Eddowes in Kent

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

Up until WW2 Kent hop pickers got paid in "Hop Tokens". It was only when the hop-pickers were "paid off" at the end of their stint that the tokens were converted to cash. E. Scott of Hunton used printed cards, and John Day of Scott's Farm, Hunton, used perforated metal tokens.

The use of tokens improved the farmer's cash flow and also stopped the pickers from moving on, but the tokens did have a certain cash value in local shops and pubs.

The attached is from "Essays in Kentish History" by Margaret Roake (1973).



It would appear from this that Eddowes and Kelly could only have bought the jacket and boots in Maidstone on their return journey to London. So John Kelly's story that they hadn't done well at hopping and were just as penniless as when they left London wasn't true. Unless, of course, he meant they were penniless because of buying the boots and jacket. But who buys new attire and then walks the thirty five miles to London, a feat they accomplished in one day? And him in his new boots. Ouch!

Thoughts please.

Regards,

Simon

[Mitch Rowe]

Perhaps he reckoned his old boots would fall apart on the way back. They must have been for want of money. The boots were pawned. Kate probably wouldnt have turned a trick unless she were broke.
I dont think the plantation owners would have been too generous towards the pickers. The stores and bars probably overpriced everything. A fool and his money are soon parted you know. Look what was going on in USA with sharecroppers and such.

A good example of such actions is described in this book:

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Sinclair/TheJungle/

I have no reason to believe corruption was any less in Britain.

[Jane Coram]

Hi Mitch,

Hop picking back in the LVP was not actually that much different from today in Kent. My husband and I were regular pickers up until a few years ago, and my husband still is. We just live a few miles up the road from where Kate went hop picking.

Generally the hop fields in Kent are still quite cut off and once a person is there the outside world generally ceases to exist unless you make a concerted effort to stay in touch. Certainly in the LVP once the pickers got there contact with the outside world was limited. These were very tiny farms, even the largest being only very modest, some of them just a few acres. These weren't big landowners with huge plantations, just very simple, small farmers on a very modest income themselves for the most part.

The local village would only have a tiny local shop, if that, more likely just a pub and a church. It would be a good few miles away from the hop fields, and none of the workers would have walked to it after a hard day in the hop fields, they would be too knackered.

The prices there were only the same as would have been paid anywhere as they served the local community. Maidstone was the nearest largest town and the reason Kelly and Kate bought their clothing there was simply because it was the only place they could buy it. Generally a local village store would not carry much apart from food and bare necessities.

So there was limited chance to spend any money even if they had any. As Simon said, it did help the owners cash flow to hand out tokens in lieu of money, because they wouldn't get paid for the hops until the end of the season usually, and they might well have not had the cash to pay the workers until they got paid themselves.

The tokens would also to stop them buggering off half way through the picking season and leaving the hop field owners without pickers. It happens quite a lot even now, for different reasons. If it's a very good season then rival hop farm owners will steal workers from other farms and pay them more money. If it's a bad season, the workers will get fed up and go and look for work elsewhere, so either way the tokens would make sure that they stayed put.

The season of 1888 was a very bad season indeed, and Kelly was probably telling the truth about them not making any money, or at least not much.
Usually there were riots at the beginning of the season as workers vied for places and it often led to bloodshed. That year the workers were fewer on the ground because they knew the pickings would not be so good and there were no riots. Only the old regulars who went back to the same farm year after year would go, because they would get better treatment.

Generally the workers were looked after very well if they were regulars. There would be plenty of fresh local food to eat, and the owners would supply plenty of cider for the workers who would sit around the camp fire at night, getting rather merry. It was a very pleasant spell away from London for most of them, which is why they were so desperate for the jobs, often using violence to get their places.

The newspaper archive here has got quite a few items scattered through on hop picking and that particular season, which was really quite dire. It's interesting reading.

Hugs

Jane

xxxxx

[Mitch Rowe]

Thankyou Jane. I stand corrected. Ill peruse the archives for a better understanding of the events in question.

