which he had started found a fellow. He was handed back to Smith, his
task-master, by whom he was laughed at and jeered unmercifully, and
worked with an increase of severity. When Blincoe left work, his old
associates flocked around him, condoling his misfortune, and offering
him half-pence and bits of bread that they had saved! When they heard
how _godly_ had caught him, their indignation swelled to such a height,
they declared they would drown him in the mill-dam, if ever they had an
opportunity. These condolements were grateful to his wounded pride and
disappointed hopes. As he retired to his miserable bed, the governor,
grinning horribly, made him a low bow in the military style, and gave
him a hearty kick on his _seat of honour_ at the same instant. In this
manner, was he ushered to his bed, laughed at by that portion of the
elder apprentices, who had made similar attempts, and had undergone a
similar or more vindictive punishment. Having abandoned all thoughts of
escape, Blincoe submitted sullenly and patiently to his fate;—he worked
according to his age and stature, as hard as any one in the mill. When
his strength failed, and his limbs refused their office, he endured the
strap or the stick, the cuff or the kick, with as much resignation as any
of his fellow-sufferers. In the faded complexions, and sallow looks of
his associates, he could see, as, in a mirror, his own altered condition!
Many of his comrades had, by this time, been more or less injured by
the machinery. Some had the skin scraped off the knuckles, clean to the
bone, by the fliers; others a finger crushed, a joint or two nipped off
in the cogs of the spinning-frame wheels! When his turn to suffer came,
the fore-finger of his left hand was caught, and almost before he could
cry out, off was the first joint—his lamentations excited no manner of
emotion in the spectators, except a coarse joke—he clapped the mangled
joint, streaming with blood, to the finger, and ran off to Burton, to the
surgeon, who, very composedly put the parts together again, and sent him
back to the mill. Though the pain was so intense, he could scarcely help
crying out every minute, he was not allowed to leave the frame. He said
but little to any one; but was almost continually bemoaning in secret the
cruelty of his fate. Before he was eight years old, Blincoe declared,
that many a time he had been tempted to throw himself out of one of the
upper windows of the factory—but when he came to look at the leap he
purposed taking, his courage failed him—a propensity, he mentioned not as
thinking it evinced any commendable feeling, but as an illustration of
the natural and unavoidable consequences of working children too hard,
and subjecting them to so many severe privations.
About the second year of his servitude, when the whole of the eighty
children sent from Pancras Workhouse, had lost their plump and fresh
appearance, and acquired the pale and sickly hue which distinguished
factory children from all others, a most deplorable accident happened in
Lowdham Mill, and in Blincoe’s presence. A girl, named Mary Richards,
who was thought remarkably handsome when she left the workhouse, and,
who might be nearly or quite ten years of age, attended a drawing frame,
below which, and about a foot from the floor, was a horizontal shaft,
by which the frames above were turned. It happened, one evening, when
most of her comrades had left the mill, and just as she was taking off
the weights, her apron was caught by the shaft. In an instant the poor
girl was drawn by an irresistible force and dashed on the floor. She
uttered the most heart rending shrieks! Blincoe ran towards her, an
agonized and helpless beholder of a scene of horror that exceeds the
power of my pen to delineate! He saw her whirled round and round with
the shaft—he heard the bones of her arms, legs, thighs, &c. successively
snap asunder, crushed, seemingly, to atoms, as the machinery whirled
her round, and drew tighter and tighter her body within the works, her
blood was scattered over the frame and streamed upon the floor, her head
appeared dashed to pieces—at last, her mangled body was jammed in so
fast, between the shafts and the floor, that the water being low and the
wheels off the gear, it stopped the main shaft! When she was extricated,
every bone was found broken!—her head dreadfully crushed!—her clothes
and mangled flesh were, apparently inextricably mixed together, and she
was carried off, as supposed, quite lifeless. “I cannot describe,” said
Blincoe, “my sensations at this appalling scene. I shouted out aloud for
them to stop the wheels! When I saw her blood thrown about like water
from a twirled mop, I fainted.” But neither the spine of her back was
broken, nor were her brains injured, and to the amazement of every one,
who beheld her mangled and horrible state, by the skill of the surgeon,
and the excellence of her constitution, she was saved!—Saved to what
end? the philosopher might ask—to be sent back to the same mill, to
pursue her labours upon crutches, made a cripple for life, without a
shilling indemnity from the parish, or the owners of the mill! Such was
the fate of this poor girl, but, dismal as it was, it will be seen by
the succeeding parts of this narrative, that a lot still more horrible
awaited many of her fellow-sufferers, whom the parish officers of St.
