Agricultural History Review, Volume 55 Part 1 (2007), pp. 95–106

This paper provides a detailed mapping of the agricultural wage in England based on responses to a wages question in the ‘Rural Queries’, sent to selected parishes in 1832. It shows clearly the regional nature of the wage and the relative amounts given by region. It reveals hitherto unreported detail, with two centres of high wages and a gradual falling away with distance from these centres. Wage profles within each region are discussed in the text and give confdence that the regions are real and not an artifce. These newly mapped wage regions are then used to demonstrate that magistrates awarded ‘maintenance payments’ to mothers of bastard children in direct proportion to the basic agricultural wage. 

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