Primary Sources
Child Labour
From the evidence of Nichol Hudderson to the Children's Employment Commission, 1842:
The child "...is lame now and will always be lame. His let was set wrong at first. One leg is shorter then the other. The pit makes him sick. Has been very bad in his health since he went down the pit...The heat makes him sick...Feels worst when he first goes down in the morning; at 3 o'clock in the morning; and when he comes up at 6 o'clock (in the evening) he feels sick...very seldom when he gets home can he eat very much...Has know three boys killed...The rope broke when the corf(basket) was going down, and they fell to the bottom."
In Britain in 1816, a parliamentary committee was appointed to investigate the working conditions of children in the cotton textile industry. In the following extract from its report John Moss answers the committee's questions:
"[Q] Were you ever employed as the master of the apprentices at a cotton mill?
[A] I was engaged to attend the apprentice-house at Backbarrow. I was over the children.
...
[Q] What were the hours of work?
[A] From five o'clock in the morning till eight at night.
[Q] Were fifteen hours in the day the regular hours of work?
[A] Those were the regular hours of work.
...
[Q] What time was allowed for meals?
[A] Half an hour for breakfast and half an hour for dinner.
...
[Q] When the works were stopped for repair of the mill, or for any want of cotton, did the children afterwords make up for the loss of that time?
[A] Yes.
[Q] When making up lost time, how long did they continue working at night?
[A] Till nine o'clock, and sometimes later; sometimes ten.
...
[Q] Did the masters ever express any concern for such excessive labour?
[A] No.
...
[Q] Did the children sit or stand at work?
[A] Stand.
[Q] The whole of their time?
[A] Yes.
[Q] Were there any seats in the mill?
[A] None.
[Q] Were they usually much fatigued at night?
[A] Yes, some of them were very much fatigued.
...
[Q] Were any children injured by the machinery?
[A] Very frequently.
From A Narrative of William Dodd, A Factory Cripple, 1841:
"At the age of six I became a piecer... each piecing requires three or four rubs, over a space of three or four inches; and the continual friction of the hand in rubbing the piecing upon the coarse wrapper wears off the skin, and causes the finger to bleed. The position in which the piecer stands to his work is with the right foot forward, and his right side facing the frame. In this position he continues during the day, with his hands, feet, and eyes constantly in motion... the chief weight of his body rests upon his right knee, which is almost always the first joint to give way... my evenings were spent in preparing for the following day - in rubbing my knees, ankles, elbows, and wrists with oil, etc. I went to bed, to cry myself to sleep."
From F. Trollope, Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy, 1840:
"A little girl about seven years old, whose job as a scavenger was to collect incessantly from the factory floor, the flying fragments of cotton the might impede the work... while the hissing machinery passed over her, and when this is skilfully done, and the head, body,, and the outstretched limbs carefully glued to the floor, the steady moving, but threatening mass, may pass and repass over the dizzy head and trembling body without touching it. But accidents frequently occur; and many are the flaxen locks, rudely torn infant heads, in the process."
From Michael Sadler, in a speech to the House of Commons, 16 March 1832:
"The parents rouse them in the morning and receive them tired and exhausted after the day has closed; they see them droop and sicken, and, in many cases, become cripples and die, before they reach their prime; and they do all this, because they must otherwise starve. It is a mockery to contend that these parents have a choice. They chose the lesser evil, and reluctantly resign their offspring to the captivity and pollution of the mine."
Henry 'Orator' Hunt, in a speech to the House of Commons, 16 March 1832:
"The question is, wether the children of the manufacturing poor should work for more hours then human nature can sustain. If the honourable members were to see the hundreds of the poor, unfortunate wretches employed in the cotton-mills in Lancashire, they would feel the absolute necessity of adopting an active interference. I say, let the manufacturer keep double the number of workmen, but do not let him destroy the health of the rising generation."