Pancras, pursuant to Acts of Parliament authority, had apprenticed for
fourteen years to the masters of Lowdham Cotton Mill. The dreadful
spectacle Blincoe had witnessed in the racking of Mary Richards, rendered
his employment more odious than ever.
It is already stated, that the food was very ordinary and not very
plentiful; the apprentices were so oppressed by hunger, that the oldest
and most daring sallied out at night and plundered the fields, and
frequent complaints were made, and the apprentices got a very bad name,
which belonged rather to the masters, in whose parsimony it originated!
When Blincoe had served about three years of his time, an event happened
at Lowdham Mill, arising out of the manner in which apprentices were
treated, that wrought a complete revolution there, and led to a new era
in Blincoe’s biography! Among the girls, who were bound apprentices to
Messrs. Lamberts of Nottingham and Lowdham, were two sisters, named Fanny
and Mary Collier, who had a mother residing in London. These young girls
finding their health declining from excess of labour, bad provisions,
and want of wholesome air and exercise, found means to write a letter
to their mother, full of complaints, upon which, the widow undertook a
journey to Lowdham, where she resided a fortnight, during which time, she
was a reserved and shrewd observer of the condition of her own and of
other children, and then returned to the metropolis. As far as Blincoe
remembers these circumstances, Mrs. Collier did not make any complaints
to Messrs. Lamberts, or to the manager! She reserved such representation
for the parish officers of Saint Pancras, which induced them to send
down a parochial committee, to inquire into the state and condition of
the apprentices. One day, just as the dinner was being served out in the
_usual_ slovenly manner, without the least notice of the intended visit
having been previously given, the Committee arrived, without asking or
waiting for permission, they walked into the common room, and tasting
the viands upon the table, they found them such as had been described.
Whether _conscience_ had any concern in the effort to discover and
reform abuses in the mill, said Blincoe, I know not; but this I do know,
that, if they had had a spark of shame, pity or remorse, the sallow,
and sickly appearance of the eighty victims, saying nothing of Mary
Richards, who was for ever rendered a cripple, ought to have filled them
with sorrow and shame, on account of the base and cruel imposition,
that had been practised in 1799. It is more probable, however, that the
atrocious treatment experienced by the thousands and tens of thousands
of orphan children, poured forth from our charitable institutions, and
from parish workhouses, and the dreadful rapidity with which they were
consumed in the various cotton-mills, to which they were transported,
and the sad spectacle exhibited by most of the survivors, were the real
causes, which, in 1802, produced Sir Robert Peel’s Bill, for the relief
and protection of infant paupers employed in cotton-mills. Hence, the
extraordinary liveliness evinced by the overseers and churchwardens
of Saint Pancras might have been occasioned by the dreadful scenes of
cruelty and oppression developed during the progress of that Bill,
which Blincoe never heard of, nor ever saw, till eleven or twelve years
after it had passed into a law. It would be difficult to produce a more
striking instance of the utter contempt, in which the upstart owners of
great establishments treated an act, purposely enacted to restrain their
unparalled cruelty and waste of human life. The act itself declared the
masters, owners, or occupiers of every cotton-mill in Great Britain and
Wales should have a legible copy of the act, placed in some conspicuous
and public part of each mill, and accessible to every one; yet, Blincoe,
who was reared in the cotton-mill, never saw or heard of any such law,
till eleven or twelve years after it had been enacted! When the committee
began their investigation, as to the treatment and condition of the
children sent from St. Pancras Workhouse, Blincoe was called up among
others and admonished to speak the truth and nothing but the truth! So
great however was the terror of the stick and strap, being applied to
their persons, after these great dons should be at a great distance, it
rendered him, and no doubt the great majority of his fellow sufferers
extremely cautious and timid. It is however, likely, that their looks
bespoke their sufferings, and told a tale not to be misunderstood. The
visitors saw their food, dress, bedding, and they caused, in conjunction
with the local magistrate, very great alterations to be made. A new
house was ordered to be erected near the mill, for the use of the
apprentices, in which there were fewer beds to a given space. The
quantity of good and wholesome animal food to be dressed and distributed
in a more decent way, was specified. A much more cleanly and decorous
mode of cookery and serving up the dinner and other meals was ordered.
