Was your ancestor a child worker in a factory?

In my latest feature for the December issue of Family History Monthly, I investigate nineteenth century child workers and how to research them for your family tree.

For many centuries, the children of the poor entered the workplace from an early age. It was considered part of growing up. They helped with their parents' work at home, in workshops or on the land. Child workers played a vital role in the nation’s economy. They were employed in textile factories, down the mines, in metal manufactures, potteries, glass manufacture, on canal boats, in domestic service, as chimney sweeps: the list is almost endless.
When news broke about abuses in the early factories, this led to a reform movement in the nineteenth century to limit children’s working hours. Lord Ashley (1801–1885), later the seventh earl of Shaftesbury, helped to push factory legislation through parliament.
Parliament vetoed Lord Ashley’s proposal for a ten hour day, but the government passed the Factory Act of 1833, which children under nine years old from working in textile factories, except silk mills. Children aged nine to thirteen were limited to a eight hour working day; teenagers no more than twelve hours. Night work was banned. Children had to attend school for two hours each day. Factory inspectors were appointed to enforce the law.

The age at which children began full-time work gradually increased, thanks to Lord Shaftesbury and other reformers gradually succeeded in their fight to limit children's working hours in factories, workshops and in agriculture. The Factory Act of 1891 increased the age of beginning full-time work to eleven years.
Your local record office may have registers of children exempted from school under the factory and workshop acts in school attendance records. The factory acts said that firms must keep statutory records of children and young persons, and your ancestor’s name could be listed there.

Images from author’s collection: Anthony Ashley Cooper, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. Engraving by unknown artist, Rev. Edward Lightwood’s The Good Earl, (London, 1886).

The factory chimneys of cotton town Manchester, 1870s. Nationally, over 43,200 children under thirteen were employed in the cotton industry alone in 1871. Cassell’s Illustrated History of England Vol. 7, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c.1873).

Reviews of Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

'Tracing Your Canal Ancestors was not only a great historical read, but the information and references for tracing your canal ancestors can be applied to other research, making it a great research reference book. It will certainly help my research for my own ideas!' Mr Andrew Bell, Shetland. 

'An excellent practical guide...' Towpath Talk, August 2012.

'This is an extremely useful, interesting and well written book which should be in the collection of anyone interested in workers on Britain's waterways... This is a commercial and social history of the people who lived and worked on the waterways... A thorough and practical guide'. Bristol and Avon FHS.

'Essential reading for those new to the subject'. Railway and Canal Historical Society.

'A practical guide that aims to help ancestors who worked on the canals, or for a canal company, to explore these roots... There is a wealth of rich information about archives, further reading, websites and relevant societies'. Your Family Tree, April 2012.

‘This book is an excellent guide for those who have traced their family back to someone who worked on the boats or for canal companies. The first half is a resumé of canal history, but from the rather different perspective of the individuals involved with them: in their construction, maintenance and operation. It offers the human history of canals… It explains not only how people might have been associated with canals, but also gives ideas for sources of where information about them might be held. Even for those not involved with genealogy, it offers a different approach to canal history…
There is a short general chapter on conventional genealogical research, but it is the specific waterway sources that will be valuable… Even the seasoned canal historian will learn from the extensive catalogue of regional archive holdings… Interspersed with the practical information is a series of case studies… Although obviously of direct interest to genealogists, this is also informative reading for the more general canal historian’. Hugh Potter, Waterways World, February 2012.

‘… A clear, atmospheric history of canals and the people who built and worked them… Tracing Your Canal Ancestors is both an inspiring read and a good starting point for your investigation into your canal-faring forebears.’ BBC Who Do You Think You Are?, January 2012.

‘Social historian Sue Wilkes’ new book, Tracing Your Canal Ancestors, is an authoritative guide for those with connections to Britain’s waterways.  A mixture of socio-industrial history with clear advice on how to find out more about ancestors who played a part in British canal history, Sue Wilkes’ book will be an invaluable addition to many family historians’ bookshelves’. Your Family History, Dec 2011.

‘Canal living as it was in the late 19th century is dissected here in great detail, with regular case studies, illustrations and … colourful anecdotes… Wilkes provides an in-depth practical guide to researching your own boatmen ancestors, with vast amounts of information on archives, websites and societies that could help further your genealogical research. This guide is not just for those with boatmen in their trees – it also provides often overlooked information on people who relied on the canal trade for a living, such as lock-keepers, toll collectors and canal company clerks.
The book is an excellent manual for family historians, and comes with lots of ideas about where to find further details about the personal lives of those that worked the waterways’. Family History Monthly, December 2011.


