The Children History Forgot Reviews and Press Comment

 'I read your books The Children History Forgot and Tracing Your Canal Ancestors.  They were fantastic... I loved both books.  I knew poor children had it rough but had no idea just how bad their conditions were, or the appalling way they were treated. It was certainly an eye-opener!' Mr Andrew Bell, Shetland.

‘Sue Wilkes’ latest book is an impressive account, both describing the exploitation of child labour at the very heart of British society, and the struggle for reform over the issue. The book starts with the collapse of the centuries-old apprenticeship system with the rapid developments of the Industrial Revolution, and shows how…children from as young as seven years old were increasingly forced to work as parish apprentices in factories, often on fifteen-hour days. Reformers such as Robert Owen in New Lanark tried to improve conditions… but progress was slow.

Wilkes skilfully describes the battles fought for reform on all fronts, in the mines, the agricultural sector, the factories and even the humble domestic chimney, in an attempt to allow children to right to simply be children once more. A powerful account recalling a forgotten workforce on which an empire was built’. Discover My Past England, September 2011.


'While we may often bemoan current health and safety regulation, just imagine what life would be like were there none... no laws regarding working with dangerous chemicals; no safety equipment... and no education, no hope of a better life but for a fortunate few. Yet this was the draconian reality of life for a silent majority... Wilkes' work is eminently fascinating, and is a necessary and valuable piece of research into an era that may have gone - at least on these shores - but should not be forgotten'. Your Family History, Issue 20.

'Sue Wilkes traces the human cost - in human and economic terms - of Britain's success... Wilkes gives graphic descriptions of the "fearful conditions" in which children worked... This book is meticulously researched with fascinating documentary evidence and excellent illustrations. It can be recommended as an informative and compelling work... it engages and educates from start to finish.' Parson Woodforde Society Quarterly Journal, Autumn 2011.

‘Sue Wilkes’ latest book tells the story of the long fight for… reform during the late Georgian and Victorian eras and takes a fascinating insight into the working lives of our ancestors’. Chester Chronicle, Flintshire Chronicle, 8 September 2011.

'The style is colloquial... this book... will... successfully appeal to its intended readership'.  Book reviews, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Vol. 160, 2011.

Britain’s tiny chimney sweeps

This CBBC Horrible Histories video graphically illustrates the plight of Britain’s child chimney sweeps or ‘climbing boys’. Girls were used to clean chimneys as well as boys, but most of the child sweeps interviewed by the Children's Employment Commissions of Queen Victoria’s reign were boys.

As early as 1803, machines were invented for sweeping chimneys, and societies were set up to promote their use instead of children. Lord Shaftesbury (the 7th earl) spent many years trying to stamp out the use of child sweeps. But for decades, children died after becoming stuck in chimneys, or were burnt, or became ill from the soot, which was cancerous.

Although the Horrible Histories video mentions that using child chimney sweeps was banned in 1864, in fact this law was a ‘dead letter’ and was widely ignored. Shortly after the 1864 Act, in England there were still 2,000 climbing boys aged between five to ten years. It was not until 1875, when Lord Shaftesbury’s Act was passed, that police were given powers to properly regulate the chimney sweeping trade.

Now, humanitarians such as Jonas Hanway first tried to limit the use of child sweeps in 1788 – almost a century earlier. The Children History Forgot tells the shocking story of why it took so long for society to stop this shameful practice.

Images:
A child chimney sweep of the 1860s. John Leech, ‘Pictures of Life and Character’, Punch (Bradbury & Evans, 1863).
Oliver Twist narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a chimneysweep. Illustration by George Cruikshank, Charles Dickens’s The Adventures of Oliver Twist, (Chapman & Hall Ltd, and Henry Frowde, circa 1905).

Child Lace Workers

Child labour was used in the manufacture of machine-made lace (bobbin-net) as well as hand-made lace. Young children tended the lace-making machinery. Finishing processes such as lace ‘running’, ‘dressing’ and ‘drawing’ were done by hand, mostly by women, young persons and children in large workshops or private houses. ‘Running’ was a type of embroidery which added extra decoration to the lace.

The girls who did this work suffered from increasingly poor eyesight and spinal problems because of the long hours they spent bent over the lace.

In the ‘dressing’ process, the lace was dipped in a starchy paste, then stretched over a frame. When it had dried, it was cut to size and pressed ready for sale.

