Millers

[gandalf458x]

Just curious as I have found an ancestor who was a miller... I have had the impression in the past that millers were often considered to be rogues defrauding customers by adding stones to sack of flour, thus increasing the weight of the sack. Does anyone know if there is any truth in this, and I understand that it's a gross exaggeration in any event, or have I been listening to too many folk songs!

[BC Wench]

I remember seeing something about this on t.v. when someone was visiting a mill to see how it worked. I'm sure it mentioned that some millers would grind stones along with the wheat to eek out the weight. But, I'm not sure whether that happened when either WW1 or WW2 was going on.

[gandalf458x]

Ah, thanks BC. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I guess it would have been before WW1 or WW2 as I think a lot of mills went out of business in the late 1800s (or perhaps earlier). My miller was described in the 1851 census as a pauper, formerly miller.

I remember when I researched my (former) village many years ago, I discovered the miller in 1824 emigrated to Australia leaving a lot of debt, which was at least in part blamed on a series of bad harvests.