The move to London

[teaurn]

I have had several of mine move to London from various counties.

Clark from Somerset about 1806

Flashman from Devon about 1855

Parcell and Muncey from Cambridgeshire about 1895

and Moore from Norfolk about 1850

 

[coombs]

Even though my great grandad was in the army I still consider his time in London as an official move there so I have ancestors who moved from Durham, Norfolk, Sussex and the West Country and Essex and Oxon to the Smoke.

[Kim1980]

Yes, lots. Stone Masons from Bristol area, ag labs from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire and Devon. I can't help but think they would have had a much better quality of life if they'd stayed in the country though.

[IgorStrav]

I don't know about quality of life in the country.

 When you read that ag labs were often just not paid enough to support their families, let alone the unreliable supply of work, the cold and the necessity of working all day and every day in sickness and in health......I don't think any of the ancestors had a good time, did they, in country or city.

I am endlessly gratefuly for their strengh and resilience without which none of us would be here.

[Greensleeves]

One of the problems which people had not considered when moving from country to town, was that in the country they had gardens.  This meant that they could grow their own fruit and vegetables, keep chickens and a pig, and they could also gather free food such as hazelnuts and blackberries in the autumn. 

The stories of 'high wages' in the big cities did lure many people from the depressed country areas, but as Igor said, neither had a particularly good time.  In the city the living accommodation was invariably grim, with shared toilets, yards, few washing facilities, and certainly nowhere to grow beans or keep hens.  Whilst in the countryside, families were being thrown off their little pieces of land and forced to share cottages.

It must have been so difficult to make that decision - whether to say or go.  But at least with the railways it meant that people were mobile and they did have the opportunity to try their luck elsewhere.  The Industrial Revolution certainly changed the character of the working class in Britain for ever.

[Nick29]

I don't know about quality of life in the country.

 When you read that ag labs were often just not paid enough to support their families, let alone the unreliable supply of work, the cold and the necessity of working all day and every day in sickness and in health......I don't think any of the ancestors had a good time, did they, in country or city.

I am endlessly gratefuly for their strengh and resilience without which none of us would be here.

I think they probably did have quite a lot of happiness in their lives, but I think that their definition of happiness may be different to ours in these modern times 

[meles]

Elizabeth Gaskill's novel "North and South" describes rural and city conditions at that time. They both were tough for working people, in different ways.

meles

[Gillg]

My widowed great-grandmother went in the opposite direction, choosing to move from rural Huntingdonshire to Burnley in industrial Lancashire in the 1880s.  Her children, mostly by that time in their teens, soon found work in the factories and other businesses.  My grandfather was apprenticed to a draper and some of his other brothers worked on the railways.  I think Granddad must have been a bit more delicate than his older brothers!

Gillg

[coombs]

Also rural dwellers had to work in all kinds of weathers to feed the family and their lives were ruled by daylight at darkness. Pretty much in the city but at least after 1807 there were gas street lamps.