Child Workers In A Cotton-Spinning Mill

 

Mule-spinning machinery. 

Britain's early cotton factories depended on child labour. Some children and young people worked as 'piecers'; they joined together cotton threads when they broke on a spinning-mule. The youngest worked as 'scavengers'; they cleaned up the cotton dust and waste from under the mule. As the mule carriage moved forward and backward three times every two minutes, this could be very dangerous, as they might get their head trapped. 

'Creel fillers' placed the cotton rovings on the mule ready to be spun. 'Doffers' removed full bobbins of cotton thread and replaced them with empty bobbins. 

In 1819, William Royle, a 30 year-old cotton-spinner at Thomas Ainsworth's Warrington mill, paid his piecers from 2 shillings to 6 shillings a week. He earned 20 shillings net after paying his child helpers. William said he had first started factory work when he was ten years old.

Half the workforce at this mill, which ran from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m., was under sixteen years of age. On Saturdays, the mill stopped at 5 p.m. Four times per week, the children stayed behind for half an hour at the mill to clean the machinery after it stopped. 

The children had no breakfast, dinner or tea break. They had to eat while they worked, so their food was regularly covered with the cotton dust or 'fly' which filled the air in the factory. The children usually had porridge for breakfast, potatoes with perhaps a little bacon for dinner (lunch), and bread and butter for their tea. 

It was hot and humid in the factory (to help stop the threads from breaking) - over 80 degrees Fahrenheit - so women and girls worked in their petticoats, with a 'brat' (pinafore) over their petticoats. Boys and men worked without their waistcoats or coats. The workers were usually barefoot, without shoes or stockings. 

King Cotton's Timetable

I've often discussed workers and the types of machinery they tended on this blog, and the long hours they worked. But what was a typical timetable for a working day in the 1840s for a Lancashire mill family (including my ancestors)? 

Their day began at 5.30 a.m. with a rap at the window from the long stick of the knocker-upper – they paid him or her a small fee to act as their alarm clock. If the family lived a long way from the mill, they might have to get up even earlier to allow time to walk to work. Even if workers were only two or three minutes late for work, they were ‘quartered’ - fined 15 minutes’ wages - and if they were 15 minutes late, they lost a whole quarter of a day’s wages. Some mill masters locked the mill gates after ten minutes, which meant that workers were locked out till breakfast time.

On their way to work, our factory family bought hot coffee or cocoa from street vendors. The factory bell began ringing at five to six in the morning until 6 a.m., when the mill engine started up. The youngest child workers arrived at the factory gates, still half-asleep. Breakfast was from 8.30–9 am; perhaps some bread wrapped in a cloth, but not every mill stopped for breakfast, so workers ate while they worked.  The factory owner sometimes provided hot water for the operatives to make tea, but in some mills in the 1830s, the mill engineer’s wife sold hot water to the workers for 2d a week. (One witness estimated that the engineer’s wife made 30-40s every week just selling hot water). If they could afford it, workers took tea and coffee to the mill, and brewed up with jugs kept at the mill. If they couldn’t afford fresh tea, it was left at home: tea-leaves were dried out and re-used whenever possible.

After breakfast they worked until the dinner-hour at 1 pm, when our family met up by the factory gate; they might perhaps buy lunch from the corner shop.  If the mill was too far away for them to go home for lunch, some took bacon with them and paid 1d to the engineer’s wife for a dish of mashed potatoes, and 1d a week for cooking the bacon to go with it. If Grandma was minding her daughter’s children, she might cook lunch for her daughter and take it to the factory, so she didn’t have to rush home. Work started again at 2 pm, and finished at 5.30pm - so workers were at the factory for 11 and a half hours including meal breaks.

Saturday was payday - the highlight of the week, when the factory closed at 2.30. After work, the operatives hurried to the shops, which stayed open until midnight; they knew from experience if they left it too late only the worst food would be left - rancid cheese, rotten meat and vegetables. Tea, coffee and sugar were bought a ‘pennyworth’ at a time, as was pickle, which was used to relieve the monotony of their usual diet of potatoes. By the time they reached home, Mum was often too exhausted to cook much, but a typical supper might be oatmeal gruel or potatoes boiled in their jackets. Working children instantly fell asleep after supper. Next day, the whole routine began all over again (holidays were rare).

And that’s why mill workers were considered ‘old’ if they were lucky enough to reach the age of forty.

A Strut(t) Around Belper I

North Mill, Belper

My poor blogs have been neglected for a little while, as I've been working hard on my new book for Pen & Sword, Regency Spies, but I hope to be posting more regular updates now. Continuing my series of blog posts on some of the fabulous places in Britain which I visited last year, today's post is on Belper, a Derbyshire town with some amazing industrial heritage.

