On Monday, John Erie, thatcher, while thatching a haystack at the Laines, missed hit footing through the breaking of a staff of the ladders and pitched down a considerable height on his head. The poor old man was so much shook as to lay him up, and it will be some time before he will be enabled to follow his occupation.

A few days since, John Betts, jobbing gardener, and formerly coachman to the Rev. H. Plimby, while pruning a vine at Whiteman’s Green, had a fall, through the slipping of the ladder from the roof of a house, and was so much injured as to prevent him from working, probably through the summer. He is also an old man, and deserving of help.

Sussex Advertiser, Surrey Gazette 7 August 1860

Contributed by Malcolm Davison.

Picture: A Land Girl carrying a large forkful of hay in order to feed cattle at the Women's Land Army training centre at Cannington in Somerset during 1940.

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