[Jon Guy]

Generally the workers were looked after very well if they were regulars. There would be plenty of fresh local food to eat, and the owners would supply plenty of cider for the workers who would sit around the camp fire at night, getting rather merry.

Hiya Jane

Many of my friends are "seasonal" farm workers,and the farmers still roll out the cider or beer at the end of the day, mainly to get them drunk so they don`t drive off !!!

[Jane Coram]

Hi Mitch,

Sorry I didn't mean to sound as if I was correcting you! I get carried away sometimes. It's all very well for me because I live a couple of miles up the road and my husband's a grower, but most people wouldn't know what the area was like if they didn't live there!

England has always been a funny old place. No wonder they call us a race of eccentrics. It is very quaint and charming out here in the sticks. I live in a very small (although getting bigger unfortunately) Medieval village, where they still have the yearly pagan bonfire parade, a la Wicker Man (although we only burn effigys of famous people and not policemen - well not usually) and we have a genuine haunted pub that was partly built in the 13th century, and was having the latest modernizations down in the 17th. Lol.

I just got the giggles when I thought of my old man bent over his carrots singing Old Man River!

Hope you don't hate me.

I've put up some pics of hop picking in Kent which do show a few smiling faces. Bloody hard work though. Oh and just a snippet. You know that Kate's boots were laced up with green string? That's the stuff they use on the hops to hold them up. And another ......her apron was supposedly pretty filthy and Walter Dew described as so black you could hardly see what colour it was. (pinch of salt there) but her hands and nails were certainly turgid -
Hop picking initially stains your hands and clothes green, but it soon turns to black and filthy from the juice. Explains a lot that!

pics coming up

Hugs

Jane


xxxxxx

[Jane Coram]

Got millions of them, but here are a few.

xxxxx

[halomanuk]

Lets be honest,the stench of London in the summer,especially the east End was enough to drive the people out to the country anyway so they might as well make a little (very little) money on the side...

[steje73]

Oh, for a hop-picking photo with Kate in it. That'd be a find...

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

This is a printed card "hop token" from E. Scott's farm at Hunton, the Kent village where Eddowes and Kelly allegedly spent five to six weeks. The token is about one-and-a-half inches wide.



Regards,

Simon

[Mitch Rowe]

Hi Mitch,

Sorry I didn't mean to sound as if I was correcting you! I get carried away sometimes. It's all very well for me because I live a couple of miles up the road and my husband's a grower, but most people wouldn't know what the area was like if they didn't live there!

England has always been a funny old place. No wonder they call us a race of eccentrics. It is very quaint and charming out here in the sticks. I live in a very small (although getting bigger unfortunately) Medieval village, where they still have the yearly pagan bonfire parade, a la Wicker Man (although we only burn effigys of famous people and not policemen - well not usually) and we have a genuine haunted pub that was partly built in the 13th century, and was having the latest modernizations down in the 17th. Lol.

I just got the giggles when I thought of my old man bent over his carrots singing Old Man River!

Hope you don't hate me.

I've put up some pics of hop picking in Kent which do show a few smiling faces. Bloody hard work though. Oh and just a snippet. You know that Kate's boots were laced up with green string? That's the stuff they use on the hops to hold them up. And another ......her apron was supposedly pretty filthy and Walter Dew described as so black you could hardly see what colour it was. (pinch of salt there) but her hands and nails were certainly turgid -
Hop picking initially stains your hands and clothes green, but it soon turns to black and filthy from the juice. Explains a lot that!

pics coming up

Hugs

Jane


xxxxxx

Thats perfectly alright Jane. No apologies necessary. Im perfectly willing to be corrected when Im wrong. In fact I welcome it.

Thankyou for the pics and the explanation.

[Suzi]

Hi all-
Although this is principally a teaching resource site there are some interesting little snippets and pics.www.hoppingdowninkent.org.uk/intro2.php
Note the cider (?) bottle and the aprons! Circa 1900

Fascinating U.S. hoppers

The famous hopper's stilts!!...not advisable apres cider!

