Rural Occupations

The National Census of 1851 was the sixth to be taken : it was more accurate than its decennial predecessors, having access to the civil registers of births, deaths and marriages, which had been kept since 1837. The statistics below (extracted by the Discovering Yardley Group) are given as totals for Yardley's four administrative divisions : those for Broomhall and Swanshurst Quarters (separated by Stratford Road) include the details for our Association area. Of 307 dwellings in the two Quarters only 7 were unoccupied.

The population comprised 726 males and 753 females, the average household being of 5 persons. At this time, before immigration from Birmingham to new suburbs and begun (only 1 new house was being built hereabouts in 1851), one would expect to find a static and long-settled population : yet in fact only 35% of the Quarters' inhabitants were natives of Yardley. This cannot be explained at present ( - we may find our more in the future). Almost as many people as were born here had come in from Warwickshire, the rest from other Worcestershire parishes and elsewhere.

Agriculture was the occupation of 36% of the men. 54 were self-employed farmers, which category included subsistence cottagers and tenants of hundred acre holdings, and 142 were farm labourers - three times as many in Swanshurst as in Broomhall. Three farms were managed by bailiffs, and there was a solitary gamekeeper.

Crafts and services ancillary to agriculture had 23 representatives : 10 were blacksmiths, 4 supplied horses, saddles and harness, there were 5 sawyers, 2 wheelwrights, and a cattle dealer. Other crafts and trades were carried on by 5 carpenters, 5 millers (at Titterford, Sarehole, and perhaps Broomhall watermills), 5 shop-keepers (3 grocers, an ironmonger, and a haberdasher), 3 innkeepers and 3 maltsters. Only 3 inns in 10 square miles. Life was even harder than we had imagined !

Other watermill employees were a clerk at the Needle Mill (Colebank Priory Mill on the Solihull bank of Yardley Wood Brook), an engineer (at Sarehole Mill where a steam engine was being installed) and a boatman (probably on Titterford Mill Pool). 17 men were working with leather as skinners, tanners, or shoe-makers, and 9 men were making fishing tackle in Swanshurst. 2 tailors and a button-maker lived in Broomhall. There were 5 general labourers. While the two northern Quarters shared three police officers, the south had none, and there were no tollgate keepers of Stratford Road.

Professional men numbered 18 : of these 2 were clergymen, presumably the vicar of the newly-built and enparished Christ Church on Yardley Wood Common and the curate of Marston Chapel at Hall Green. 9 men were teachers (there were only 14 in the whole parish) and 2 were bankers. No doctor or local historian was listed. The solitary vet (recorded as a craftsman, not a professional) lived in Church End.

The number of male workers was 97 for Broomhall and 201 for Swanshurst. The rest of the males, 402 of them, were presumably children with perhaps a few men too old to work. No figures were given for the out of work, these probably being included in the totals for their customary employment. It is notable that apart from one agent and the gamekeeper, no estate or house servants were recorded - no gardeners, grooms, kennel-men or coachmen. Details of female employment have not been extracted, but it may be guessed that women were working as maids, seamstresses, laundresses, and shopkeepers, with status as low as their pay.

Before leaving the 1851 Census, let us note that the average life span of the period was only 35 years : of the Quarter's population nearly a quarter were under 10, 44% were under 20, and only 17% were over 50 years old. Children had only a 60-40 chance of reaching the age of 10 (let alone grow up to marry and breed) but if they did, most of them would have had some schooling.