In the early 1800s village life throughout England was hard. In Heyshott the average farm worker was paid a shilling a day, if he had employment, and the price of food being what it was, it was difficult for people to scrape enough food together and it is not surprising that many children did not survive infancy.
 
Children were employed from the age of 7 or 8, at a penny a day, to scare birds away and keep cattle from crops.
The children had no schooling of any kind and they ran about without shoes and little clothing.
 
It was little better in the 1830s because although wages did increase by a shilling or so a week, the price of food was very high. Bread was one shilling for a quarter of a loaf [4lb. loaf], tea at 5/- per pound, one oz. for 4 pence. [Poor could only afford to buy it by the oz.] Sugar at 6 pence or 8 pence a pound, candles of cotton or rush were 8 or 10 pence, soap was 6 pence. Many of the poor would grow such food as greens, turnips, carrots and onions to help out their meagre budget. Labourers got extra money at hay and harvest times and with this they used to buy boots which cost £1. a pair, or extra clothing or household equipment such as a cooking pot, which cost approximately 3 shillings.
 
The women went into the fields and 'gleaned' for extra money to buy food like flour or a herring. The very poor would buy 'toppings', left overs after the corn had been thrashed, with this they tried to make a kind of cake. They used burnt bread crushed up and put it in a pot with boiling water to make a kind of tea, which must have been dreadful.
 
In 1832 there were agricultural riots caused by the introduction of thrashing machines which took over the hard manual work of thrashing with sticks. They were seen as a threat to the already poor wages of the land workers. Labourers organised raids in some parts of the country to destroy as many implements as they could lay their hands on. When the yeomanry and the military were called in to put an end to the riots there were a series of homestead and rick burnings. Of those who were arrested, sentenced and convicted, some were hung and others transported for life. The latter was considered the more terrible as the passage out to Australia was both long and dangerous.
 
Example
A boy born in 1826 had typhoid fever at the age of 5. At 6 he went to work in the fields keeping pigs, driving oxen and horses at plough, up to the age of 15. During this time he suffered chillblains, he wore boots which weighed up to 4lbs, and suffered with frostbite in the winter.
 
His home farm of some 5 to 6 hundred acres was worked by approximately 9 men with 35 horses, and 24 bullocks. The farm was 3/4 tilled. The 9 men lived in one room with no light to dress by. They did have rushlights which they had to light by steel and flint. One day's work was to plough one acre. I leave you to think of the hardship of this sort of life in the days of insufficient food and clothing.

 
The following tables for the comparison of the year 1820 under Protection and under Free Trade in 1903.