The provision of village schools in Bedfordshire is to be dealt with by Mr. D. W. Bushby in a future volume, but there are some aspects of rural education that should be in a study of the farm worker. Although the motives and enthusiasm of the gentry and clergy who promoted voluntary schools in the 1830’s and 1840’s were probably the same in Bedfordshire as in other counties, the reception given to the new schools was gravely distorted here by the peculiar strength of domestic industry: lace in the north and straw plait in the south of the county. This hindered the attendance of girls in particular, and helped to reinforce a strong tendency towards illiteracy among females in rural areas. In the comparatively small areas where the labour of small boys was in demand – the market garden region in East Beds. – the school attendance figures are reversed, although it is not yet clear what effect if any it had on working class literacy.

The correspondence of the Bedford estate steward at Woburn indicates that in the 1840’s a demand for village schools was being voiced by the labourers themselves, and was not merely a concern of their well-meaning betters.

After the establishment of parish School Boards under the 1870 Education Act, school attendance was made compulsory parish by parish. Before that date the working class families of the county had been divided in their attitude to education. The Victorian ‘new working class’ of occupation – policemen, railwaymen and the like – invariably sent their children to school. The ‘traditional’ working class in rural areas were far less uniform in their support for education, and more dependent on child labour in lace-making or straw plait. The Bedfordshire farm labourers come into the second category.

Duke of Bedford’s involvement

Letter from Thomas Bennett, the Steward at Woburn, to Christopher Haedy, the estate’s Agent-in-chief in London.

Park Farm Woburn August 18th 1840.