Thomas Beddoes to the Editors of the Bristol Gazette, 3 August 1808
[The Editors of the Gazette feel gratified in communicating to the Public the following useful and well-timed Information to Farmers, Husbandmen, &c. from the pen of Dr. BEDDOES.]
For the BRISTOL GAZETTE.
GOOD ADVICE
for all who will follow it in hot weather, but especially for Husbandmen in Harvest.
How hard it is to persuade people to try to swim against the stream of custom! The worse the custom and the more injury they receive from it unawares, the harder it will be found to make the sufferer change his course. On this very account, many a man much wiser than I can pretend to be, has no doubt held back wholesome counsel. It is at least a fact that I have myself been for a long time discouraged from endeavouring to set that valuable class of persons, whom I have at present more particularly in view, a little right in the affair, which concerns them nearly. For every one who knows ever so little of the world, must perceive how it would be. Suppose an honest farmer were to say in the middle of his workmen – ‘Here, Sirs, is a doctor who pretends that ale, beer, cyder, and all strong liquors whatever are unnecessary and improper for husbandmen in harvest; nay that in the quantities usually drunk at this time they are very bad and do a great deal of injury indeed.’ What, I beseech you, would the consequence be? Why, the most forward and flippant among the hearers would curse the doctor, vow that no such shabby r––t–g––t notions should go down in Gloucestershire, and follow this declaration with a volley of coarse expressions, with which it is not worth to trouble you.
It would be a sign of great moderation indeed, should the principal spokesman of the set go no further than to ask – ‘How should these doctors, I wonder, know what labour is? I wish they would first come and work along with us but for one week. I would then give them free leave to talk against a sup of heartening liquor for poor hardworking men and welcome;’ With this, of course, the rest will chime in, and the whole eye their store of harvest beer with fresh delight.
As one part therefore will take the doctrine that Temperance is the handmaid fittest to wait upon Toil for an insult on common sense, while the remainder will feel as if there were a design to deprive them of their dearest and most valuable perquisites, it is natural that those who understand the subject best, should avoid it altogether or at least enter upon it with hesitation. But so much suffering, and in some cases such severe sickness having arisen, this present hot summer, from mere mismanagement; and evidence, difficult for any reasonable person to resist, having lately flowed in from so many independent quarters, there may now be less need to respect the prejudices of the ignorant and the murmurs of the intemperate. What useful truth indeed is there in the world which has not been ill received by these? And why should we not at length consult the benefit of the well disposed and the tractable, few as they may be in the beginning?
No one, it is objected, can properly judge how much of ale or the like, Nature may require, unless he have laboured at harvest work himself. Very well: I am willing to take the matter up so, and abide by the issue of this argument. And what judge, I beseech you, can that man be, who has never gone through a course of harvest work without his fill of intoxicating liquor – half seas over most of the time, and constantly in the humour to make his employer feel Who’s master now? – How can such an one pretend to decide whether he could not do better upon small-beer, butter-milk, whey, &c.? What is his opinion worth, unacquainted as he is with the sober side of the story? The cooler sorts of liquor must undoubtedly be tried, before it can be determined which of the two is the more suitable to the case. And I trust I shall go far towards convincing every thinking reader, and, may be, stagger the most obstinate, if I shew that the hardest out of doors summer-work is in places enough perfectly well borne, without any of the stronger fermented liquors whatever, or with very little; and if I actually point out the mischief arising from strong liquors according to customary allowance, so plainly that he, who loves them best, shall notwithstanding feel obliged to admit my statement, because in his comrades he will have seen, and in himself will have felt, that it is true. Were there room, I could establish a third most important point; namely, that in situations like that of our harvest-men, and even more trying, a cool regimen is not only the best, but the only safe.
The wasteful extravagance in Leicestershire and the midland counties makes one shudder. They brew the harvest-beer immoderately strong; and of this a gallon, with two quarts of strong ale, is a common allowance, besides a deluge of such small-beer as might elsewhere pass for ale. In the counties round Bristol, the usual agreement by the acre brings to each reaper or mower six or eight quarts of ale or cyder a day. Mr Marshall asserts that they have nine or ten sometimes, in the vale of Gloucester; and from some feats of beastliness, arising out of harvest debauchery, he concludes ‘that a severnman’s stomach will hold just nineteen pints!’ The consumption of those not engaged in task-work is computed at six or eight quarts also; though the farmers say, that unless restricted they will drink away the use of their eyes and limbs, before half the day is over.
