John
Fielden,
the third
son of Joshua Fielden,
was born in Todmorden on 17th January, 1784. Joshua Fielden was the
owner of a small textile business. At the age of ten John was required
to work in his family's cotton factory for ten hours a day. When he
had served his apprenticeship his father made John
and his four brothers, partners in Joshua Fielden & Sons.
Once a week Joshua and his sons would take their cloth to Manchester,
20 miles away, and collect the bags of imported cotton. This journey
became easier with the building of the Rochdale Canal in 1804.
When Joshua Fielden died in 1811, the
business was still fairly small. Joshua left £200 in cash and
the property and machinery was estimated to be worth £5000. Jointly
run by John and his four brothers, Samuel, Joshua, James and Thomas,
the business expanded rapidly over the next few years.
John married Ann Grindrod, the daughter of a Rochdale grocer in 1811.
The couple had seven children: Jane (1814), Samuel (1816), Mary (1817),
Ann (1819), John (1822), Joshua (1827) and Ellen (1829). John Fielden's
wife died of a heart-attack in 1831 after seeing a child drown in
the local canal.
Brought up as a Quaker, Fielden had been
taught at an early age to be concerned about the welfare of the people
the company employed. In 1816 the four brothers presented a petition
to Parliament that argued for factory legislation to protect child
workers. In 1822 Fielden was a founder member of the Todmorden
Unitarian Society, a religious group active in the social reform
movement. Two years later, Fielden funded the building of the Unitarian
Chapel. Fielden also established and taught at the Unitarian School
in the village.
When the wages of factory workers began to fall in the 1820s, Fielden
started advocating the introduction of a minimum
wage. Fielden argued that if workers were paid a decent wage, this
would be good for the British economy as it was increase spending
on manufactured goods. He also believed that low wages and long hours
had a disastrous effect on the health of the workers. As an employer
Fielden practised what he preached and paid good wages to his workers.
In an attempt to improve wages Fielden gave support to John
Doherty and his Grand Union of Operative
Spinners. Fielden also worked with Doherty in the formation of
the Society for the Protection of Children Employed in Cotton Factories.
By 1832 Fielden Brothers was one of the largest
textile companies in Britain. The company owned 684 power looms and
was responsible for about one per cent of the total cloth being produced
in Yorkshire and Lancashire.
John Fielden believed that adult men should have the vote and was
active in the Manchester Political Union.
He established the Todmorden Political Union and
in 1831 Fielden and William Cobbett were
selected as Radical candidates for Oldham
in the election that followed the passing of 1832
Reform Act. Cobbett and Fielden both won easily and became the
leaders of the reform movement in the House
of Commons.
After the death of William Cobbettin 1835,
reformers relied heavily on John Fielden to put their case in the
House of Commons. Campaigns supported by
Fielden included the six demands of the Chartist
movement and opposition to the 1834 Poor Law
Act. Fielden also campaigned against the payment of compensation
to slave owners and supported revision of the Corn
Laws. Fielden was also in favour of a national system of education
under public control and always voted against measures that attempted
to give financial aid to church schools.
John Fielden main political activity concerned factory legislation.
Although Fielden personally believed that a ten hour day was too long
for children, he supported the campaign for a ten hour day as he was
aware this was the only thing that Parliament would accept. It was
a long hard struggle and it was not until 1847 that Parliament passed
the Ten Hours Act. As Lord
Ashley had been defeated in the General Election
earlier that year, John Fielden had the task of taking the act through
Parliament. Although Ashley had been the official leader of the factory
reformers, no one had done more than Fielden to obtain this reform.
By the 1840s, John Fielden's son, Samuel
Fielden, became the dominant figure in the Fielden
Brothers company. In 1845 Fielden purchased a small country estate,
Skeynes, near Edenbridge in Kent. John Fielden died at Skeynes on
29th May, 1849. He is buried in a simple grave at the Unitarian
Chapel in Todmorden.
Todmorden
in 1840. Fielden Brothers factory is in the centre of the picture.
Child
Labour Debate Activity (International School of Toulouse)
Child
Labour Simulation (Spartacus Educational)
(1)
John Fielden, The Curse of the Factory System (1836)
In
the counties of Derbyshire, Nottingham, and, more particularly, in
Lancashire the newly-invented machinery was used in large factories
built on the side of rivers capable of turning the water-wheel. Thousands
of hands were suddenly required in these places, remote from towns.
The small and nimble fingers of little children being by far the most
in request.
(2)
Samuel
Fielden, Autobiography
of Samuel Fielden (1887)
Todmorden lies in a beautiful valley, and on the hillsides are small
farms; back about a mile are the moorlands, which could be made into
fine farms, as the topography of the moors is more level generally
than the enclosed land. But though thousands of starving Englishmen
would be very glad to work them, they must be kept for the grouse
and the gamekeeper and the gentry. Grouse sport for the privileged
classes being esteemed of more importance than the happiness of thousands
of human beings. The farms are all dairy, the milk all being sold
in town. There are numerous large mills in the town, Fielden Brothers
being the largest; it contains about 2,000 looms.
When
I arrived at the mature age of 8 years I, as was usual with the poor
people's children in Lancashire, went to work in a cotton mill, and
if there is any of the exuberance of childhood about the life of a
Lancashire mill-hand's child it is in spite of his surroundings and
conditions, and not in consequence of it. As I look back on my experience
at the tender age I am filled with admiration at the wonderful vitality
of these children. I think that if the devil had a particular enemy
whom he wished to unmercifully torture the best thing for him to do
would be to put his soul into the body of a Lancashire factory child
and keep him as a child in a factory the rest of his days. The mill
into which I was put was the mill established by John Fielden, M.P.,
who fought so valiantly in the ten-hour movement.
The
infants, when first introduced to these abodes of torture, are put
at stripping the full spools from the spinning jennies and replacing
them with empty spools. They are put to work in a long room where
there are about twenty machines. The spindles are apportioned to each
child, and woe be to the child who shall be behind in doing its allotted
work. The machine will be started and the poor child's fingers will
be bruised and skinned with the revolving spools. while the children
try to catch up to their comrades by doing their work with the speed
of the machine running, the brutal overlooker will frequently beat
them unmercifully, and I have frequently seen them strike the children,
knocking them off their stools and sending them spinning several feet
on the greasy floor.
When the ten-hour movement was being agitated in England my father
was on the committee of agitation in my native town, and I have heard
him tell of sitting on the platform with Earl Shaftesbury, John Fielden,
Richard Ostler, and other advocates of that cause. I always thought
he put a little sarcasm into the word earl, at any rate he had but
little respect for aristocracy and royalty. He was also a Chartist
and I have heard him tell of many incidents connected with the Chartist
agitation and movement.
(3)
John Fielden, speech in the House of Commons (9th May, 1836)
At
a meeting in Manchester a man claimed that a child in one mill walked
twenty-four miles a day. I was surprised by this statement, therefore,
when I went home, I went into my own factory, and with a clock beside
me, I watched a child at her work, and having watched her for some
time, I then calculated the distance she had to go in a day, and to
my surprise, I found it to be nothing short of twenty miles.
(4)
Charles Wing, Evils of the Factory System (1837)
Mr.
Fielden's cotton-mill at Todmorden employs 840 hands. The labour is
sixty-seven hours and a half week, being an hour and a half less than
most others. No children were employed under nine. A school is attached
to the mill. If the liberal management pursued in Mr. Fielden's mill
were generally adopted, there would be few evils to complain of.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
