The wages of children was lowly relating to this dangerous work undertaken. At Quarry Bank Mill, children under 13 were paid as little as 1 to 3 shillings a week: As opposed to 3s/9d to 4s/2d in Manchester Towns. The mills in Manchester paid their workers a much higher wage than the Greg paid his at Styal. The wage gap could be explained by the free schooling, access to a doctor and adequate living conditions, the apprentices in Manchester didn’t have access to these ‘luxuries’.
Quarry Bank Mill’s workforce was lowly paid and is unfavourable when wages were considered.
The working day was long and dangerous for child textile workers. The severity often led to injuries and deaths towards the end of the working day as children became tired and lazy. At Litton Mill, Derbyshire, the working day was described as, “from before five in morning until nine or ten at night, no time allowed away for meals.” It was not uncommon for workers to be forced to labour for fourteen hours or more with minimal breaks, working around large, dangerous machinery.
Source B is an account of Child Labour at Quarry Bank Mill taken in 1833.
It is an interview of the Superintendents at Styal and a government official. They describe the working day for pauper apprentices, “12 hours from six in the morning to seven at night; an hour at noon for dinner and half an hour at eight o’clock for breakfast; they always go out of the mill for meals.” They go on to describe, “We have very little sickness” and how they have only one death at the machinery.
This source paints a prosperous view of Quarry Bank, but it is unreliable as it is only an ‘extract’, Greg was present, and most importantly there is no evidence that the government officials ever visited the mill at Styal. Therefore this source has no value and doesn’t help us answer the Question.
In 1833 Samuel Greg told the factories commission that his machinery was fenced off, this to Greg’s credit was not compulsory till 1844. On the other hand, there was work for children that involved crawling under the machines whilst in movement and so injuries were commonplace. At the same factories commission in 1833, Greg said that there had been only one death at the machinery’s hands, that of John Bowden. Source E depicts a busy, loud, mule spinning factory: And shows the dangerous machines in operation. Quarry Bank Mill was therefore safer to work in than most mills that wouldn’t have fenced machinery, but safety for children working in textile mills in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth was bad and little was done to ensure their health and safety at work.
In 1837, Robert Hyde Greg estimated the mortality rates were around 7 per 1,000. This compares favourably to 33 per 1,000 in Manchester. Samuel Greg established a Sick Club and a Female Society (to assist with the problems of childbirth). Membership of this Sick Club was compulsory, a farthing was taken off each shilling of a workers wages, and this paid for a doctor. This was good for both the workers and Greg as it increased productivity. On the other hand, Turner Thackrah, a man campaigning for an improvement in occupational health wrote, “I stood … and observed the streams of operatives as they left the mill.
The children were ill-looking, small, sickly barefooted and ill-clad… there I saw a degenerate race, stunted and enfeebled – children that were never to be healthy adults” about children leaving Oxford Mill, Manchester in 1832. Source A was written by Fredrick Engles. Engles was a writer and campaigner for the rights of the labouring classes. He visited Quarry Bank Mill in 1845 and described, “the lofty airy rooms, the fine machinery, here and there healthy operatives”. But, suspicious, he also describes how, “the presence of the employer keeps you from asking indiscreet questions… you begin to be converted from your exaggerated ideas of misery and starvation”.
Engles, a socialist campaigner, has a biased and exaggerated view on working conditions in textile mills and is deeply suspicious of a cover-up at Quarry Bank. This source is a first hand account but can be discounted because it is bias and trying to boost Engles campaign for the rights of the working class. By this comparison the workers of mills in Manchester were ill and weak compared to the people of Styal who were healthy. Although they suffered from heat, dust and noise of the mill the doctor and rural environment were in their favour, life expectancy and quality of life was better at Styal as opposed to Manchester.
Quarry Bank Mill wasn’t common and therefore can’t be used to give a substantiated or universally applied answer as to what conditions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were like for children working in textile mills. Source C seems the most impartial and rounded view on child labour as it is taken from a modern book, with the advantage of hindsight, and was written by a bias-free modern historian, Pauline Gregg. Gregg explains, “To the cotton master the apprentice children were as much his property as the machines they tended. Kind treatment did not pay. It was more economical to work one batch out then get another.”
This certainly didn’t represent Styal and so Styal was conclusively not typical. Samuel Greg looked after his child employees by providing a doctor, schooling and treating them well and generously. Samuel Greg believed this was economical, and not “to work one batch out and then get another”. This may be one of the reasons Quarry Bank Mill was a successful business venture. Pauline Gregg later goes on to describe, “stories of the treatment of the children while at work were sickening.
They suffered constant flogging to keep them awake. One boy as a punishment was hung by his wrists over moving machinery, so that he was compelled to hold his legs up to avoid mutilation.” This is far from Source D’s description of punishments at Styal; punishments at Styal were liberal, far lighter and less brutal. At Quarry Bank Mill, age starting, hours worked, safety, death rates, and treatment were all preferable to the mills I have compared it too. The sources and a visit to Quarry Bank aren’t sufficient to find a rounded answer, about child labouring conditions in textile mills.
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