Belper nailmaker, North Mill.

Belper was traditionally home to the framework knitting and nail-making industries. North Mill, Belper has a wonderful collection of textile machinery, so do take the time to explore it if you can. 

The museum has many more machines than I've been able to show you here, and some social history displays.

Stockings were formerly knitted from silk on machines, but the Strutt family invented an improvement to the frame so that ribbed stockings could be knitted from either silk or cotton (the Derby rib). Ribbed stockings were more elastic and easier to wear than former designs.

Spinning Jenny, North Mill.

Good quality cotton yarn was needed to knit stockings, however, so Strutt helped to bankroll Richard Arkwright's initial forays into cotton spinning - Arkwright's waterframe was a great improvement on James Hargreaves' original spinning jenny.

Arkwright's first cotton-spinning mill was built at Cromford (1771);  Jedediah Strutt's own cotton-spinning mill (the South Mill) in Belper, powered by water, was founded in about 1776; the North Mill was completed about a decade later.

Stocking frame, North Mill.

Arkwright's waterframe, North Mill.

In my next blog post, I'll take a look at conditions in the Belper mills for their women and child workers.

A-Z of Earning A Living

Eagle-eyed readers of the new Discover Your History magazine (formerly Your Family History) will have spotted my new 5-part series on ancestors' occupations: the A-Z of Earning A Living.  I'm delving into some occupations which crop up in the Victorian censuses. Some trades like baking bread, dyeing cloth and making shoes date back to ancient times.

Guilds like the London Livery Companies were founded during the medieval period, and there's a free online database of apprentices and freemen where you can check for your ancestors' names.  Companies included at present are the Clothworkers, (1545-1908), Drapers (c.1400-1900), and the Mercers (1339-1900), with some data from the Goldsmiths' Company (1600-1700).

Thousands of children worked during Victorian times: they worked as domestic servants, on the land, in coal mines, factories, and in metal manufactures, to name just a few. Many were apprentices, compulsorily bound to a master by the parish authorities.

The age at which your ancestor began work depended on the date; the 1944 Education Act raised the school leaving age to fifteen (an earlier attempt was forestalled by WW2).

In the September issue of Discover Your History, I discussed agricultural labourers, bakers, cotton workers, dockers, dyers and engineers.  My feature in the new October issue explores the world of fishermen, gas workers, haberdashers, half-timers, hawkers, iron workers, jewellers and joiners.  You'll have to buy the magazine to find out more!

Images from the author's collection:

Carpenters and joiners at work. French engraving, c.1820.

Whitby fishermen, Punch, 23 September 1882.

Retorts at a Lancashire Gas Works. Lancashire Industrial & Commercial, 1935.

 

Did Your Ancestor Work in Lancashire?

In my latest feature for Your Family History magazine (issue 35), I give tips for exploring occupational sources for Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors.

The county was the cradle of the industrial revolution. Faster roads, the pioneers of the canal system, and the new-fangled railways all helped to make the county the 'workhouse of the world'. Men, women and children worked in a huge variety of industries. 

The county was most famous for its cotton and coal, but it was home to other industries such as glass, transport, engineering and ship-building.   Many Lancashire products were on show at the Great Exhibition of 1851.   

 

Cotton goods were still Britain’s largest export at the turn of the twentieth century. The Manchester Ship Canal, which opened in 1894, had rejuvenated Lancashire manufacturing after a trade slump.  But two world wars, and foreign competition, led to an inexorable decline in the fortunes of Lancashire’s most famous industries: one by one, cotton mills and coal mines closed their gates for good.  

If your ancestor worked in Lancashire, then try searching local record office catalogues for accident registers, apprenticeship records, cash books, friendly society records, sick club records, staff records, pensions, wage books, trade union records etc., which are all useful sources for genealogy.

Images from author's collection:

Steam manufactory, Bolton, Lancashire Illustrated, 1832. Rothwell, Hick & Co.’s works made steam engines and industrial machinery. Horse power was still important even during  the age of steam;  horses were used to haul locomotives round the factory. 

Wigan pit brow lassies. Cassell’s Illustrated History of England Vol. IX, (Cassell, Petter and Galpin, c.1874).

Shipment of Lancashire locomotives and rolling stock at Manchester Docks, Lancashire Industrial & Commercial, 1935.

Bridgewater Foundry, Patricroft, founded by James Nasmyth. Pictorial History of the County of Lancashire, 1844.