All of my ancestors (bar one) appear to have been Ag Labs of one sort or another. Im positively dying to find a cobbler or cordwainer among some as yet unfound ancestors!

At the moment Im interested in getting some sort of confirmation of the average wage of an ag lab in England since I havent found the aforementioned cobbler. After doing some trawling around the net it appears that it might have been around 20 pounds a year. Does this sound right?

Cut to Australia in the same time period and people were making between 10-16 shillings a week ( according to one source) which is between 26 pounds and 41 pounds and at one point up to 25-30 shillings a week,(an astonishing 65-78 pounds!!!) because everyone was rushing off to find gold and good skilled ag labourers were in short supply.

It certainly gave me a different perspective about why families moved half way across the world to start a new life. It must have seemed worth the risk.

Shay