Frozen-out Gardeners

In a hard frost, when no work could be done on the land, bands of men went through London and the market towns as frozen-out gardeners. They wore aprons, carried rakes or old spades on their shoulders and hoisted a withered cabbage or a turnip on a pole, crying Pray remember the poor gardeners, or chanting that they had no work to do. Hone printed the scene under 4 January from the Mirror of the Months, and Chambers, writing under 14 January, suspected that many of them had never been gardeners at all.