or spoon, to use at table, or hats, shoes, or stockings. At Lowdham,
particularly during the latter part of their stay there, the children
used to wash at the pump, night and day, and were allowed soap! At
Litton mill, they were called out so early, and worked so late, that
little or no attention was given to personal cleanliness! On Friday
night, the apprentices were washed, combed, and shirted! Blincoe found
his companions in a woeful condition—their bodies were literally covered
with weals and contusions—their heads full of wounds, and, in many
cases, lamentably, infested with vermin! The eldest girls had to comb
and wash the younger apprentices—an irksome task, which was carelessly
and partially performed. No soap was allowed—a small quantity of meal
was given as a substitute; and this from the effects of keen hunger,
was generally eaten. The first day’s labour at Litton Mill, convinced
Blincoe, into what a den of vice and misery he was cast. The overlookers
were fierce and brutal, beyond any thing he had ever witnessed at Lowdham
Mill; to which servitude, terrible as it once appeared, he looked back
with regret. In the retrospect of his own conduct, he felt shame and
sorrow—for, compared with what he had to perform and to endure, he now
considered that he had lived in idleness and luxury at Lowdham. The
custom of washing and shifting on Friday night, arose, he said from a
notion, that it was more _profitable_ to allow those ablutions to be then
performed, that the apprentices might be kept to work till _midnight_ on
Saturday, or even beyond that hour. The apprentices slept about fifty
in a room. The governor used to unlock the door of each room when the
first bell rang: having unlocked the last room door, he went back to the
first, with a switch stick in his hand, and if he found any one in bed,
or slowly dressing, he used to lay on without mercy; by which severity,
the rooms were soon empty. The apprentices had their breakfast generally
of water-porridge, called in this part of Derbyshire “stir-pudding,”
and oaten cake, which they took in the mill. The breakfast hour was
eight o’clock; but the machinery did not stop, and so irregular were
their meals, it sometimes did not arrive till ten or eleven o’clock.
At other times, the overlookers would not allow the apprentices to eat
it, and it stood till it grew cold and covered with flue! Skim-milk, or
butter-milk was allowed; but very sparingly, and often in a stinking
state, when it was served out. Forty minutes were allowed for dinner; of
which time, full one half was absorbed in cleaning the frames. Sometimes
the overlookers detained them in the mill the whole dinner-time, on
which occasion, a halfpenny was given, or rather promised. On those
occasions, they had to work the whole day through, generally _sixteen
hours_, _without rest or food_! These excessive labours, accompanied
by comparative starvation, may appear to my reader, as, at first, it
did to me, _incredible_; but Blincoe’s relations, marvellous as it may
appear, was afterwards confirmed by individuals, whose narratives _will
be given_, and with whom no sort of acquaintance or intercourse had
latterly subsisted. Owing to this shamefully protracted time of labour,
to the ferocity with which the children were driven by stripes, cuffs,
and kicks, and to the insufficiency of food, no less than its bad and
unwholesome quality. Blincoe, in common with his fellow-sufferers has
often dropped down at the frames, and been so weary, when, at last,
he left work, he has given a stronger boy a halfpenny, or a part of
his supper, to allow him to lean upon him on his way back to the
’prentice-house.
Bad as was the food, the cookery was still worse.—The most inferior sort
of Irish-fed bacon was purchased for the consumption of these children,
and this boiled with turnips, put into the water, I cannot say without
washing; but certainly without paring!—Such was the _Sunday_ fare of
the parish children at Litton Mill. When first Blincoe, and the rest
of the children arrived from Lowdham, they noticed many of the other
apprentices had neither spoon nor knife; but had to eat as they could,
meat, thick-porridge, or broth, nor were the new comers long allowed any
such implements. On Sunday, bacon-broth and turnips were served out,
which they eat with oaten-cake, in dirty wooden bowls. It could not be
otherwise, than unpalatable; for the portion of water to be converted
into _broth_, was very ample. In this, rusty, half putrid, fish-fed
bacon, and unpaired turnips were boiled!—A portion of this broth, with
coarse oaten-cake was served out, as the first course of a frequent
Sunday’s dinner. Next, the rusty bacon was portioned out with the
boiled unpared turnips!—There was generally, a large quantity of broth
to spare, which often became very fetid before it was cold. Into this
stuff, no better than hog-wash, a few pails more of water were poured
and some meal stirred in, and the disgusting mess was served out for
supper or the next day’s breakfast, as circumstances required. Blincoe
declared, that the stench of this broth was often so powerful as to turn
his stomach, and yet, bad as it was, keen hunger forced him to eat it.
