Nature Study
' Another Country Walk with Tessa and Lychett'
ERIC PARKER
2.25 * Interval Music
2.30 British History
'The Tolpuddle Martyrs '
AMABEL WILLIAMS ELLIS
On March 19, 1834, six farm-labourers of the highest character were sentenced at Dorchester Assizes to seven years' transportation for the crime of ' administering an unlawful oath '. They had sworn to act together in an attempt to get their wages increased from seven to ten shillings a week. They were pioneers of trade unionism, and the idea of the workers banding themselves together aroused such fear in the governing class that the six men of Tolpuddle were punished savagely.
So great was the public outcry that the six martyrs' were eventually pardoned, but only after they had served two years of the term of transportation.