The Community

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Jarratts Buildings - The Community

A Few Facts and Figures 1861 - 1939

The ten-yearly census returns and the 1939 Register provide a snapshot of how the Jarratts community lived and developed.

In 1881 some of the houses in Jarratts began to be enumerated in High Street and others in Green Street. I have regarded these houses as still being part of the Jarratts site.

The numbers of people living in the houses varied greatly. Although many would have been uncomfortably overcrowded, others had only a few occupants, indicating that a healthy and skilled hewer could earn enough to keep a small family without having to supplement the household income by taking in lodgers.

In 1861 and 1871 there was a degree of transience with several families moving on. From 1881 - 1901 a distinctive community emerged with some families staying in the same home for several decades. One couple lived in the same house from 1871 through to 1920, dying within two months of each other. In some cases children who had grown up in Jarratts married and took on the tenancy of their parents' home. Three generations of the Booth family lived there from 1861 to 1939 and unmarried Alice Booth took over the tenancy of her father's house when he died in 1912. Sometimes a child grew up, married and moved into another house within Jarratts when one became available.

In 1911 several new names appeared in the census. Most of these were young couples with a growing family. Some of the long-standing residents had either died or moved in with relatives in the first decade of the twentieth century, freeing up homes for new occupants. In 1861 the average age of a Jarratts head of family and spouse was 36 years. This gradually increased until it was 46 in 1891. It fell to 42 in 1901 and then to 40 in 1911. Although there were some young families, several houses were occupied by elderly people who had lived there for a decade or longer.

Between 1911 and 1921 several of the long-standing, elderly occupants died. Although new surnames start to appear in parish records,some of the apparently new residents were young women who had grown up at Jarratts and whose husbands had moved into the community. In 1921, Nos 27 and 51 were occupied by a grandchild of the tenants of 1861,the tenancy having continued in the family in an unbroken line for three generations. Half of the occupied houses (26/52) had a head of household or spouse who had been connected with the site for at least twenty years.

The site had an older age profile than previously. The average age of the head of household and spouse had increased from 40 to 44 years and there were only three tenants who were under thirty. This explains the reduced number of children under fourteen. The decline would be more marked were it not for widowed families with young children who were living with a sibling or a parent.

An indicator of change was the reduction in the number of lodgers who had come from a different part of to country to work. With four heads of household and several members of families classified as 'out of work, jobs were not abundant in Worsborough at that point. Of those who were listed as lodgers, more than half were close relatives of the host family, or young adults whose family home was too full to accommodate them.

The 1939 Register reveals that the population of Jarratts had declined substantially. A former resident has indicated that in the 1930s Jarratts had the cheapest rents in the area and was home to those on the most limited incomes. The Register shows that there were 9 male householders who were unemployed and one who was incapacitated. Six of the houses were rented by an older widow or an unmarried older woman. The link between living at Jarratts and working at the pit no longer existed. Tenants worked in a range of industries. Almost half of the households were young couples starting out in married life, perhaps with one or two children. Around a quarter of the tenants were elderly, and some had lived on the site for decades. Relatively few were in mid-adulthood. Families who could earn enough to move out of Jarratts and into another home in Worsborough did so at this period.

Some families moved around the site. In the twentieth century, the poor condition of some houses meant that a new tenant had to accept one in bad condition and then move when one in better repair became available. The steps to the upper part of the site would have made access difficult as residents aged and may explain the moves made by some of the older occupants.

Produced from analysis of censuses and 1939 Register by Denise Bates.The 1939 split between adults and children as shown on the graph is necessarily a best estimate as some records on the 1939 Register are officially closed.