The employment of women and children in agriculture: a reassessment of agricultural gangs in nineteenth-century Norfolk

This article examines one of the most infamous forms of rural labour in nineteenth-century No rfolk: the agricultural gang. Using Parliamentary Papers as its source, the paper argues that some previous interpretations of this form of organized labour have both exaggerated the scale of ganging in the county, and misrepresented the composition of agricultural gangs. It will be shown that, far from exploiting the cheap labour of young children and adult women across Norfolk, by the 186os, agricultural gangs mainly consisted of a youthful workforce and were regionally concentrated in the west of the county. It calls for a more considered approach to using Parliamentary Papers to prevent the perpetuation of generalizations concerning female and child labour in the nineteenth-century countryside