"The Physical and Moral Condition of the Children and Young Persons employed in Mines and Manufactures"

In 1843 London publisher John W. Parker issued The Physical and Moral Condition of the Children and Young Persons Employed in Mines and Manufactures: Illustrated by Extracts from the Reports of the Commissioners for Inquiring Into the Employment of Children and Young Persons in Mines and Collieries, and in the Trades and Manufactures, in which Numbers of them work Together, Not Being Included under the Terms of the Factories Regulation Act.

This official report investigated the state of children working in mines and factories in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Comprising thousands of pages of oral testimony, sometimes from children as young as five, the report’s findings shocked society, and led to legislation to secure minimum safety standards in mines and factories, as well as general controls on the employment of children.

Readers of the April 8, 1843 issue of the widely read The Saturday Magazine were treated to a summary of the report, from which I quote selections:

"A recent Report upon the Physical and Moral Condition of the Children and Young Persons employed in Mines and Manufactures, informs us that thousands of children in "Christian England" are altogether without the means of instruction; that their tender bodies are exposed to unheard-of hardships; that their minds contain fewer ideas than  perhaps the human mind was ever known to possess except in idiotcy; that their spiritual faculties and affections are subservient to this mental ignorance and physical degradation! This is a national disgrace more truly humiliating than defeat in war; but any expressions of sorrow must be weak compared with the force of the facts themselves. I will, therefore, present you with an abridgement of the official Report....

"Employment commences at a tender age. Instances occur in which children, in several districts female children, are taken into the coal-mines to work as early as the age of five. From eight to nine is, however, the ordinary age; but a very large proportion of the persons thus engaged is under thirteen years. At the calcining furnaces of copper-works, in South Wales, both boys and girls regularly work with the men twenty-four hours consecutiviely, on alternate days, without excepting Sunday. This labour is sometimes extended to thirty-six, and even forty-eight hours. In trades and manufactures, children, in some cases, begin to work when only three and four years old; not unfrequently at five, and are generally in regular employment between seven and eight. Female children are hired out almost equally with boys, and at the same tender ages. The growth of both becomes stunted. Lads of fifteen and sixteen years of age are no larger than ordinary English school-boys, and not so strong and healthy. Moreover, this early servitude involves the necessary neglect of almost all intellectual and religious culture.

"The labour is excessive. That of the youngest colliers begins at day-break, when they enter the mine, which they are not allowed to leave till night. Sometimes they remain in darkness and solitude during the whole time they are in the pit, and many of them do see the light of day for weeks together, during the greater part of the winter season, except on holidays and Sundays. From six years, and upwards, the hard work of pushing and dragging the carriages begins. Both sexes are set to the same kind of labour for an equal number of hours. In the east of Scotland a much larger proprotion of children and young persons are employed in the coal mines than in other districts; many of these are girls, and the chief part of their labour consists in carrying the coals, on their backs, up steep ladders. Their daily full employment is rarely less than eleven hours, more frequently twelve, and sometimes even more. In the majorityof these mines night-work is part of the ordinary system of labour. No regular time is set apart either for meals or rest.

In the operations connected with blast furnaces for reducing the ores of iron, the children invariably work at night during alternate weeks, and continue at work, without any interruption whatever, for four and twenty hours during every other Sunday.

"In mines in Derbyshire, the hours of work are commonly fourteen, and are sometimes extended to sixteen, out of the twenty four....

"Cleanliness. Much improvement has taken place in this respect during the past few years: but something yet remains to be done. The squalid aspects of the homes and persons of the colliers of East Scotland bespak a popuulation neglected and abondend to a course of life which has blinted the commonest principles of human comfort. In parts of Wolverhampton a want of cleanliness is an obvious and constant source of disease.

"None of the drawers (said a drawer of coal from the Lancashire and Cheshire district) ever wash their bodies. I never wash my body. I let my shirt rub the dirt off. My shirt will show that. I wash my neck, and ears, and face, of course. My sisters never wash themselves. When a collier is in full dress he has white stockings, low shoes, and a very tall shirt-neck, very stiffly starched, and ruffles; but they never wash their bodies underneath. Their legs and bodies are as black as your hat.

"It is not considered worth while to wash over-night what is to be dirtied again in the morning."