I by no means dispute the propriety of drinking freely of some kind of liquor. The custom I hold to be as wholesome as it is agreeable. The only question respects the proper quality or strength. Now, that ale or cyder to this amount are unnecessary may be so easily shewn, that I am really puzzled what instances to bring forward, and what to hold back. In the industrious and flourishing county of Midlothian the reapers are mostly women. They breakfast on oatmeal-porridge – a kind of hasty pudding – with a pint of buttermilk. At dinner they have a fourteen ounce loaf of bread, and a quart of (small) beer each; and for supper they have the same as for breakfast. I can easily see an objection, by which some might think they could get rid of such a fact as this; but it is of no avail. MEN in various parts fare much the same as these female reapers. In Westmorland, for example, they never think of needing ale or cyder by the gallon. There, says Mr. Pringle in his report of the county, they ‘breakfast on milk-pottage and bread and cheese; receive one pint of good beer in the forenoon, and another in the afternoon. They dine on meat and potatoes or pudding, and have plenty of common beer to drink through the day. They begin in the morning as soon as the corn is dry, rest none but while at meals, and continue as late as they can work.’ By a gentleman, who farmed his own land by one of the Lakes, I was assured that they get in harvest without any fermented liquor; finding themselves more able upon butter-milk, whey, milk and water, and plain water. You imagine, perhaps, these labourers of the North to be puny half-fed, starveling milk-sops – a breed between men and women. You will find them fully a match for yourselves – quite as capable of coping with a field of grain, or with a body of French. They are, in fact, ‘men of mighty bone’, as an old poet describes those of Cheshire, where they observe the same abstemiousness in the same season; the allowance of ale being small, and the principal beverage small-beer, butter-milk and whey. In Yorkshire, as indeed partly in various other counties, the shearing or reaping is done by the women; if you have not been there yourself, I wish you were only to see, Mr. Marshall’s charming description of the simplicity of diet of the Yorkshire peasantry, and of the whole harvesting. It is too long to insert, and possibly what follows may strike you full as much. – You must know, in the first place, that from a gallon and a half to two gallons of strong beer with as much small as they choose, is stated as the harvest allowance in Essex. ‘This,’ says Mr. Vancouver, ‘with a profusion of animal and vegetable food, constitutes their daily fare’. But what, according to the same author, is the effect? Pray, mark his words well: – ‘By the heat of the season, and change of food, they get a surfeit, and many of them are laid up for the first week or ten days with inflammatory fevers’. What I was going to mention is this: A gentleman who came hither from Essex for his health, related to me the case of a labourer, a desperate stickler at the scythe and bottle both, and it is, I verily believe, the same case which has been thought worth recording in print by that very respectable clergyman, Mr. Howlett, of Great Dunmow, as speaking strongly against ‘the high luxurious living so frequently adopted for the more expeditious ending the Essex harvest’.
The general plea (he observes) for this luxurious living is, that it enables the men to exert themselves more vigorously that they could otherwise do. This, if I am not greatly mistaken, is a delusive imagination. I recollect the instance of a man living through the harvest, not only much lower than this, but even much lower than those who take their harvest and provide for themselves.; This man with three others, had undertaken, early in the year, as is the custom in that county, to compleat the harvesting of a certain number of acres. He fell ill meanwhile, and was but just got upon his legs again by harvest. This made him very anxious as you may judge, but his doctor assured him that he might safely join his fellows, “provided that he eat very little meat, refrained entirely from strong beer, and refreshed himself every night at his return from work, with about a pint of new milk”. He was extremely fond of strong liquor, his temptation to it however upon this occasion was in a great measure removed by the beer he had brewed for his harvest proving good for nothing. –
He strictly followed the Doctor’s directions, drank only small beer to his meals in the day time, eat little bread and cheese, enjoyed extremely his delicious beverage of milk at night, and found himself incredibly refreshed and strengthened by it.’ The upshot was: he went through his work to the perfect satisfaction of his partners, and with more comfort and satisfaction to himself, than he had ever done before.