The apprentices were divided into six classes, and a new set of tin
cans, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, were made, to be served up to each
individual, according to the class to which he or she may belong, to hold
the soup or porridge! The old governor was discharged, who had given them
all such a fright on their first arrival, and several of the overlookers
were dismissed and new ones introduced;—among the latter description
of persons was a man, who seemed wholly destitute of humanity—his name
was William Woodward—born, I believe, at Cromford, in Derbyshire. The
appearance of this ferocious tyrant at Lowdham Mill proved a much heavier
curse, scourge and affliction to Blincoe, than all the grievances which
had existed, or were removed! As Woodward’s amusement, in tormenting
these poor apprentices, will occupy a large space in the next chapter, I
shall say little of him in this.
It was the ill fortune of Blincoe and his associates, that, shortly after
the reforms specified were introduced, and the hours of labour reduced,
so that their situation became every way incomparably more eligible,
Lowdam Mill stopped working.
At this period, Blincoe had served about four years of his time, and
had learnt to wind rovings, and spin at the throstle, and certainly
earned as much money for his master in the week as would suffice to keep
him a month or longer, in meat, drink and clothes; but he had not been
instructed in any part of the stocking-trade, nor had he acquired such a
degree of knowledge of the cotton-spinning, as might enable him to gain
his bread elsewhere.
At this juncture, if justice had been done, the apprentices would have
reverted to Saint Pancras parish, and not been abandoned as they were,
and turned over to a new master, without any care being taken, that he
should, if he took them, abide by the condition specified in their first
indentures, and act up to the regulations introduced at Lowdham Mill.
Blincoe said, he believed the Messrs. Lamberts wrote to the parish
officers of Saint Pancras, informing them of the situation of the
children, in order that their friends might take back whom they
pleased to claim, and if, in this conclusion, Blincoe is right, and
these officers neglected to take proper measures for the safety and
protection of so large a body of children, as they had sent to Lowdham
Mill, all healthy and straight limbed, they are morally responsible for
the unparalled sufferings to which they were afterwards exposed. When
the subject shall again come before parliament, it will be requisite
to have the conduct of the parish officers on this occasion thoroughly
investigated, not so much from a wish to have their offences visited
with any legal penalty, if such were practicable, as to shew the
necessity of abrogating the power invested in them by act of parliament,
to place children beyond a given distance from the place of their
birth or settlement:—and secondly, to deprive them altogether of the
power of tearing away children from their parents, and sending them
into any manufactories whatever, without the knowledge and consent of
their parents, or next of kin. If the parish officers think proper to
apprentice them to any of the ordinary and established trades, they
ought to have that power independently of their parents. In the mill,
where Blincoe was next consigned, the _parish children_ were considered,
treated, and _consumed as a part of the raw materials_; their strength,
their marrow, their lives, were consumed and converted into money! and as
their livestock consisting of parish apprentices, diminished, new flocks
of victims arrived from various quarters, without the cost of purchase to
supply their place!
It is within the compass of probability, that there have been, and are
yet, instances, wherein the overseers of the poor, and more especially
the _assistant_ overseers, who are mere mercenaries, and serve for pay,
have been, and are, some of them at least, _bribed_ by the owners of
mills for spinning silk, cotton or woollen yarn, to visit the habitation
of the persons receiving parochial aid, and to compel them, when children
are wanting, utterly regardless of education, health, or inclination, to
deliver up their offspring, or by cutting off the parish allowance leave
them to perish for want!
When Messrs. Lamberts gave up the cotton-yarn establishment, carried
on at Lowdham Mill, they permitted all their apprentices who wished to
leave their employment in a cotton-mill, to write to their parents and
friends, and some few found redeemers; the great bulk were, unhappily
left to their fate! Being a foundling, and knowing no soul on earth
to whom he could look up for succour, Robert Blincoe was one of the
unhappy wretches, abandoned to as dismal a destiny as ever befel _a
parish apprentice_. It was his evil fortune, with a multitude of fellow
sufferers, to be turned over _en masse_ to Mr. ELLICE NEEDHAM, of
Highgate Wall, Derbyshire, the master and owner of Litton Mill, near
Tideswell.