Henry Thompson Hope, in a speech to the House of Commons, 16 March 1832:
"The right honourable member [Michael Sadler] seems to consider that it is desirable for adults to replace children. I cannot concur with that opinion, because I think the labour of the children, is a great resource to their parents and of great benefit to themselves. I therefore, on these grounds, oppose to this measure... I believe that the bill will be productive of great inconvenience, not only to the persons who have embarked such large capital in the cotton manufacturers, but even to workmen and children themselves..."
Health and Hygiene
From Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1848:
"The...cottages are in bad order, never repaired, filthy, with damp, unclean cellar dwellings; the lanes are neither paved nor supplied with sewers, but harbour numerous colonies of swine... The mud in the streets is so deep that there is never a chance, except in the driest weather, of walking without sinking into it ankle deep at every step."
From Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat writing about Manchester in 1835:
"A sort of black smoke covers the city. Under this half-daylight 300,000 human beings are ceaselessly at work. The homes of the poor are scattered haphazard around the factories. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. In Manchester civilised man is turned back almost into a savage."
From a letter to a parliamentary inquiry in 1840, written by Dr Robertson, a Manchester surgeon:
"Manchester is a huge overgrown village, built according to no definite plan. The homes of the work-people have been built in the factory districts. The interests and convenience of the manufacturers have determined the growth, while the comfort, health and happiness [of the workers] have not been considered. Manchester has no public park or other ground where the population can walk and breath the fresh air. Every advantage has been sacrificed to the getting of money."
From Dr William Duncan, Report on the Sanitary Condition of Liverpool, 1839:
"In the streets inhabited by the working classes, I believe that the great majority are without sewers, and that where they do exist they are of a very imperfect kind unless where the ground has a natural inclination, therefore the surface water and fluid refuse of every kind stagnate in the street, and add, especially in hot weather, their pestilential influence to that of the more solid filth... the only means afforded for carrying off the fluid dirt being a narrow, open, shallow gutter, which sometimes exists, but even this is generally choked up with stagnant filth."
The Impact of Enclosure
From F. Moore, Considerations on the Exorbitant Pride of Proprietors, 1773:
"In passing through a village near Swaffham in the county of Norfolk a few years ago... I beheld the houses tumbling into ruins, and the common fields all enclosed;... I was informed that a gentleman of Lynn had brought that village and the next adjoining to it;... he had thrown one into three, and the other into four farms; which before the enclosure were in about twenty farms; and upon my further enquiring what was becoming of the farmers who were turned out, the answer was that some were dead and the rest were become labourers."
From D. Davies, The Case of the Labourers in Husbandry, published in 1795:
"... for a dubious economic benefit, an amazing number of people have been reduced from a comfortable state of partial independence to the precarious condition of mere hirelings..."
Working Conditions
From an interview with James Patterson, a factory worker, before a parliamentary committee, June 1832:
"I worked at Mr Braid's Mill at Duntuin. We worked as long as we could see. I could not say at what hour we stopped. There was no clock in the mill. There was nobody but the master and the master's son had a watch and so we did not know the time. The operative were not permitted to have a watch. There was one man who had a watch but it was taken from him because he told the men the time."
From an interview with former factory worker Sarah Carpenter, published in The Ashton Chronicle, 23 June 1849:
"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 bead. There was another called Mary. She knocked her food can on the floor. The master, Mr. Newton, kicked her where he should not do, and it caused her to wear away until she died. There was another Caroline Thompson. They beat her till she went out of her mind."
From the testimony of Dr Michael Ward before a parliamentary committee, 25 March 1819:
"I had frequent opportunities of seeing people coming out from the factories and occasionally attending as patients. Last summer I visited three cotton factories with Dr. Clough of Preston and Mr. Barker of Manchester and we could not remain ten minutes in the factory without gasping for breath. How is it possible for those who are doomed to remain there twelve or fifteen hours to endure it? If we take into account the heated temperature of the air, and the contamination of the air, it is a matter of astonishment to my mind, how the work people can bear the confinement for so great a length of time."
