The Slade letters contain comparatively little detail about the families that occupied this section of the social structure.  Furthermore, the mentions that do occur frequently take a negative slant.  The absence of mention perhaps tells us as much as the negative comments.  People in the Slades’ social level perhaps did not pay much attention to the labourers as individuals.  Should they pause to give an opinion, there was more than an even chance of their assuming the worst rather than even keeping an open mind.  Charlotte once wishes she could ship out a dozen labourers to Henry at Swan River much in the way that she might have sent out a dozen magazines for him to read.

We hear about Tom Lewingdon, father of Mary I in the table above.  He had visited the new Moulsford Station one Sunday and returned convinced that he had seen a thousand people come to see the new wonder.  This is the same Tom Lewingdon suspected of stealing Thomas Fuller’s watch.  Clearly local knowledge applied here, since Mr Fuller always hung his watch in the privy window prior to entry.  He had gone away and forgotten the watch.  Although not valuable, the watch had a sentimental value since it was the first timepiece he had owned.  He offered a sovereign reward.  Mr Munday’s man brought the watch back complete with a story of finding it on the common.  But the smart money went on Tom and Munday’s man splitting the reward after Tom gave him the watch.

The Jarvis family gets two mentions.  We hear of old Tom Jarvis, breast plowing on the downs.  Nothing else goes with the story to reveal the exact identity.  We can identify the Jarvis contained in the other mention.  This Jarvis had incurred the wrath of the Fullers, so much so that they had a warrant out for his arrest on poaching charges.  The warrant also mentioned his cronies, William Breach and Tom King.  This can only be the son of James Jarvis and Mary Jones, born in 1822, and, therefore, one of the young tearaways in 1841.  Mr Fuller was probably just trying to frighten them, since some doubt existed about whether he would actually have them punished.

Young Tom King seems to have had plenty of steam to discharge.  We first hear of him as a suspected rabble-rouser at Christmas 1840.  The Slades suffered this time: somebody stole their three old geese, presumably to grace Christmas tables in secret somewhere that year.  Henry Slade took this seriously, offering two sovereigns in reward and even having handbills printed.  The same wrecking crew also smashed windows in a Fuller house.  Young King was suspected, along with William Breach and Shiner Pope.  Much later on in the letters, we again find Tom King and William Breach together, linked in trouble.  This time William Breach and Tom Summersby.  No spontaneous incident, the fight had umpires (Tom King and Jack Cooper) as well as an audience of some forty onlookers.  The context eventually needed the constable to attend.

The constable was probably the Pease Huggins we encounter in the story of yet another agricultural labouring family on the make. Henry Slade senior had found Jack Collins stealing.  Pease Huggins, we argue below, is probably the blacksmith William Huggins.  He had arrested Collins prior to taking him off to Wallingford.  As they started on their journey, Jack ran off, heading down Long Leaze to make his getaway.  Huggins ran after him, but the Collins clan (Jack’s wife, his elder brother William and his wife, plus a Tom Collins) put obstacles in his way and abused him.  Jack succeeded in his escape, for he made use of the new technology, the train, on which he went to London.  Later, he sent for his wife and family.  She sold up her belongings to make money for the expedition.  The Slades pulled no punches here.  Charlotte describes the departure of this family as ‘a good riddance from the parish’.  She did not get her wish completely, for examination of the subsequent Census entries reveals that the Collins crept back from London and began again in the village. 

We can, perhaps, see another side to the Collins story.  Jack’s unnamed wife was Martha Chip.  Illegitimate herself (and eventually to be the grandmother of three illegitimate children), her Aunt Martha had married Thomas Brown in 1788.  The Census shows her in residence with Thomas, now 68 and 70 respectively.  Thomas describes himself as a pauper. Within six months, we hear of Martha Brown worn completely to a skeleton and not expected to live beyond that September.  Sure enough, by October they bury her.  Doubtless poverty ran through the entire family cluster.  We know the family pulled together, because, at the time of the Census, Thomas and Martha Brown have present in the house Sarah Mayne, their married daughter, (probably already separated from her husband) and young Alfred Collins, eldest son of Martha Chip and Jack Collins.

There is another reason for the Slades to want Jack Collins and his family out of the parish: a tenuous family linkage exists.  This runs through the grandmother of Martha Chip, Elizabeth Pope.  Her niece, also called Elizabeth, married Septimus Slade, brother of Henry Senior, whose only mention in letters refers to the time he got drunk and chased his wife and child from the house, late at night.  Her father, George Pope, came down the next day to fetch their things.

The Shiner Pope, first encountered as one of the Christmas rabble-rousing gang, resurfaces later.  Fined five shillings he was bound over for a year in a bond of £10 to keep the peace.  The letter describes this Pope as ‘your man Shiner’, so he must have some connection with Henry Slade junior.  We cannot identify him further.  Pope had been brawling with Jack Redhood, punished to the same level.   This may be the John Redhood, aged 52, listed as head of household in the 1841 Census, or his son, also called John, born in 1820, but not listed in this Census.  John the elder’s wife, Hannah, worked in one of the Fuller households, and is there listed as a servant for Thomas Fuller.  A decade later, she describes herself as a pauper, resident in the household of her son.  Interestingly, the same letter describes Redhood as ‘Munday’s man’.  Perhaps this is the same ‘Munday’s man’ who returned to Mr Fuller the watch stolen by Tom Lewingdon, claiming the reward.

Finally, we have Will Strange.  We hear that he had left the employ of Henry Slade senior during the summer of 1840.  They had had a difference over wages.  The young Strange wanted twelve shillings a week for being under-carter.  Charlotte Slade speculates that tales of high wages in Swan River had turned Strange’s head.  Just as likely a reason can be found in his marriage the year earlier to Martha Jarvis.  They already had one child, Alfred, born a year before the recorded marriage, and Thomas had come along sometime in 1840, according to the Census (but no mention in the Parish Records).  Will doubtless found a wife and family rather more expensive than he had envisaged.

So, in most cases, where the letters refer to people from this level of society, the mentions take a negative slant.  The one main exception to this concerns Betty Herbert.  One of her ten children, son John, had accompanied Henry Slade to Swan River, signing up as his servant.  Charlotte often sees her at Ranting and Betty occasionally sends letters or journals to Thorpe Farm for inclusion in the mail to Australia.  Her son seems to have prospered out there.  He makes a marriage, but forgets to tell his mother in his letters, and is described by someone who saw him there as fat as a pig.  Betty Herbert is more properly known as Elizabeth Jones, belonging in the heart of the Jones dynasty.  Charlotte, however, has nothing but good to say of her.