Before, however, I close this delineation of the character and conduct of
the owners of Lowdham Cotton-Mill—Messrs. William, Charles, and Thomas
Lambert—it is due to them, if living, whatever may be their fortune, and
to their memory, if deceased, to state, that, with the exception of Mary
Richards, who was so dreadfully racked upon a shaft, and her bones mostly
broken, not one of the children sent to their mill by St. Pancras parish,
were injured as to be made a cripple, nor were they deformed in their
knees and ancles. That there were deficiencies as to food and an excess
of labour exacted, is clear, by the alterations which were introduced;
but still, compared with what they soon afterwards suffered, they were
humanely treated.
They were kept decently clad, had a bettermost suit reserved for Sundays
and holidays—were occasionally allowed a little time for play, in the
open air, and upon _Goose fair-day_, which is, or then was, a great
festival at Nottingham—the whole of them were conveyed in carts to that
celebrated place, and regaled with furmety, and sixpence in money was
allowed to the very youngest! They went pretty regularly to Lowdham
Church on Sundays; were not confined within gates and walls, as was the
case at most other mills, where parish apprentices were immured! nor
were there any iron-bars before the windows! They were _worked hard_; but
not so hard as to distort their limbs, nor occasion declines or deaths!
Their food latterly was good, and cleanly cooked. Their bedding, though
coarse, was clean! When they had meat, they were allowed trenchers,
knives, forks and spoons. It will presently be seen, when carried away
from Lowdham Mill, into what a den of vice, disease and famine, filth
and slavery, they were plunged; by what hellions they were worried, and
all in defiance of a positive, and recently made law, on purpose for
their protection, and in the face of the VISITING MAGISTRATE whose visits
were, according to Blincoe’s assertion, too frequently directed to the
luxurious table of the master, to admit even a chance of justice to
the apprentices. May this exposition of crimes and suffering inflicted
upon the friendless, the orphan, the widow’s son, induce honest and
upright men, senators and legislators, effectually to curb the barbarous
propensities of hard-hearted masters, and rescue their nation from a
worse stain, than even the African Slave Trade, horrible as was that
odious traffic, ever inflicted.
CHAP. IV.
The next cotton mill to which poor Blincoe was consigned, together, with
those of his companions in tribulation, who had no friend to redeem them,
from impending misery, belonged to a Mr. Ellice Needham. Like most of
his fraternity, his origin was obscure. He is said to have arisen from
an abject state of poverty, and had it been by honourable industry,
his prosperous fortune had redounded to his credit. Of his primeval
state of poverty, it was his weakness to be ashamed. By the profusion
of his table, and the splendour and frequency of his entertainments, he
seemed to wish to cover and conceal his mean descent. His house, lawns,
equipage, and style of living, completely eclipsed the neighbouring
gentry; yet, boundless was his ostentation, he was in his heart sordidly
mean and parsimonious. His cruelty, in wringing from poor friendless
orphans, the means of supporting his guilty and unbecoming pomp,
sufficiently evinces the baseness of his heart! His mansion, in 1803, and
years later, was at Highgate Wall, near Buxton in Derbyshire.
To this arrogant and unfeeling master, Messrs. Lambert made over the
unexpired term of years for which the greater part of the parish
apprentices had been bound by their respective indentures. What
premium was paid, or, if any, I know not. As this master was neither
a hosier, nor a lace manufacturer, he had not the power to fulfil the
conditions imposed on Messrs. Lamberts, viz. to instruct the girls,
during the last three years of their time, in lace-knitting, and the
boys in stocking-weaving. The consequence was, the poor children lost
those important advantages, and those who survived the term of their
apprenticeship to Ellice Needham, found themselves without that degree
of skill which was requisite to enable them to gain their bread, in
almost any other cotton-mill, and could touch none but the very coarsest
work.
As Messrs. Lamberts were constrained, by circumstances, to stop their
works, it might be, that they had not means to support the apprentices;
but were forced to get rid of them with the utmost expedition. There
have been instances, where, in case of Bankruptcy, parish apprentices
bound to cotton-masters, have been put into carts, driven to the verge of
the parish, and there turned adrift without money—without a friend or a
place to shelter them. According to Blincoe’s account, although Messrs.