'The book is well written in a lively style; the information is comprehensive and more than enough to give a researcher a good start in their quest for a canal ancestor...The book is in two broadly equal parts. The first 100 pages are a description of the canal network, its history and development, and the lives of the people who lived and worked afloat. The second half is a series of appendices, designed to guide the researcher through the tracing process. The author addresses the basic nuts-and-bolts of family history – general registration, parish registers and censuses, underlining the particular difficulties census enumerators may have had with – literally – a floating population...The book is well indexed and has a comprehensive bibliography. Sources are cited.
The book is well illustrated with photographs, contemporary drawings, maps and copies of relevant documents that the researcher may encounter. The illustrations are a significant strength of the book. The author is an enthusiast without being an anorak; I enjoyed this book and found myself wishing I had canal ancestors, so that I could delve deeper into their long-gone world'. Federation of Family History Societies, December 2011.

‘Fresh on the heels of Sue Wilkes’s recent The Children History Forgot comes an equally superb offering on a completely different theme – the canal heritage of the British Isles. From the first truly artificial waterway in Ireland (the Newry Canal) to the massive network subsequently carved out in Britain, the author details not only the construction of the network, but the careers that depended on it. There were the navvies who built them, the lockkeepers and canal companies who operated the infrastructure, and the companies who depended on the resource to make a living. Amongst that are the classes often overlooked – families who lived their entire lives from birth to death on the waterways.

... The book is in two main parts – the first detailing the history and the second how to uncover it using key resources and archives. Whether you do or do not have a connection to the waterways, this work is an absorbing and enlightening read’. Discover My Past Scotland, January 2012.

Desperate (Victorian) housewives - by Jen Newby

I'm very proud to welcome the fabulous Jen Newby, editor of Family History Monthly, to my blog this week! I've often written about how hard life was for working class women, but what was life like if you couldn't earn your own living, and were doomed to a life of cosy domesticity? 

Jen takes up the thread of their lives:

"If I could travel back in time to the 19th century I would rather have been anything but a middle class woman – chimney sweep, scullery maid or even a factory worker. While researching Women’s Lives, my new book on women’s social history during the 19th and early 20th century, I discovered that many relatively well-off women lived lives of quiet desperation, boredom and, frustration.

While female educational opportunities were gradually improving, and their peers were heading off to become teachers, doctors and political activists, ordinarily young ladies were stuck at home with some needlework or improving reading, waiting for marriage and the chance to escape to a house of their own. The conventional view was that women should aspire to marriage and motherhood. Even as late as 1895, novelist Grant Allen got away with writing, ‘A woman ought to be ashamed to say that she has no desire to become a wife and mother’.

So throughout the long 19th century, thousands of carefully-dressed young ladies vegetated on chaise longue. ‘Women’s business’, as novelist Sarah Stephens described in, Passages From the Life of a Daughter at Home, in 1845, was finding ‘something to pass the time…in drawing or in music or literature or worsted work…reading aloud’. Every Girl’s Book (1860) lists uninspiring entertainments open to young middle-class girls: spillikins, fancy work, embroidery, silk work, making wax flowers. For older women there were card games, bridge and sewing.
Lacking suitors and balls, jaded young women devoured romantic novels of adventure and excitement, like Edwardian bestsellers, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Blue Lagoon. The market for women’s magazines rocketed during the second half of the 19th century, with Isabella Beeton and her husband churning out The Queen and The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine.
Not all meekly accepted a life of flower arranging and trips to church. Remembering her youth, Florence Nightingale complained: ‘Oh, weary days – Oh evenings that never seem to end – for how many years have I watched that drawing room clock and thought it would never reach the ten’. Some were pushed by their comfortable, stultifying upbringings to aspire to something more, escaping into the world to make their mark. Their stories are still capable of inspiring women today".

Jen’s wonderful new book, Women’s Lives: researching women’s social history 1800–1939 is published by Pen & Sword. You can find out more about Jen's books here.

All images from Jen Newby's collection.

Silk ancestors

My latest feature on researching your ancestors in the silk industry has just been published in the July issue of Family History Monthly. When I was doing the research for Regency Cheshire, I was struck by the long hours children worked in the silk industry. All raw silk was imported into this country, so changes in import tariffs badly affected the silk towns of Macclesfield and Congleton; many workers suffered hardship in the late 1820s when new legislation opened the floodgates to cheap foreign silks.  Changes in fashion could also have a huge impact on silk workers' livelihoods.
Image: London Promenade Dress with a ‘robe of one of the new mourning silks’.Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion, Music and Romance, Vol. XII, 1837.