Children
who worked long hours in the textile mills became very tired and found
it difficult to maintain the speed required by the overlookers. Children
were usually hit with a strap to make them work faster. In some factories
children were dipped head first into the water cistern if they became
drowsy. Children were also punished for arriving late for work and
for talking to the other children. Parish apprentices who ran away
from the factory was in danger of being sent to prison. Children who
were considered potential runaways were placed in irons.
Thomas Savage in Wandsworth Prison
Child
Labour Debate Activity (International School of Toulouse)
Child
Labour Simulation (Spartacus Educational)
(1)
Sarah Carpenter was interviewed about
her experiences in The Ashton Chronicle (23rd June, 1849)
The
master carder's name was Thomas Birks; but he never went by any other
name than Tom the Devil. He was a very bad man - he was encouraged
by the master in ill-treating all the hands, but particularly the
children. I have often seen him pull up the clothes of big girls,
seventeen or eighteen years of age, and throw them across his knee,
and then flog them with his hand in the sight of both men and boys.
Everybody was frightened of him. He would not even let us speak. He
once fell poorly, and very glad we were. We wished he might die.
There was an overlooker called William Hughes, who was put in his
place whilst he was ill. He came up to me and asked me what my drawing
frame was stopped for. I said I did not know because it was not me
who had stopped it. A little boy that was on the other side had stopped
it, but he was too frightened to say it was him. Hughes starting beating
me with a stick, and when he had done I told him I would let my mother
know. He then went out and fetched the master in to me. The master
started beating me with a stick over the head till it was full of
lumps and bled. My head was so bad that I could not sleep for a long
time, and I never been a sound sleeper since.
There was a young woman, Sarah Goodling, who was poorly and so she
stopped her machine. James Birch, the overlooker knocked her to the
floor. She got up as well as she could. He knocked her down again.
Then she was carried to the apprentice house. Her bed-fellow found
her dead in bed. There was another called Mary. She knocked her food
can down on the floor. The master, Mr. Newton, kicked her where he
should not do, and it caused her to wear away till she died. There
was another, Caroline Thompson. They beat her till she went out of
her mind.
We were always locked up out of mill hours, for fear any of us should
run away. One day the door was left open. Charlotte Smith, said she
would be ringleader, if the rest would follow. She went out but no
one followed her. The master found out about this and sent for her.
There was a carving knife which he took and grasping her hair he cut
if off close to the head. They were in the habit of cutting off the
hair of all who were caught speaking to any of the lads. This head
shaving was a dreadful punishment. We were more afraid of it than
of any other, for girls are proud of their hair.
(2)
Jonathan Downe was interviewed by Michael
Sadler's Parliamentary Committee on 6th June, 1832.
When
I was seven years old I went to work at Mr. Marshalls factory at Shrewsbury.
If a child was drowsy, the overlooker touches the child on the shoulder
and says, "Come here". In a corner of the room there is
an iron cistern filled with water. He takes the boy by the legs and
dips him in the cistern, and sends him back to work.
(3)
John
Brown interviewed Robert Blincoe in
1828 about working in a textile mill.
Blincoe
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.
(4)
Joseph
Hebergram was interviewed by Michael Sadler's Parliamentary Committee
on 1st June, 1832.
Question:
What were your hours of labour?
Answer: From five in the morning
till eight at night.
Question: You had fourteen and a half hours of actual labour, at seven
years of age?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Did you become very
drowsy and sleepy towards the end of the day?
Answer: Yes; that began about
three o'clock; and grew worse and worse, and it came to be very bad
towards six and seven.
Question: How long was it
before the labour took effect on your health?
Answer: Half a year.
Question: How did it affect
your limbs?
Answer: When I worked about
half a year a weakness fell into my knees and ankles: it continued,
and it got worse and worse.
Question: How far did you
live from the mill?
Answer: A good mile.
Question: Was it painful for
you to move?
Answer: Yes, in the morning
I could scarcely walk, and my brother and sister used, out of kindness,
to take me under each arm, and run with me to the mill, and my legs
dragged on the ground; in consequence of the pain I could not walk.
Question: Were you sometimes
late?
Answer: Yes, and if we were
five minutes too late, the overlooker would take a strap, and beat
us till we were black and blue.
Question When did your brother
start working in the mill?
(5)
Robert Blincoe was interviewed by John
Brown in 1828.
The
blacksmith had the task of riveting irons upon any of the apprentices,
whom the master ordered. These irons were very much like the irons
usually put upon felons. Even young women, if they suspected of intending
to run away, had irons riveted on their ankles, and reaching by long
links and rings up to the hips, and in these they were compelled to
walk to and fro from the mill to work and to sleep.
(6)
Samuel Davy was seven years old when he was sent from the Southwark
Workhouse to Penny Dam Mill in Preston.
Irons
were used as with felons in gaols, and these were often fastened on
young women, in the most indecent manner, by keeping them nearly in
a state of nudity, in the depth of winter, for several days together.
(7)
Edward Baines, The History of the Cotton
Manufacture (1835)
It
is alleged that the children who labour in factories are often cruelly
beaten by the spinners or overlookers that their feeble limbs become
distorted by continual standing and stooping, and they grow up cripples.
That they are compelled to work thirteen, fourteen or fifteen hours
per day. Views such as these have been repeatedly given of factory
labour which have persuaded many to think they must be true. But this
is the exception not the rule.
(8)
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. 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.
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