Charles
Aberdeen
first started work in a cotton factory when he was
sent to one in Hollywell by the Westminster Workhouse when he was
twelve years old. Aberdeen was working in a cotton factory in Salford
when he was sacked in April, 1832 for signing a petition in favour
of factory reform. Aberdeen was fifty-three when he was interviewed
by Michael Sadler and his House
of Commons Committee on 7th July, 1832.
Child
Labour Debate Activity (International School of Toulouse)
Child
Labour Simulation (Spartacus Educational)
(1)
Charles Aberdeen interviewed by Michael
Sadler and his House of Commons Committee
on 7th July, 1832.
Question:
Does the business of the scavengers demand constant attention, and
to be in perpetual motion, and to assume a variety of attitudes, so
as to accommodate their business in cleaning the machinery to its
motions?
Answer: Yes, to go under the machine, whilst it is going.
Question: Is it dangerous employment.
Answer: Very dangerous when they first come, but they get used to
it.
Question: Are the hours shorter or longer at present, than when you
were apprentice to a cotton mill?
Answer: Much the same.
Question: Will you inform the committee, whether the labour itself
has increased, or other wise?
Answer: The labour has increased more than twofold.
Question: Explain in what way.
Answer: I have done twice the quantity of work that I used to do,
for less wages. Machines have been speeded. The exertion of the body
is required to follow up the speed of the machine.
Question: Has this increased labour any visible effect upon the appearance
of the children.
Answer: It has a remarkable effect. It causes a paleness. A factory
child may be known easily from another child that does not work in
a factory.
Question: Has it had the effect of shortening their lives?
Answer: Yes.
Question: What grounds have you for thinking so.
Answer:
I have seen men and women that have worked in a factory all their
lives, like myself, and that they get married; and I have seen the
race become diminutive and small; I have myself had seven children,
not one of which survived six weeks; my wife is an emaciated person,
like myself, a little woman, and she worked during her childhood,
younger than myself, in a factory.
Question: What is the common age to which those that have been accustomed
from early youth to work in factories survive.
Answer: I have known very few that have exceeded me in age. I think
that most of them die under forty.
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