Lamberts’ informed the guardians of the poor of St. Pancras parish of
the necessity they were under of giving up their apprentices, or turning
them over to their masters, no steps were taken for the protection of
the friendless children, an imputation, the more extraordinary, when the
promptitude and decision with which they had acted in the case recited,
is considered. It is, therefore, probable, that their activity might
be owing to the horrid tales, that had then burst upon the public,
descriptive of the cruelty and misery, of which parish children placed
out in cotton-mills were the victims. It was in 1802, that Sir Robert
Peel, of Bury, who had the largest number of parish and foundling
children, employed in his cotton-mills, of any cotton-master in Great
Britain, brought forward his bill for their protection. According to
Blincoe’s narrative, the committee from St. Pancras arrived at Lowdham
Mill, at this juncture, and the reforms introduced at Lowdham Mill, were,
therefore, likely to have been owing to the parliamentary agitation of
that question; and nothing can be more highly illustrative of the force
of public opinion, than this proof of its potent effect on the officers
of St. Pancras parish!—Supposing the conjecture to be well founded, at
the time the apprentices were removed from Lowdham Mill, this humane act
had passed into a law, and had become all but a dead-letter!—It may also
have been a reliance upon the effect of that law which induced the parish
officers to leave the children to their fate—what THAT fate was will
presently appear!
It seems, that Mr. Ellice Needham, the master of Litton Mill, went to
Lowdham, to inspect the condition of the apprentices, who had improved
very materially after the introduction of the new regulations. Nothing
could be more kind or condescending than Ellice Needham’s deportment at
Lowdham. To some, he gave money—to all, he promised most liberal and kind
usage—he promised like a Titus—but he performed like a Caligula.
Blincoe could not recollect, with precision, the number of apprentices,
male and female, who were removed in carts from Lowdham to Litton Mill.
The first day’s progress brought them to Cromford, where they halted
for the night. The girls were lodged in dwelling-houses; the boys, on
straw, in a barn or stable! The next morning, the whole party were
marched on foot through the village, as far as Matlock toll-bar, so proud
was Woodward (their conductor) of their healthy appearance! Here they
again mounted their carts! But this improvement is not imputable to the
wholesomeness of cotton-factory employment; but to the effect of the
recent modifications introduced at Lowdham Mill, and to their diminished
hours of toil.
It was in the gloomy month of November, when this removal took place! On
the evening of the second day’s journey, the devoted children reached
Litton Mill. Its situation, at the bottom of a sequestered glen, and
surrounded by rugged rocks, remote from any human habitation, marked a
place fitted for the foul crimes of frequent occurrence which hurried so
many of the friendless victims of insatiate avarice, to an untimely grave.
The savage features of the adjacent scenery impressed a general gloom
upon the convoy, when Woodward pointed out to them the lonely mill to
which they were travelling. As the hands were then at work, all of whom,
except the overlookers, were parish children, the conductor of the new
comers led them through the mill. The effect of the review filled the
mind of Blincoe, and perhaps his unhappy associates, with deep dismay.
The pallid, sickly complexions—the meagre, haggard appearance of the
Litton Mill apprentices, with their filthy and ragged condition, gave him
a sorrowful foretaste of the dismal fate that apparently awaited him.
From the mill, they were escorted to the ’prentice-house, where every
thing wore a discouraging aspect. Their first meal was water-porridge and
oaten cakes—the former thin and ill-made—the latter, baked in flat cakes,
on iron griddles, about an inch thick—and being piled up in heaps, was
liable to heat, ferment and grow mouldy. This was a new and not a very
palatable diet. Whilst Blincoe and many of his comrades went supperless
to bed, their half-starved comrades, the Litton Mill apprentices,
ravenously devoured what the more dainty Lowdham children turned from
with loathing, and told them _their stomachs_ would come to in a few
days, and that they would be glad to pick from a dunghill, the mouldiest
pieces, then so disdainfully flung away.
The lodging-room, the bedding, every thing was inferior to what it was at
Lowdham; and the smell, from oil and filth, incomparably more offensive.
Blincoe passed a restless night, bitterly deploring his hard destiny,
and trembling at the thought of greater sufferings! Soon after four in
the morning, they were summoned to the work, by the ringing of a bell.
Blincoe was put to wind rovings. He soon found an immense difference, in
his situation, having much more work to perform, and being treated with a
brutal severity, hitherto unknown to him.