The all important Tally Man

Suzi x

[Jeff Leahy]

Hi Men of Kent/Kentishmen

Was intrigued by your accounts on several levels..largely because I've just given up on the Eastend and moved to East Farleigh Bridge Kent.

I'm also working on a script about Catherine Eddows and digging up some stuff on her time hop picking. Did you know Pash's shop is now a cash machine....must have been vary long and narrow shop.

Anyway i was wondering if anybody new anything about the Road they would have taken Maidstone to London...what condition it was in etc? Might help with some recon..Kent does have alot of Ripper connections: Stride-sheerness, eddows/pash-maidstone, Kosminski/Abraham Ramsgate, Seaside home?

Also Kent is the only County council with its own TV station called Kent TV. It might be an interesting subject to run pass them for a short, if your up for it Jane?...must be loads of old Hop picking photos about, who knows what might turn up?

Kent, who would have thought it, a ripper conference in the cider making

Jeff

[Simon Wood]

Hi Pirate Jack,

Go to Press Reports and The Echo for August 31 1888.

There's an interesting article about a hopper's walk from Trafalgar Square to East Farleigh, about three miles from Hunton [where Eddowes and Kelly toiled].

It took the correspondent two and a half days to complete the journey on foot. What a slowcoach—Eddowes and Kelly allegedly walked back in a day!

Anyway, I hope you find the article useful.

Regards,

Simon

[Jeff Leahy]

Core Blimey Simon wait till the locals get a load of this!

Taking the route by Gravesend and Chatham, on the third day I reached East Farleigh, about two miles from Maidstone. It is a little village situated on ground rising steeply from the Medway, which is here a sluggish but pleasant stream. The church and the old Bull Inn opposite, constitute the nucleus of the village, which boasts a railway station in the hollow, another inn - the Victory - on the other side of the bridge, a post-office in the general dealer's shop in the one long street, and a school-house beside the church. All the country round is one vast hop garden, studded with the kilns in which the hops are treated.

Such is the hopper's life at East Farleigh. It is not a very tempting one, you will say, and yet the hopping season is looked forward to by hundreds in East London with feelings of eager anticipation. It is the annual holiday of East London, which then migrates to Kent to recruit itself in health, in spirits, and, perchance, in purse; that is, if East London is a married man, with a wife and children, for hop-picking is work for nimble fingers. The individual adventurer who has not been a picker from his youth up seldom clears much. For my own part, all that I gained, from my hopping expedition was to keep myself for two or three weeks in the very plainest way, and to utterly ruin my clothes.

The reports from the hop country this year are not encouraging, nevertheless we may take it for granted that the migration of East London to Kent will not be less than in other years. It is difficult to account for the fascination which hop-picking has for the East Londoner. Men will even throw up steady work to make their annual excursion to Kent. The change, no doubt goes for much, and the fresh air and sense of freedom. One thing is certain, that hop picking cannot be good for the children who are engaged in it. The coarse language so often heard on the field, and the disgusting state of the hop houses, must have a deleterious effect upon their tender minds. But then, unfortunately, they are perhaps no more exposed to these evil influences in Kent than in East London.


Who would have believe I stumble across a piece of Ripper history just when I'm trying to get away from it all!

The Victory pub is my local. Well 2 minute walk over the railway line, These days largely emptie. Ł2 a pint and cheap sunday lunch. A rather nice young couple with a baby have taken it over..friday nights is darts..I havnt yet made pop quizz on thursday..they have promised Kareoke.

Well many thanks Simon..who would have thought Kate Eddows may have walked across my bridge...

I did a load of footage when it flooded last month, perhaps I should post on Utube? We also had a water mains burst!

Sorry if I'm sounding a bit of a ripperologist nerd..it never occured to me East Farleigh would have a connection?

However surely Maidstone is in the oppersite direction..downstream..I went down river on Saturday by boat..from East Farleigh...if kate was Hop picking here then she went in the oppersite direction to buy her boots..east Farleigh is closer to London?

Your sad local Kent ripperologist...reporting live from the Victory pub