Machine-made lace came off the machine in sections joined by threads, and ‘drawing’ meant removing these joining threads with a needle. An investigator in the 1840s found one Nottingham mother forcing her two year old child to work at ‘drawing’. This little girl’s older sisters worked at lace-drawing from six in the morning until darkness fell during the summer months. The machine-made lace industry was based in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire, the West Country and the Isle of Wight.

Images: Lace running by hand. Lace dressing at Nottingham. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. I, c.1862.

Schools Which Weren’t Really Schools

Child labour in the Victorian countryside was not confined to working on farms or in the fields. Families turned to domestic industries and handicrafts to bring in a few more pennies. Children worked for long hours in close, stuffy rooms in the straw-plaiting, shirt-button making, glove-making and pillow-lace industries. (Straw plait was used to decorate bonnets or make hats).

During the nineteenth century, thousands of women and children were employed making pillow-lace (hand-made lace) in Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Devonshire.
Children as young as five years old worked in lace ‘schools’, which were really workshops.
Bedfordshire children worked an eight hour day, for which they earned just a penny or three halfpence. The children became ill and had eye problems after doing such intricate work for long hours. Sometimes the children were taught a little reading and writing, but their parents expected them to perform a minimum amount of work per day.
The ‘schoolmistress’ who supervised the children used a big stick to keep their minds on their work.

Some of the children who worked in straw-plaiting ‘schools’ were very tiny. An investigator for the Children’s Employment Commission in the 1860s found George Tompkins, aged only three and a half years old, making straw plait in a school at Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire.

There are some images of children making pillow lace, and more info on the lace schools, here.
Image: The lace on these morning dresses was almost certainly hand-made. Lady's Monthly Museum, December 1798.

Nails and Screws

Children were widely used as cheap labour in the making of nails and screws. Nails could be made by hand using wrought iron (as in the Wigan area, and Black Country), and all the family joined in the manufacturing process. ‘Cut’ nails were not as strong as wrought-nails, and were made by machine, worked by a child or man.

Screw heads were also made by machines worked by children. Birmingham was the major centre for screw manufacture in the 1860s. At Hawkins’ screw factory on Princip St, thirteen year old Mary Regan worked from 8am until 7pm, with an hour for dinner. Mary first went to work when she was about six years old, in a button factory.






These child workers had little time to go to school. Charles Sidwell (age 11), when shown a picture of a bird’s nest with eggs, said he didn’t ‘know what that picture is’. He was also shown a picture of a cow being milked: ‘ that’s a lion’, he said. (Children’s Employment Commission, 3rd report, 1864, XXII, 3414-I).

Making cut nails, and making screw heads. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. I, c.1862.

The Child Gangs of Castle Acre

There were over 73,000 boys aged ten to fourteen at work in the countryside in 1851. Over ten thousand girls worked as 'live-in' farm servants. Boys were not usually considered physically strong enough to do full-time jobs such as ploughing until they were about ten years old (age fifteen for girls). However, they did odd jobs such as scaring birds from the crops, or helping to glean after the harvest.  The Poor Law 'reforms'  of 1834 had resulted in a large increase in child labour in the countryside; children worked in the fields or helped with hedging and ditching at far younger ages than in former times. The restriction of parish relief meant that parents were desperate to find work for their children.
In counties such as Norfolk, a system of ‘gang labour’ grew up. It was a way of getting labour-intensive jobs such as turnip harvesting done as cheaply as possible. A farmer would pay a gang master to do the job at a fixed price. The gang master recruited workers at the lowest page possible to maximise his profit. Children as young as six worked in the gangs. Because they had to travel where the work was, they often walked miles to work, and back home again after their day’s toil. The parish of Castle Acre became notorious for its use of gang child labour.  You can find out more about the gang children and reformers' battle to stop the gangs in The Children History Forgot.
Image: Oxen pulling haycart. Unknown artist, c.1790.

Tobacco Manufacture

In the mid-1860s, children as young as eight worked in tobacco factories in Newcastle-on-Tyne, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Sheffield, Scotland and Ireland. The tobacco was imported from Virginia plantations like this one.

In Britain, children were usually employed ‘spinning’ (making rolled tobacco), packing cut tobacco, and making ‘bunches’ of tobacco (stripping the leaves from the stem so they could be used to make cigars).
At Glasgow (Mitchell & Son’s), the youngest workers earned 1s 6d (7½d) per week; they worked from 6am-6.30pm, with two hours for mealtimes. Both boys and girls worked in the industry.
Image: A boy stripping tobacco leaves for cigar manufacture, and achild spinning a wheel to twist ‘pig-tail’ tobacco. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. I, c.1862.