August & September jobs in Victorian London. Sacked workers, harvesting & hop picking(the well off went on holiday). In 2025 precarious and seasonal work continues to be a significant issue.
As Raphael Samuel notes in his long essay Comers and Goers during August the well off went on holiday and that meant less work for a range of occupations. He notes that the ‘indoor trades’ that provided goods for the world of rank and fashion found little business in August while women workers were particularly badly hit as those who used the services of hairdressers and laundresses went on holiday to the UK seaside. Factory work was also hard to come by. Samuel notes that at one of the East End’s biggest employers Allen and Hanbury in Bethnal Green 25% of women workers were sacked every summer.
Work was to be had instead not in urban but rural areas with then labour intensive work such as harvesting (August) and hop picking (September) requiring large numbers of casual workers. Sometimes the change from urban to rural was seen as a form of (hard) working holiday.
Neither harvesting or hop picking are significant sources of employment in 2025- both being mechanised. However the seasonal, short term nature of employment certainly is. Official society and the MSM hardly notices but it’s a daily reality for many
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