Shropshire Routes to Roots

1. Nineteenth century child labour

Introduction

This collection of sources relating to child labour in the nineteenth century is intended as supporting material for structured classroom work, although the sources are available to everyone with an interest in the subject. All sources are available for public viewing at Shropshire Archives.

Background

Although many children had always laboured in some form or another, particularly in agriculture, the increased labour demands brought about by the processes collectively known as the Industrial Revolution meant an exponential increase in the numbers of children working and the types of work they were required to do.

For example, by 1850 there were 24,000 children under 13 years of age working in the British cotton industry, and 37,000 young people under 18 years of age; an estimated 600,000 children were employed in all industries.

The lack of a compulsory education system meant that children of poorer families were considered part of the economic potential of the household. Throughout the nineteenth century children were expected to work in many different environments (including mines, agriculture and factories) and working conditions were often poor.

What created a new situation was that children were now to be found in industrial employment, both in the factories and elsewhere, and this certainly meant that they became subject to more intensive and exhausting work than had been the case in domestic and rural employments.

[Reeve; The Industrial Revolution 1750-1850, p76]

Society eventually became concerned enough for some to campaign for at least a reduction of hours of work for children and reforms were made. In 1842, Parliament appointed a Royal Commission on Child Employment to fully investigate the condition of child labour throughout Britain. Our Text sources represent some of the testimony given to the commission about the lives of working children in Shropshire.

The Children's Employment Commission in 1842 found disturbing evidence of what the Tory county newspaper called 'White slavery in Shropshire'. The commission was seeking evidence to justify legislation and may have highlighted the worst practices. Its own evidence demonstrates that many bad practices had been abandoned, but at the same time raises questions about what must have been appalling abuses of child labour during the Napoleonic Wars. Its reports nevertheless established that dangerous and unhealthy practices were still employed at a significant number of pits in the district.

[Trinder; The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire, p167]

The more traditional form of child labour was the system of apprenticeship, dating from the Statute of Apprentices of 1563, whereby a child was apprenticed to a master to learn a trade for a long period, generally seven years or when the apprentice reached the age of twenty one. The master provided board, lodgings and training and the parents (or in the case of the poor, the Overseer of the Poor) payed a fee. The system was voluntary after 1814. The apprenticeship was legally sealed with an indenture agreement, varied examples of which are provided in Image sources.

The system was notoriously inefficient, and by the mid-nineteenth century was much less common.

Relations between masters and boys varied considerable. Indentures could be broken only by the decision of the Justices of the Peace; the records of quarter sessions include cases of absconding, ill-treatment, disputes over the placing of pauper apprentices,etc. In practice, large numbers of apprentices either failed to complete their training or did not become masters at the end of their term...The great growth of the population in the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries increased demand for goods and manufactures, and opportunities for employment elsewhere brought about the collapse of the system, except in certain trades.

[Hey; Local and Family History, p21]

• The Industrial Revolution.
• Requirement of labour in the new industries.
• Lack of systematic national compulsory education.
• Poverty required the children to work.
• The apprenticeship system.
• The Commission on Child Employment.

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