No county furnishes the militia with finer fellows than Carmarthenshire. The regiment has long been celebrated. It is now in Bristol, and has occasionally turned out in part into the neighbouring hay fields. Gangs of workmen, some cockahoop, and others reeling at their business from strong drink, were, to be sure, a new sight to the mountaineers. But they could see little else to admire in the sons of the vale; and were far from finding themselves a more puny race. They even pretend that their women can get through as much harvest-work in a day as most Gloucestershire-men. I know not how this is, but their fare at home is certainly much the same with that which we have seen to agree so well with our Essex invalid. Butchers’ meat they have none in the day-time, and only a little at supper three times a week; of poor ale one or two pints daily. They drink freely of butter-milk, whey, thin flummery and pure water. In Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire, and so forth, the regimen is as cool as that of the sturdy labourers and brave soldiers now quartered here.
Does anyone require more to satisfy him that harvest can be got in with very little strong liquor or without any? Which able-bodied Somersetshire or Glocestershire reaper will pretend that it is impossible for him to do the same service on the same farm as a woman or a sick man? Were these liquors however merely unnecessary but innocent luxuries and not likewise mischevious, I should no more think of grudging the enjoyment of them to the servant than I should to the master. I have always been bent upon gaining an insight into the disorders of the labouring class; and have even created opportunities for this purpose where they did not exist before. It was easy to mix early among harvest people. This I have done in different districts; and where they either drank no strong drink or not above a quart in a day, I have found them cool and pleasant as the fields around them, after they are refreshed by the dews of the night. But for your six and eight quart men – they often cut as sorry a figure as any which the rising sun had to shine upon. The countenance was blank; the head heavy; the eyes bloodshot, haggard and black beneath. They lifted their leaden heels sluggishly over the stubble, spitting sixpences or champing their clammy mouths. They looked exactly like fish out of water, and were really fitter for bed again than for work. And so they continued jaded and out of sorts till the breezes of the morning had a little tempered the dry unkindly heat of the skin.
On questioning them quietly one by one, I soon discovered that this man had been tossing and tumbling all night, he never was so restless! Another awaked fatigued like a sick person who is drugged into imperfect slumbers; a third was sorely tormented by hot sour risings in his throat. A forth had felt stifled in his sleep by a monster that seemed to kneel on his breast, snorting flame into his face; – all or nearly all the effect of that fire which strong drinks had lighted up in the veins. The drink of one days exhausts probably more than the sober exertions of three; though a hot sun and a long day’s hard labour without such help are sure to produce fever enough. This fever should not be fomented by things which drive on the heart to beat with fresh fury, though, in so doing, they give the spirits a momentary filip. It ought on the contrary to be kept down by thin diluting drinks. Only let no one swallow at once an excessive quantity of cold water, or stand much in a stream of cool air, while at rest after being drenched with sweat. Our country people have a terrible dread of chills; and a chill is, no doubt, often very injurious. But scores probably are hurt by the contrary, for one that suffers from a chill. Were I to say an ice-house is a bad place to live in – I should say right; but my meaning would not be that, a heated oven is a good one – though it is in this sense that they seem to take cautions against getting a chill.
But a morning’s mawkishness or headache is not the worst part of the story. You have read above of the Essex surfeits. There are besides vomitings and purgings of gall, and inflammatory complaints in plenty. If a man have his inside touched before, he shall get the rot completely ere harvest is over. His liver shall grow harder & harder, so as to destroy his health entirely, and throw him by degrees into a dropsy. Other fatal disorders are ripened during this long season of intemperance, and at none is the foundation for bad complaints more commonly laid. It is not every constitution, you may be assured, that can bear to be kept in a fever for weeks together. The wear and tear of the body is too great; nor does anything tend more to make people old and decrepid before their time.
