As a rule, the Wealden peasant is provident. Some men subscribe as much as £8 or £9 a year to clubs; £1 for support in illness, and £7 to £8 is expended for clothes. The general arrangement in the hop districts is that the man's wages pays for rent and food, while that which the women and children earn goes towards clothes.
But provident or improvident, there can be no doubt that the majority of children and old people do not get enough to eat. The old people have a peculiar complexion arising from poorness of blood, in some cases breaking out into sores. I was told that there is widespread hereditary consumption in East Sussex.
The extinction of its ancient industry, the iron trade, the rise, of import smuggling, and the Act of Uniformity, all combined to throw the Weald into that path of retrogression from which it has only very partially emerged. Parishes in which three hundred years ago there was such an active, earnest, progressive spirit, that several of their inhabitants were burnt to death for the cause of the Reformation, are now sunk in an almost incredible ignorance and immorality.
I met with a poor boy near Cross-on-Hand, who had been paralysed since he was eighteen months old, in his leg. His body was not fit for any work, but his mind had grown. He told me that in arithmetic he had gone as far as vulgar fractions, and now longed to draw. Yet those who exercise the Christian ministry in the Weald complain of the apathy and stolid indifference of the people, of the rowdyism of the boys, and the immorality of both sexes. From all I heard, it would be difficult to exaggerate the latter evil. Let no one suppose, however, that they are peculiarly corrupt. It is poverty, ignorance, and a low state of public opinion which is at the root of the evil. I saw a kind little woman, at the risk of losing other employment, attending upon a poor old bed-ridden couple, who were being eaten by vermin, and had no one else to care for them. She had had two illegitimate children, but from the way she spoke of the fact it was believed that she only regarded it as an inconvenience.
The people are very clean, as a rule. The men generally wear black smocks, and the woman are neat and tidy in their dress. The interiors of the cottages are black from the smoke of the
