The labourer was lowest and most at risk in the social order of 19th century Ireland. He owned no land, only having a small area on which to build a cabin and grow a very small amount of potatoes. Labourers might get about five pennies a day for their effort in the fields, and a meal of potatoes in the evening.

They relied on work wherever it was available; on farms during harvest time or even to England. In the meantime the women and children would be left waiting for the husband's return and would have to beg in the meantime to survive. Begging increased during the Summer months when the potatoes crop was almost finished

Estate labourers got no wage at all. But the day to day work paid for their cottage and a few roods of ground for them to tend.

The census from 1841 had houses graded in four classes. Of the the lowest was a windowless mud cabin with only a single room. Half the rural population where shown to be living in this type of cabin according to the census!