Podder

That strength of body is often equal to the courage of mind implanted in the fair sex, will not be denied by those who have seen the water-women of Plymouth; the female drudges of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland; the fish-women of Billinsgate; the weeders, podders, and hoppers, who swarm the fields; and the lowest beings of the feminine gender wo swagger in the streets of London.

And it is added, that it is frequently a practice with the large cultivators of early green pea crops, in the neighbourhood of London, to dispose of them, by the acre, to inferior persons, who procure the podders[…]

Many of the richer persons sell their Peas by the acre, to persons who employ the podders, and who gather by the sack of four bushels. About forty podders are set to ten acres.

This tent, Pitched in a grassy angle of the lane, Stood as the outpost of the podder's camp; Rude, travelling people, with their carts and asses, Potters or tinkers, kindred to the gipsy, Who hither yearly came for the pea-harvest, And had encampment here.

Another advantage of the "podder" lies in the fact that the peas do not get wet and sticky from the juice of the vines , but remain dry and so may be more quickly and easily cleaned, thus shortening the time before the peas are in the cans.

In the “podder” the mechanism is still simpler. Instead of passing the whole vines into the machine, the pods are picked off by hand and these are fed into the machine through a hopper. The removal of the peas from the pods is effected in the same way as in the viner, and the peas and pods delivered by chutes.

When I had set the podder up, on the 4th of July, and gave it a trial on the morning of the 5th, Mr. Taylor remarked, " Well , I guess it is a go," and at noon three hundred people walked out of the factory, never to return, as I supposed.

The podder can also harvest awkward corners in a field previously left unharvested.