Hop picking season in Kent, men, women and children from many distant villages and town of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, East End of London, Southwark and Lambeth travelled along the roads leading to the scene of action in hope of two or three weeks of agreeable and profitable employment. When night descends, they lodged wherever they could find shelter in barns and outhouses, in gipsy tents or under hedges; cooking their food, sleeping and dressing in primitive camps, enjoying their leisure hour on the banks of the Medway, washing their clothes in the river.