Testimony of Isabel Wilson, aged 38, before the 1842 Mines Commission:
"I have been married 19 years and have had 10 [children]; seven are[alive]. When [I worked in the mines] I was a carrier of coals, which caused me to miscarry five times from the strains, and was [very] ill after each... [My] last child was born on Saturday morning and I was at work on the Friday night. Once I met with an accident; a coal broke my cheek-bone, which kept me idle some weeks. I have [worked] below 30 years, and so has my husband; he is getting touched in the breath now."
Testimony of Jane Johnson, aged 26, before the 1842 Mines Commission:
"I could cary 2 hundredweight [just over 100 kilograms] when 15 years of age but now I feel the weakness upon me from the strains. I have been married near 10 years and had 4 children;have usually [worked] till within one or two days of the children's birth. Many women lose their strength early from overwork and get injured in their backs and legs; was crushed by a stone some time since and forced to lose one of my fingers."
Testimony of Agnes Kerr, aged 15, before the 1842 Mines Commission:
"...[I] make 18 to 20 journeys a-day; a journey to and fro is about 200 to 250 fathom [one fathom equals 1.8 metres]; have to ascend and descend many ladders; can carry 1.5 hundredweight [approximately 76 kilograms]. I do not know how many feet there are in a fathom...:know the distance from habit; it is sore crushing work; many lassies cry as they bring up the burdens. Accidents frequently happen from the tugs breaking and the loads failing on those behind and the lasses are much [inflicted] with swelled ankles. I cannot say that I like the work well; for I am obliged to do it."
From a Rochester correspondent to The TImes, 26 December 1840:
"Upwards of half-a-dozen girls in the workhouse, some of them verging on womanhood, have at times had their persons exposed in the most brutal and indecent manner, by the Master, for the purpose of inflicting on them cruel flog gins; and the same girls, at other times, have in a scarcely less indecent manner,been compelled by him to strip the upper parts of their persons narked, to allow him to scourge them with birch rods on their bared shoulders and waists, and which, from more then one of the statements from the lips of the sufferers, appears to have been inflicted with out mercy. One girl says, 'My back was marked with blood'."
From the evidence of Nichol Hudderson to the Children's Employment Commission, 1842:
The child "...is lame now and will always be lame. His let was set wrong at first. One leg is shorter then the other. The pit makes him sick. Has been very bad in his health since he went down the pit...The heat makes him sick...Feels worst when he first goes down in the morning; at 3 o'clock in the morning; and when he comes up at 6 o'clock (in the evening) he feels sick...very seldom when he gets home can he eat very much...Has know three boys killed...The rope broke when the corf(basket) was going down, and they fell to the bottom."
In Britain in 1816, a parliamentary committee was appointed to investigate the working conditions of children in the cotton textile industry. In the following extract from its report John Moss answers the committee's questions:
"[Q] Were you ever employed as the master of the apprentices at a cotton mill?
[A] I was engaged to attend the apprentice-house at Backbarrow. I was over the children.
...
[Q] What were the hours of work?
[A] From five o'clock in the morning till eight at night.
[Q] Were fifteen hours in the day the regular hours of work?
[A] Those were the regular hours of work.
...
[Q] What time was allowed for meals?
[A] Half an hour for breakfast and half an hour for dinner.
...
[Q] When the works were stopped for repair of the mill, or for any want of cotton, did the children afterwords make up for the loss of that time?
[A] Yes.
[Q] When making up lost time, how long did they continue working at night?
[A] Till nine o'clock, and sometimes later; sometimes ten.
...
[Q] Did the masters ever express any concern for such excessive labour?
[A] No.
...
[Q] Did the children sit or stand at work?
[A] Stand.
[Q] The whole of their time?
[A] Yes.
[Q] Were there any seats in the mill?
[A] None.
[Q] Were they usually much fatigued at night?
[A] Yes, some of them were very much fatigued.
...
[Q] Were any children injured by the machinery?
[A] Very frequently.
