Hi,
wonder if the following from 1847 re William Atyeo of Huish Episcopi is of interest:
W-A- {William Atyeo} has a wife and three children, one of whom is at service. The son, twenty years of age, is ill, from a chill caught whilst breaking stones, during the frost, and receives casual relief from the union. The daughter at home is also ill, and without shoes. The mother and daughter have each but three garments – a gown, petticoat, and shift. W-A- works on the bye-roads, and earns 10d a day, when the weather permits. Pays 1s a week rent. In the bedroom, which is small, damp, and miserable, are two beds, side by side, in one of which sleep the man and his wife, who have but one blanket and two sheets to cover them; in the other, the brother and sister, the former being twenty years of age, and the latter twenty-four. With them also sleeps an illegitimate child of the daughter who is from home. This is the cottage to which I referred last week, and take it altogether, I never saw such a scene of misery, degradation, and vice, which are the result of poverty, in my life. I say vice, from the history of its inmates, as given me by a person who has a knowledge of the family, and whose position in the parish renders him acquainted with the affairs of its humble inhabitants.
Your Inquirer.
