Robert
Blincoe was
born in 1792. At four years old Blincoe was placed in St. Pancras
Workhouse, London. He was later told that
his family name was Blincoe but he never discovered what happened
to his parents. At the age of six Robert was sent to work as a chimney
boy. However, Robert was not a success and after
a few months he was returned to St. Pancras Workhouse.
In 1799, Lamberts recruited Robert and eighty other boys and girls
from St. Pancras Workhouse. The boys were to be instructed in the
trade of stocking weaving and the girls in lacemaking at Lowdam Mill,
situated ten miles from Nottingham.
Blincoe completed his apprenticeship in 1813, worked as an adult operative
until 1817, when he set up his own small cotton-spinning business.
Blincoe married a woman called Martha in 1819.
John Brown, a journalist from Bolton, met Robert Blincoe in 1822.
Brown interviewed Blincoe for an article he was writing on child labour.
Brown found the story so fascinating he decided to write Blincoe's
biography. John Brown gave the biography to his friend Richard
Carlile who was active in the campaign for factory legislation.
Later that year John Brown committed suicide.
Robert Carlile eventually decided to publish
Robert Blincoe's Memoir in his
radical newspaper, The Lion. The
story appeared in five weekly episodes from 25th January to 22nd February
1828. The story also appeared in Carlile's The
Poor Man's Advocate. Five years later, John
Doherty published Robert Blincoe's Memoir
in pamphlet form.
As
a result of a fire in 1828, Robert Blincoe's spinning machinery was
destroyed. Unable to pay his debts, Blincoe was imprisoned in Lancaster
Castle. After his release he became a cotton-waste dealer and his
wife ran a grocer's shop.
Blincoe's business was successful and he was able to pay for his three
children to be educated. One of his sons went on to graduate from
Queen's College, Cambridge to become
a Church of England clergyman. Robert
Blincoe died of bronchitis at the home of his
daughter in Gunco Lane, Macclesfield in 1860.
Child
Labour Debate Activity (International School of Toulouse)
Child
Labour Simulation (Spartacus Educational)
(1)
John Brown, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (1828)
In
the summer of 1799 a rumour circulated that there was going to be
an agreement between the church wardens and the overseers of St. Pancras
Workhouse and the owner of a great cotton mill, near Nottingham. The
children were told that when they arrived at the cotton mill, they
would be transformed into ladies and gentlemen: that they would be
fed on roast beef and plum pudding, be allowed to ride their masters'
horses, and have silver watches, and plenty of cash in their pockets.
In August 1799, eighty boys and girls, who were seven years old, or
were considered to be that age, became parish apprentices till they
had acquired the age of twenty-one.
(2)
John
Brown, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (1828)
The
young strangers were conducted into a spacious room with long, narrow
tables, and wooden benches. They were ordered to sit down at these
tables - the boys and girls apart. The supper set before them consisted
of milk-porridge, of a very blue complexion! The bread was partly
made of rye, very black, and so soft, they could scarcely swallow
it, as it stuck to their teeth. Where is our roast beef and plum-pudding,
he said to himself.
The apprentices from the mill arrived. The boys had nothing on but
a shirt and trousers. Their coarse shirts were entirely open at the
neck, and their hair looked as if a comb had seldom, if ever, been
applied! The girls, like the boys, destitute of shoes and stockings.
On their first entrance, some of the old apprentices took a view of
the strangers; but the great bulk first looked for their supper, which
consisted of new potatoes, distributed at a hatch door, that opened
into the common room from the kitchen.
There was no cloth laid on the tables, to which the newcomers had
been accustomed in the workhouse - no plates, nor knives, nor forks.
At
a signal given, the apprentices rushed to this door, and each, as
he made way, received his portion, and withdrew to his place at the
table. Blincoe was startled, seeing the boys pull out the fore-part
of their shirts, and holding it up with both hands, received the hot
boiled potatoes allotted for their supper. The girls, less indecently,
held up their dirty, greasy aprons, that were saturated with grease
and dirt, and having received their allowance, scampered off as hard
as they could, to their respective places, where, with a keen appetite,
each apprentice devoured her allowance, and seemed anxiously to look
about for more. Next, the hungry crew ran to the tables of the newcomers,
and voraciously devoured every crust of bread and every drop of porridge
they had left.
