The Abingdon Hiring Fair was depicted in The Graphic on 10 March 1888 as an example of a Statute Fair. Hiring is seen happening outside the Lion Hotel.

Part of the Lion Hotel was later demolished, and part of the site is now home to Dorindos and Coffee Aroma. Nobody today was looking for employment there.

I was asked when Abingdon’s Michaelmas Fair ceased to be a hiring fair. Looking through old newspapers, the short answer is: hiring was still happening at the Michaelmas Fair in the mid‑19th century, was becoming less important by the 1880s, continued in a small way for farm workers in 1907, and had disappeared by 1913. The long answer can be found in the postscript to this post.

What began as a Statute or Hiring Fair, for farm workers and domestic servants, became over time a Hiring and Pleasure Fair, and since 1907 has been a Pleasure Fair.

The greatest pleasure for some people is being terrified, spun about and turned upside down.

There are also stalls where people can try out skills that were once more common than they are now.

But it was not all pleasure. While most people were having fun, some youths were giving verbal abuse, and the police seemed more on the lookout this evening.

Today, Tuesday, there was more cloud, even a few drops of rain. But nearly everybody was having a good time, just as they did 100 years ago. This picture is of Abingdon Fair from the Oxford Journal in 1923.

P.S. The long answer

The last hiring reported at the Michaelmas Fair is from 1907, in the Newbury Weekly News:
“There appeared to be more doing in the hiring of farm hands this year, and no lack of eligible seekers of employment. The hiring took place outside the Lion Hotel when for an hour or two early in the day quite a crowd of men and youths were being interviewed by employers.”

By 1910, the Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette was still calling it the “annual hiring and pleasure fair”, although its report did not mention any actual hiring.

By October 1913, the Faringdon Advertiser said:
“Some years ago the Fair was a hiring fair, but this factor has altogether ceased at the present day.”

The actual practice of hiring appears to have been declining for several decades before that. In 1882, the Oxford Journal reported that the hiring of servants was waning:
“The business of hiring servants in husbandry and domestics appeared to be dull. No doubt, now-a-days, many and doubtless the best of the hirelings obtain their situations without attending the fair and making public exhibitions of themselves. The registry office is now the principal medium for obtaining situations of this description.”

Going further back, however, hiring of domestic servants was an important part of the Michaelmas Fair. In 1857, the Oxford Journal reported:
“’There was an observable improvement in the hiring fair. We have had to notice in previous years a falling off in the class of domestics of both sexes coming to be hired; this year, however, there was a more respectable supply. That of females was short, and, generally speaking, they appeared to be under 20 years of age; and such as were all right in their answers had no difficulty in hiring themselves at good wages. Those who had passed their twentieth year and were progressing towards thirty years of age, with several years of useful service to recommend them (and of these there was a limited number), were in great demand. Of men and boys there were multitudes (more than usual we should say), who quickly got engaged at such good and satisfactory wages as plainly indicated that the market at the present day is not glutted with labourers.”

And the tradition goes back much further. On 12 October 1805, the Jackson Oxford Journal reported:
“Great shew of dairy maids, who were hired at very low wages, owing to the late reduced price of cheese. The taskers went off briskly, and at high prices, the Farmers being in a hurry to get their corn thrashed out for market.”

Acknowledgements: British Newspaper Archive for the quotations about the hiring fair; Oxford Library Microfilm for the 1923 picture of Abingdon Fair; and eBay for the print of the Hiring or Statute Fair (currently for sale).