The diary of a Victorian farmer which has come to light gives a fascinating insight into his work and his private life. Chris Benfield reports.
James Emmott was a man of few words, especially when he was writing them down, laboriously, using an old dip pen and an inkwell, and his rough understanding of spelling, after a day in his hard fields – often followed by a cross-country hike of two miles to his beloved Baptist Chapel and the same distance back, up a hill steep as a house roof.
When his daughter was chased out of the house by his wife, with a broom, for getting pregnant out of marriage, Mr Emmott allowed the event one sentence.
And on August 12 1876, in a rare reference to his own health, he wrote simply: “I part with a tape worm 12 feet long.”
In between these terse summaries of events, which would keep a soap opera going for months, he made notes on making a living out of his precarious perch, on a rented farm of 43 acres on the Yorkshire side of the border between Skipton and Colne. It is beautiful there, but often bleak, and Mr Emmott recorded many “darksome” days on the way to his death in 1889, in his 73rd year, after 15 children, of whom 13 survived.
Taciturn though he was, his daily records, added together over several years, were a treasure trove of social history.
About 25 years ago, six of Farmer Emmott’s diaries from the 1870s, when he was passing from his 50s into his 60s, turned up in a bundle at a sale for book collectors in Retford, North Nottinghamshire. They caught the eye of Roy Newman of Dinnington, South Yorkshire, a former miner and an amateur historian. Somebody bid £2. Mr Newman successfully offered a fiver.
He read the diaries and three years ago donated them to the Dinnington & District Historical Society, of which he is chairman, and persuaded the secretary, retired teacher Pam Cook, to type them up.
Fascinating though they are, the diaries illustrate the complexity of historical analysis. Some of the words are best guesses by Mrs Cook. And there are blanks where she could not even guess. Eventually, the society hopes to publish the original diaries, for those who want to go back to the source.
For every hour Mrs Cook has already put in, there is another hour of work waiting for somebody else. From Mr Emmott’s figures, for example, it is probably possible to work out roughly what he earned and how he spent it - and the relative values of one trade over another. He wrote in the Blackwood’s Shilling Scribbling Diary. At one point he pays eleven shillings for a pair of trousers made of fustian – a heavy coarse wool – and at another, 12 shillings for a pair of boots with elastic sides. Half a year’s rent for the farm was £17 and 10 shillings. In comparison, the price of having his horse shod was an astonishing £9.
Pam Cook was struck by that figure. She comments: “I guess it was like taking your car to the garage. You pay up because there is no alternative.” In 1873, Farmer Emmott sold 15 wether lambs (castrated males) at 15 shillings (75p) each and one at 13 shillings; 6 ewes at 28 shillings and six pence each; 3 gimmer lambs (young females) at 17 shillings each; 1 ewe at 35 shillings; 1 tup (ram) lamb at 37 shillings, another at 35 shillings, a third at 18 shillings and a pair for £3 and five shillings; an old tup, ”weighed 23 pound a quarter”, for meat, for £2 and 10 shillings; and six fat sheep (for the butcher) for £10 and 10 shillings.
In today’s world, that output would look puny for a lone farmer, let alone one with a large family labouring for him. But there were many sidelines. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with a “butter basket”, which was presumably filled at the farm for somebody to sell from, because Mr Emmott often gave a hand with churning. He bought a lot of “India meal” and “sharps”, which were probably for feeding chickens. And he and his lads were clearly in the construction trade – draining fields, laying roadstones for local land owners and authorities, walling, hanging gates and doors. There are many references to digging peats and coal and hauling and burning limestone and to the production of “mastic”, which was sold by the hundredweight and seems to mean lime cement, although Roy Newman suggests it might also have had a function as an antiseptic paste for sheep’s backsides. Other important products of the local landscape, still to be explained, were “scythe sand” and “Calais sand”. Drainage trenches were priced at 11d a rood when filled with stone, slightly cheaper when filled with peat sods.
Care of the livestock involved a lot of “hoppling” of sheep. Roy Newman guesses at this being foot care and it sounds plausible. But then there is a reference to Farmer Emmott having “bottomed” a chair with sheep hoppling. A dictionary suggests it could mean hobbling. Was it the practice to hobble sheep? The cows gave birth to a lot of “wye calves”, which also remains mysterious, as does a reference to having “fest” two cows. A number of cattle are referred to as “spanged”. Could that mean spangled, or piebald?
Farmer Emmott was not rich, but he was no peasant. His basic grasp of the Three Rs gave him the status of an educated man, called on to write letters and keep accounts on behalf of his neighbours and his church and to take charge of a charity purse for the needy – including a regular who was probably called Thomasina Smith, although her name gave him endless trouble and often came out in the diaries as Thomansine or Tomonsane.
On six days he laboured. On Sundays, there is little reference to anything except chapel. He often went to the chapel or to prayer meetings in the week, too. But some evenings were spent at “the club”, about which we learn little, except that it had something to do with the “Ancient Order of Foristers”, a charitable organisation which lives on as an insurance company.
His address was Beckfoot Farm, Cowling Hill, Yorkshire. Neighbouring hamlets were Middleton and Ickornshaw. All are nowadays part of the village of Cowling, which holds a population of around a thousand, on the A6068 between Colne and the Keighley-Skipton road.
Mr Newman and Mrs Cook have been to Cowling and met the local historical association there – which included two great-great grandsons of Farmer Emmott.
The farm and an adjoining cottage are still there, but nowadays cosy little residences, separated from the land which went with them, like most of the old homesteads in those parts. Cowling Hill Baptist Chapel is still there, too, still functioning.
And the graveyard still carries memorials to all the people James Emmott records seeing into the ground... and also to him and his wife and several of their children.
The sad story of Isabella Emmott recorded in the diary requires some reading between the lines.
Aged 18 or so, she goes to Skipton to “Father her child” – which appears to mean getting a legal statement of fatherhood from a man called Bradley Smith. who agrees to pay two shillings a week for 13 years for the child.
After Isabella has had a daughter, Mary Ellen, a different man comes into her story.
On Feb 5 1877, the diary entry reads, “Police brought £1.12 from Christopher Whitaker toward keeping his ileglamet child.” Isabella then marries a third man, Israel Hudson.
Questions and answers
Up to the end of the diaries discovered, Christopher Whitaker continues to pay maintenance for Mary Ellen, which is passed on to Israel Hudson whom Isabella marries on September 7 1878. We hear no more of Bradley Smith. Now the diaries are available as text files on a computer disk, at £6.50 including postage. Call 01909 569982 or see www.dinningtonhistory.co.uk/