From A Narrative of William Dodd, A Factory Cripple, 1841:
"At the age of six I became a piecer... each piecing requires three or four rubs, over a space of three or four inches; and the continual friction of the hand in rubbing the piecing upon the coarse wrapper wears off the skin, and causes the finger to bleed. The position in which the piecer stands to his work is with the right foot forward, and his right side facing the frame. In this position he continues during the day, with his hands, feet, and eyes constantly in motion... the chief weight of his body rests upon his right knee, which is almost always the first joint to give way... my evenings were spent in preparing for the following day - in rubbing my knees, ankles, elbows, and wrists with oil, etc. I went to bed, to cry myself to sleep."
From F. Trollope, Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy, 1840:
"A little girl about seven years old, whose job as a scavenger was to collect incessantly from the factory floor, the flying fragments of cotton the might impede the work... while the hissing machinery passed over her, and when this is skilfully done, and the head, body,, and the outstretched limbs carefully glued to the floor, the steady moving, but threatening mass, may pass and repass over the dizzy head and trembling body without touching it. But accidents frequently occur; and many are the flaxen locks, rudely torn infant heads, in the process."
From Michael Sadler, in a speech to the House of Commons, 16 March 1832:
"The parents rouse them in the morning and receive them tired and exhausted after the day has closed; they see them droop and sicken, and, in many cases, become cripples and die, before they reach their prime; and they do all this, because they must otherwise starve. It is a mockery to contend that these parents have a choice. They chose the lesser evil, and reluctantly resign their offspring to the captivity and pollution of the mine."
Henry 'Orator' Hunt, in a speech to the House of Commons, 16 March 1832:
"The question is, wether the children of the manufacturing poor should work for more hours then human nature can sustain. If the honourable members were to see the hundreds of the poor, unfortunate wretches employed in the cotton-mills in Lancashire, they would feel the absolute necessity of adopting an active interference. I say, let the manufacturer keep double the number of workmen, but do not let him destroy the health of the rising generation."
Henry Thompson Hope, in a speech to the House of Commons, 16 March 1832:
"The right honourable member [Michael Sadler] seems to consider that it is desirable for adults to replace children. I cannot concur with that opinion, because I think the labour of the children, is a great resource to their parents and of great benefit to themselves. I therefore, on these grounds, oppose to this measure... I believe that the bill will be productive of great inconvenience, not only to the persons who have embarked such large capital in the cotton manufacturers, but even to workmen and children themselves..."
Health and Hygiene
From Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1848:
"The...cottages are in bad order, never repaired, filthy, with damp, unclean cellar dwellings; the lanes are neither paved nor supplied with sewers, but harbour numerous colonies of swine... The mud in the streets is so deep that there is never a chance, except in the driest weather, of walking without sinking into it ankle deep at every step."
From Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat writing about Manchester in 1835:
"A sort of black smoke covers the city. Under this half-daylight 300,000 human beings are ceaselessly at work. The homes of the poor are scattered haphazard around the factories. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. In Manchester civilised man is turned back almost into a savage."
From a letter to a parliamentary inquiry in 1840, written by Dr Robertson, a Manchester surgeon:
"Manchester is a huge overgrown village, built according to no definite plan. The homes of the work-people have been built in the factory districts. The interests and convenience of the manufacturers have determined the growth, while the comfort, health and happiness [of the workers] have not been considered. Manchester has no public park or other ground where the population can walk and breath the fresh air. Every advantage has been sacrificed to the getting of money."
From Dr William Duncan, Report on the Sanitary Condition of Liverpool, 1839:
"In the streets inhabited by the working classes, I believe that the great majority are without sewers, and that where they do exist they are of a very imperfect kind unless where the ground has a natural inclination, therefore the surface water and fluid refuse of every kind stagnate in the street, and add, especially in hot weather, their pestilential influence to that of the more solid filth... the only means afforded for carrying off the fluid dirt being a narrow, open, shallow gutter, which sometimes exists, but even this is generally choked up with stagnant filth."
