Description

[003247] [Hiring a Hind]. An Advertisement Will Appear in Next Saturday’s Newcatle Papers Altering the Time of Hiring Hinds Etc. Etc.. Alnwick: W. Davison, 1809. First Edition. 16mo (Oblong). Unbound. Ephemera. Good. Single sided printed handbill, approximately 190mm x 150mm in size.

Browned, slightly chipped to left hand side with small amounts of loss, with ink number and print run to head and ink initial to the left of the imprint.

Dated February 18, 1809, noting that the time for the hiring of ‘hinds’ has been put back a month so “it is requested, therefore, that the Gentlemen and Farmers in this Neighbourhood will defer Hiring such Servants accordingly”.

A ‘hind’, (the term is probably from Scotland though clearly also used, as here, in Northern England), was “applied to a married skilled farm worker who occupies a cottage on the farm and is granted certain perquisites in addition to wages” (Dictionary of the Scots Language).

The printer was W.[illiam] Davison of Alnwick (fl.1802-1858), described in the BBTI as a printer, engraver/etcher, bookseller, stationer, publisher, bookbinder, librarian/owner of circulating library, stereotyper/stereotype founder and pharmacist/druggist/chemist/patent medicine seller. He had briefly been in partnership with John Catnach, and many of his books were illustrated by Bewick (see Hunt, The Book Trade in Northumberland and Durham to 1860, page 29). This is likely to have been from his files, with the note of the print run to the top right hand corner