether they worked or not, some were said to hammer the stones as if they were afraid of hurting them, or to make the wheeling a couple of barrows of chalk their whole day's work.
A good deal depended on the vestry management of each parish, and there was less of flagrant idleness supported by the rates here than at many places. There was also a well-built and arranged Workhouse at Hursley, and the Poor law Commissioners consented to make one small Union of Hursley, Otterbourne, Farley, and Baddesley, instead of throwing them into a large one.
The discontinuance of out-door relief to help out the wages was a great shock at first, but, when the ratepayers were no longer weighed down, they could give more work and better wages, and the labourers thus profited in the end, and likewise began to learn more independence. Still the times were hard then. Few families could get on unless the mother as well as the father did field work, and thus she had no time to attend thoroughly to making home comfortable, mending the clothes, or taking care of the little ones. The eldest girl was kept at home dragging about with the baby, and often grew rough as well as ignorant, and the cottage was often very little cared for. The notion of what was comfortable and suitable was very different then.
The country began to be intersected by railways, and the South-Western line was marked out to Southampton. The course was dug out from Shawford and Compton downs, and the embankment made along our valley. It was curious to see the white line creeping on, as carts filled with chalk ran from the diggings to the end, tipped over their contents, and returned again. When the foundations were dug for the arch spanning the lane the holes filled with water as fast as they were made, and nothing could be done till the two long ditches had been dug to carry off the water to Allbrook. In the course of making them in the light peaty earth, some bones of animals and (I believe) stags' horns were found, but unluckily, were thrown away, instead of being shown to anyone who would have made out from them much of the history of the formation of the boggy earth that forms the water meadows.
{The Old Church, Otterbourne: p32.jpg}
