East Enders and hopping
September means the end of summer, going back to school, and the nights starting to draw in. But for generations of East End women and their kids it meant something more – hop-picking.There were many reasons why so many families made the annual journey down to Kent. Like with any other harvest, a lot of work had to be done in a short time, so lots of extra bodies were needed out in the fields, from dawn to dusk, to bring in the crop.
For the women, it might mean a break from a tedious job in the East End. Much work was casual and could be easily taken up again when they returned in the autumn – many simply packed their jobs in. It might mean a welcome paid holiday in the sunshine and the fresh air of the countryside. And for many London kids it was seen as a rest cure, a rare chance to build themselves up and get some clean air into their lungs. As one Canning Town woman remembered: “The birds never sang there, they coughed!” And a Kent farmer recalled: “The first few days here, the kids would be coughing from the fresh air, and every time they coughed, they’d be coughing out soot.”
The really efficient pickers could take advantage of the piecework nature of picking, and store away some much-needed cash to tide them over for the rest of the year. But perhaps the main reason for the exodus was the camaraderie that echoed around the hop fields. The hoppers would be roused by a blast on the farmer’s horn, and start work around 7am.
The usual method in the Kent fields was for families to work in a group, stripping the hop cones off the bines – the rough, vine-like stems of the hop plant – and into the hop bins. A long day pulling the prickly, resin-sticky hops would end at 5pm, when the cry “Pull no more bines” would go up, and the family would sit round the faggot-fuelled camp fires, sharing tea, stories and songs with their friends and temporary neighbours. From the 19th century on, summer conversations in the East End would revolve around the question “Have you got your letter yet?”
The letter was the sign that you and your family had been accepted by the farmer for another season’s picking. The traditional letter, confirming your job, your accommodation and when the picking would start, developed from the practice of London agents providing letters of recommendation to show to the Kent farmers. It was intended as a way of preventing a mass invasion of the peaceful Kent countryside by the supposedly rowdy Cockneys.
The disruption the Londoners caused may have been overstated but there was still friction between town and country long into this century. There was a running argument between the Kent and London County Councils, with Kent moaning that the influx of Londoners – especially the “economically unproductive children” – put a strain on the medical and other services. London, of course, made the counter argument that the families wouldn’t have been there at all if Kent hadn’t been so desperate for their labour.
But by the 1950s and 60s, mechanised picking was taking over the hop fields of Kent. Times were less hard and East Enders now usually had jobs which gave them paid holidays. For many, a trip to the seaside or holiday camp was preferable to an autumn of back-breaking labour. The machines tackled the shortage of labour, but ended up killing off hand-picking altogether. The annual migration of a quarter of a million Londoners was at an end and the call “Pull no more bines” would be heard no more.
For further reading, see Pull No More Bines, by Gilda O’Neill, published by The Women’s Press. See too, London History, 100 Faces of the East End by John Rennie.