A Hind's Quarters Traditional Cache

In the second half of the 19th century farm servants (hinds) were hired by the year and unmarried farm servants were commonly hired for six months. Masters and men came together at the hiring fairs usually held in the towns. Bargains were struck by word of mouth and this constituted the contract. While the hind hiring system was ruled by the one-year contract, it was also ruled by the obligation to provide an out-worker. The practice was perpetuated by the need of the big arable farms for labour, and so a man who could not readily provide a bondager, had to hire another woman or girl to live in, no easy arrangement in the cramped conditions of the hinds' rows. The bondager's work was still regarded in the late nineteenth century as paying the rent of the cottage in which the hind's family lived. It was for example the accepted custom in the Lothians for the ploughman's wife to work for twenty-one days in harvest in exchange for the rent.