Abstract—Since the early nineteenth century, contemporary
observers and historians have argued that the apparent
dichotomy in agricultural living standards between a seemingly
prosperous northern England and an impoverished south was
primarily caused by the new industrial sectors which developed
in the north of England between 1780 and the mid-nineteenth
century. In Northumberland, the dominant industrial sector
was coal mining. This paper challenges the assumption that coal
mining was the principal factor in elevating agricultural wages
in Northumberland. On the contrary, the mining sector played
only a minor role in establishing agricultural wages in
Northumberland, and there is evidence that day wages had little
impact on agricultural living standards in the region during the
nineteenth century.
Index Terms—Agricultural labourers, coal mining,
northumbrian history, Industrialisation.
Michael C. Kelly is with the Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan
(e-mail: mkelly@nu.edu.kz).
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Cite: Michael C. Kelly, " Collieries and Agricultural Labour in Nineteenth-Century
Northumberland," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 321-324, 2014.