The Impact of Enclosure
From F. Moore, Considerations on the Exorbitant Pride of Proprietors, 1773:
"In passing through a village near Swaffham in the county of Norfolk a few years ago... I beheld the houses tumbling into ruins, and the common fields all enclosed;... I was informed that a gentleman of Lynn had brought that village and the next adjoining to it;... he had thrown one into three, and the other into four farms; which before the enclosure were in about twenty farms; and upon my further enquiring what was becoming of the farmers who were turned out, the answer was that some were dead and the rest were become labourers."
From D. Davies, The Case of the Labourers in Husbandry, published in 1795:
"... for a dubious economic benefit, an amazing number of people have been reduced from a comfortable state of partial independence to the precarious condition of mere hirelings..."
Working Conditions
From an interview with James Patterson, a factory worker, before a parliamentary committee, June 1832:
"I worked at Mr Braid's Mill at Duntuin. We worked as long as we could see. I could not say at what hour we stopped. There was no clock in the mill. There was nobody but the master and the master's son had a watch and so we did not know the time. The operative were not permitted to have a watch. There was one man who had a watch but it was taken from him because he told the men the time."
From an interview with former factory worker Sarah Carpenter, published in The Ashton Chronicle, 23 June 1849:
"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 bead. There was another called Mary. She knocked her food can on the floor. The master, Mr. Newton, kicked her where he should not do, and it caused her to wear away until she died. There was another Caroline Thompson. They beat her till she went out of her mind."
From the testimony of Dr Michael Ward before a parliamentary committee, 25 March 1819:
"I had frequent opportunities of seeing people coming out from the factories and occasionally attending as patients. Last summer I visited three cotton factories with Dr. Clough of Preston and Mr. Barker of Manchester and we could not remain ten minutes in the factory without gasping for breath. How is it possible for those who are doomed to remain there twelve or fifteen hours to endure it? If we take into account the heated temperature of the air, and the contamination of the air, it is a matter of astonishment to my mind, how the work people can bear the confinement for so great a length of time."
Testimony of Isabel Wilson, aged 38, before the 1842 Mines Commission:
"I have been married 19 years and have had 10 [children]; seven are[alive]. When [I worked in the mines] I was a carrier of coals, which caused me to miscarry five times from the strains, and was [very] ill after each... [My] last child was born on Saturday morning and I was at work on the Friday night. Once I met with an accident; a coal broke my cheek-bone, which kept me idle some weeks. I have [worked] below 30 years, and so has my husband; he is getting touched in the breath now."
Testimony of Jane Johnson, aged 26, before the 1842 Mines Commission:
"I could cary 2 hundredweight [just over 100 kilograms] when 15 years of age but now I feel the weakness upon me from the strains. I have been married near 10 years and had 4 children;have usually [worked] till within one or two days of the children's birth. Many women lose their strength early from overwork and get injured in their backs and legs; was crushed by a stone some time since and forced to lose one of my fingers."
Testimony of Agnes Kerr, aged 15, before the 1842 Mines Commission:
"...[I] make 18 to 20 journeys a-day; a journey to and fro is about 200 to 250 fathom [one fathom equals 1.8 metres]; have to ascend and descend many ladders; can carry 1.5 hundredweight [approximately 76 kilograms]. I do not know how many feet there are in a fathom...:know the distance from habit; it is sore crushing work; many lassies cry as they bring up the burdens. Accidents frequently happen from the tugs breaking and the loads failing on those behind and the lasses are much [inflicted] with swelled ankles. I cannot say that I like the work well; for I am obliged to do it."
From a Rochester correspondent to The TImes, 26 December 1840:
"Upwards of half-a-dozen girls in the workhouse, some of them verging on womanhood, have at times had their persons exposed in the most brutal and indecent manner, by the Master, for the purpose of inflicting on them cruel flog gins; and the same girls, at other times, have in a scarcely less indecent manner,been compelled by him to strip the upper parts of their persons narked, to allow him to scourge them with birch rods on their bared shoulders and waists, and which, from more then one of the statements from the lips of the sufferers, appears to have been inflicted with out mercy. One girl says, 'My back was marked with blood'."