Catalogue Number
NMLH.1992.585
Object Name
Badge
Title
THE HOP GROWERS LABOURERS PICKERS &c DEFENCE LEAGUE.
Place
Kent; Surrey; Sussex; Southwark; Lambeth & London & England & UK
People
workers: hop pickers
Date
circa 1908
Description
Little is known about The Hop Growers, Labourers, Pickers Defence League, though it may have arisen out of a dispute with employers in which the workers sought to secure a legal defence, perhaps over the right to establish a trade union; and the League was certainly active by 1908
Hop picking in Britain was largely concentrated in the South-east of England, though there was hop picking too in Hereford, Leominster and Worcester. The hop-picking season attracted great numbers of men, women and children from the villages and towns of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, and from the East end of London, particularly from Southwark and Lambeth. There was an unusual mixture of all classes, as well as of all ages and both sexes: hundreds of townspeople, riverside and seaside folk, costermongers, dock labourers, and fishermen, all with their wives and children. Lodgings would be found wherever they could: in barns, in gypsy tents, and under the hedges.
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