When intoxicating liquors are distilled, they yield a burning spirit: – this does the mischief, by raising still higher the flame which heat and labour have already kindled. People who sweat so much must drink, and the other part of the liquor, if it were not disagreeable by itself, would be wholesome. But luckily there are plenty of liquors that are agreeable and refreshing, and will not yield this burning spirit – the immediate parent of intoxication and feverishness, and in the long run, of some of the worst complaints that so much infest the drunken countries of the globe, from which number Old England, I am afraid, has no clear right to be excepted. Cyder, as containing more of this pernicious spirit, I should suppose more pernicious than beer. Sure I am, that for the sake of weak people, oppressed with heat and thirst, it ought to be branded on account of its deceitful coolness in the mouth. For the pleasant acidity poorly compensates the fever which its firey spirit soon raises; even that of brisk bottled cyder notwithstanding its fine and for the moment really cooling acid gas
Acids being so pleasant when persons are heated, it is probably that acid drinks, destitute of all burning spirit, would be highly wholesome in harvest. Indeed I should not say, it is probable; the matter admits of no doubt, since the use of butter-milk, and other sober acid drinks, is most fully approved by extensive experience, of which I have only given you some slight hints Diluted vitriolic acid, of a tea-spoonful to half a pint of water (with a thin slice of lemon-peel, if any one likes this flavour) and sugar make a most refreshing drink for hot weather – The Roman soldiers drank vinegar and water – a mixture much the same, only coarser. Now you, whoever you are that turn up your nose at all drinks that do not fly directly to the brain, as too meagre for your manhood, though with your scythe in hand you be, in truth, a man like a man, yet you will not find it easy to persuade persons of any understanding that a Roman was less manly; and that what supported him, while fighting his way under heavy armour over difficult ground, is insufficient for your support, at whatever you may be drudging.
Could one succeed only so far as to compound between what is customary and what is right, real small beer (or of cyder only the second runnings or the first much watered) should be allowed in the field; of ale or cyder a pint after rest or when cooled down. Before Somersetshire became a great apple country, persons who must know and cannot design to mislead, assure me that a pint of ale a day was the harvest allowance to a man. This pint was taken, sip by sip, perhaps not above a wine glass at a time. It is, I think, the most innocent way of using drink of any strength at hard labour in the hot sun. Accordingly, it is attested to me that in those days Somersetshire labourers did not in the morning come out exhausted as they now do, and were not liable to harvest surfeit. What they took to assuage thirst besides their pint of ale was simple water.
Should a few workmen in a county, by any chance, ever take courage to be kind enough to themselves to pass a sober harvest, their employer would, no doubt, cheerfully add to their wages what they might suffer him to save in strong liquor.
I could have wished to add something about coal-heavers, ship-wrights, and the effect of wine and rum in the East and West Indies. Notwithstanding, however, the length of these remarks, I will not withhold one important fact in confirmation of my long settled opinion of the superiority of mild to fermented liquors, for the hottest and hardest labours. I take it from Mr. Curwen’s ‘Hints’, just published; ‘If good milk,’ says that friend to the farmer and to the poor, ‘could be obtained, it would, I believe, be frequently substituted in the place of other pernicious beverages. The milk of Mr. Faulder’s farm was for some years carried eight miles to London to be sold – but a nearer market opening to him at Woolwich, he wisely availed himself of it. And among his customers are the men employed in one of the great iron-works carried on at that place. A single individual has prevailed upon his companions to make the experiment of milk as a substitute for porter. The result has proved it to be the best means of quenching the violence of thirst, and securing them from the feverish heat produced by the immoderate use of fermented liquors. They have persevered in this simple and wholesome beverage with an evident benefit to their health, and with an increased ability of exertion’ – So far Mr Curwen. I only add, that milk and water may at times probably be better than entire milk – And now, you workmen, who strain yourselves under a hot sun or by huge fires, go on to say, if you like it, that you must have intoxicating liquors, especially those who have never tried any other!
The coming crop of apples would also seem to render not unseasonable, a few words concerning the cyder-flux. But for the present thus much must suffice concerning the harvest-fever – that fever into which thousands throughout the country are now eager, and as it were, all agape, to drench themselves.
THOMAS BEDDOES, M.D.
Clifton, Aug. 3, 1808.
Published: The Bristol Gazette, 4 August 1808