(3)
John
Brown, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (1828)
The
room in which Blincoe and several of the boys were deposited, was
up two pair of stairs. The bed places were a sort of cribs, built
in a double tier all round the chamber. The apprentices slept two
in a bed. The governor called the strangers to him and allocated to
each his bed-place and bed-fellow, not allowing any two of the newly
arrived inmates to sleep together. The boy whom Blincoe was to chum,
sprang nimbly into his birth, and without saying a prayer, or anything
else, fell asleep before Blincoe could undress himself. When he crept
into bed, the stench of the oily clothes and greasy hide of his sleepy
comrade, almost turned his stomach.
(4)
John
Brown, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (1828)
Blincoe
was assigned to a room, over which a man name Smith presided. The
task first allotted to him was to pick up the lose cotton, that fell
upon the floor. Apparently, nothing could be easier, and he set to
with diligence, although much terrified by the whirling motion and
noise of the machinery, and not a little affected by the dust and
flue which he was half suffocated. Unused to the stench, he soon felt
sick, and by constantly stooping, his back ached. Blincoe, therefore,
took the liberty to sit down; but this attitude, he soon found, was
strictly forbidden in cotton mills. Smith, his task-master, told him
he must keep on his legs. He did so, till twelve o'clock, being six
hours and a half, without the least intermission.
After Blincoe had been employed in the way described, he was promoted
to the more important employment of a roving winder. Being too short
of statue, to reach to his work, standing on the floor, he was placed
on a block. He was not able by any possible exertion, to keep pace
with the machinery. In vain, the poor child declared he was not in
his power to move quicker. He was beaten by the overlooker, with great
severity. In common, with his fellow apprentices, Blincoe was wholly
dependent upon the mercy of the overlookers, whom he found, generally
speaking, a set of brutal, ferocious, illiterate ruffians. Blincoe
complained to Mr. Baker, the manager, and all he said to him was:
"do your work well, and you'll not be beaten." The overlooker,
who was in charge of him, had a certain quantity of work to perform
in a given time. If every child did not perform his allotted task,
the overlooker, and was discharged.
A blacksmith named William Palfrey, who resided in Litton, worked
in a room under that where Blincoe was employed. He used to be much
disturbed by the shrieks and cries of the boys. According to Blincoe,
human blood has often run from an upper to a lower floor. Unable to
bear the shrieks of the children, Palfrey used to knock against the
floor, so violently, as to force the boards up, and call out "for
shame! for shame! are you murdering the children?" By this sort
of conduct, the humane blacksmith was a check on the cruelty of the
brutal overlookers, as long as he continued in his shop; but he went
home at seven o'clock and as soon as Woodward, Merrick and Charnock
knew that Palfrey was gone, they beat and knock the apprentices about
without moderation.
(5)
John
Brown, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (1828)
A
girl named Mary Richards, who was thought remarkably handsome when
she left the workhouse, and, who was not quite ten years of age, attended
a drawing frame, below which, and about a foot from the floor, was
a horizontal shaft, by which the frames above were turned. It happened
one evening, when her apron was caught by the shaft. In an instant
the poor girl was drawn by an irresistible force and dashed on the
floor. She uttered the most heart-rending shrieks! Blincoe ran towards
her, an agonized and helpless beholder of a scene of horror. He saw
her whirled round and round with the shaft - he heard the bones of
her arms, legs, thighs, etc. successively snap asunder, crushed, seemingly,
to atoms, as the machinery whirled her round, and drew tighter and
tighter her body within the works, her blood was scattered over the
frame and streamed upon the floor, her head appeared dashed to pieces
- at last, her mangled body was jammed in so fast, between the shafts
and the floor, that the water being low and the wheels off the gear,
it stopped the main shaft. When she was extricated, every bone was
found broken - her head dreadfully crushed. She was carried off quite
lifeless.
(6)
