, as their remuneration is
unworthy of the opulent classes who derive enjoyment from their
labour. They consist, for the most part, of Shropshire and Welsh
girls, who walk to London at this season in droves, to perform this
drudgery, just as the Irish peasantry come to assist in the hay and
corn harvests. I learnt that these women carry upon their heads
baskets of strawberries, or raspberries, weighing from forty to fifty
pounds, and make two turns in the day, from Isleworth to market, a
distance of thirteen miles each way; three turns from Brentford, a
distance of nine miles; and four turns from Hammersmith; a distance of
six miles. For the most part, they find some conveyance back; but even
then these industrious creatures carry loads from twenty-four to
thirty miles a-day, besides walking back unladen some part of each
turn! Their remuneration for this unparalleled slavery is from 8_s._
to 9_s._ per day; each turn from the distance of Isleworth being 4_s._
or 4_s._ 6_d._; and from that of Hammersmith 2_s._ or 2_s._ 3_d._
Their diet is coarse and simple, their drink, tea and small-beer;
costing not above 1_s._ or 1_s._ 6_d._ and their back-conveyance about
2_s._ or 2_s._ 6_d._; so that their net gains are about 5_s._ per day,
which, in the strawberry season, of forty days, amounts to 10_l._
After this period the same women find employment in gathering and
marketing vegetables, at lower wages, for other sixty days, netting
about 5_l._ more. With this poor pittance they return to their native
county, and it adds either to their humble comforts, or creates a
small dowry towards a rustic establishment for life. Can a more
interesting picture be drawn of virtuous exertion? Why have our poets
failed to colour and finish it? More virtue never existed in their
favourite Shepherdesses than in these Welsh and Shropshire girls! For
beauty, symmetry, and complexion, they are not inferior to the nymphs
of Arcadia, and they far outvie the pallid specimens of Circassia!
Their morals too are exemplary; and they often perform this labour to
support aged parents, or to keep their own children from the
workhouse! In keen suffering, they endure all that the imagination of
a poet could desire; they live hard, they sleep on straw in hovels and
barns, and they often burst an artery, or drop down dead from the
effect of heat and over-exertion! Yet, such is the state of one
portion of our female population, at a time when we are calling
ourse