From all those and other sources of sickness and disease, no one will
be surprised that contagious fevers arose in the mill; nor that the
number of deaths should be such as to require frequent supplies of parish
children, to fill up the vacancies. That such numerous draughts made
from mills, where there was no increase of building or of machinery, or
apparent call for more infant labourers should not have caused parish
officers to institute inquiry, as to the fate of their predecessors,
goes far toward confirming the worst imputations cast by the surviving
sufferers, upon their parochial guardians. The evidence given by Sir
Robert Peel and others, before parliamentary committees, will throw
still further light on this important subject, and prove how generally
the offspring of the poor have been abandoned by their legal guardians,
and left at the disposal of greedy and unfeeling sons of traffic. This
neglect on the part of parish officers, was the producing cause of many
of the avaricious cotton-masters escaping punishment, for offences which
richly merited the gallows. Contagious disease, fatal to the apprentices,
and dangerous to society, was the degree of magnitude, at which, the
independent rich, more, perhaps, from selfish than social feelings,
took alarm, and the public prints exposed a part of the existing abuses
in cotton-mills, of which parish children were the victims. So horrid
were these recitals, and so general and loud the indignation which they
excited, that it reached the inmost recesses of the flinty hearts of
the great cotton-masters. Their fears taught them mercy, when no longer
able to withstand, nor to silence the accusations brought against them
by public-spirited and disinterested opponents. Some of the greatest
delinquents yielded, and even became advocates for the interference of
the legislative power, between themselves and their servants. A reference
to the Appendix will shew that they were accused by the genuine friends
of humanity of aiming, by this concession, to insinuate themselves into
the confidence of their opponents, and thereby neutralize and subdue the
fine spirit by which they found their grasping, vile, insatiate avarice
controlled. Be this as it may, those individuals who took so much pains
to obtain the act of 1802, seem to have given themselves no manner of
trouble, to see it enforced. Almost before the first year expired,
it was considered a dead-letter. Just at this crisis, the cruelties,
exercised on apprentices at Litton Mill, were at their height. Excess of
toil, of filth, and of hunger, led to the poor children being visited
by contagious fevers. This calamity, which often broke, by premature
death, the bands of this vile thraldom, prevailed to such an extent, as
to stop the works. At last, such was Blincoe’s declaration, he had known
forty boys sick at once, being a fourth of the whole number employed
in the mill. From the combined testimony of many apprentices, none
were considered sick, till it was found impossible, by menaces or by
corporeal punishment, to keep them to their work. The medical gentlemen,
who sometimes attended the sick, aware of the cause of the deaths, used
to say, and like a sensible man he spoke:—“It is not drugs, but kitchen
physic they want:” and his general prescription was plenty of good bread,
beef, soup and mutton broth. When I questioned Blincoe and others, why
this medical man did not represent the horrid plight they were in to the
magistrates, he said, the surgeon and magistrates were friends and guests
of the master, and in the frequent habit of feasting with him! Blincoe
was among the number of the sick, and remembers pitch, tobacco, &c.
being burnt in the chamber, and vinegar sprinkled on their beds and on
the floor. Circumstances which sufficiently denote the malignity of the
disease, and the serious apprehensions that were entertained. So great
has the mortality been, that Mr. Needham felt it adviseable to divide the
burials, and a part of the dead were buried in Tadington Church-yard,
although the burial fees were double the charge of those at Tideswell.
Notwithstanding this extraordinary degree of sickness and mortality,
Blincoe declares that the local magistracy took no manner of notice of
these occurrences!!!
It might be hazardous to trust so far to the memory, the integrity, or
the judgment of Blincoe, or to affirm that the conduct of the local
magistrates really was thus culpable—but the imputation is corroborated
by the total silence of the magistrates of this part of Derbyshire, as
to the character and conduct of the owners of Litton Mill, during the
parliamentary investigation of 1816, 17, 18, 19. The concurrent testimony
of Blincoe and several of his fellow-sufferers confirm the fact of
contagious fevers having occurred in this mill; of the numerous deaths
it occasioned; of the consequent division of the funerals; and of the
remarks of the clergyman, by whom the last sad rites were performed; and
also, that, _once_, there was a Coroner’s inquest held! there exists
some difference of opinion, as to the material fact, whether the body
had not been first deposited in the earth, and afterwards taken up.
Not a spark of pity was shewn to the sick of either sex: they were
worked to the very last moment it was possible for them to work: and
when it was no longer possible, if they dropped down, they were put
into a wheel-barrow, and wheeled to the ’prentice-house. According
to Blincoe’s statement, they were left in the common room below, or
carried to their berth in the bed-room, and there left to live or die!
In this melancholy state, all the change that took place in the diet,
was an allowance of some _treacle-tea_, that is, hot water sweetened
with treacle. The doctor was seldom called, till the patient was in
the agonies of death. Generally speaking, the dying experienced less
attention than a sheep or a hog! The owner of Litton Mill was more
tender to those animals; because they cost money, and the anxiety of a
character like Mr. Needham’s could only be excited by the prospect of
a loss of capital! This solicitude was proportioned to the extent of
that risk; and as parish children and destitute orphans could be had
at a less price than sheep or pigs, to supply the place of those that
died, it followed, that they were less thought of. I would not willingly
exaggerate the atrocities I am depicting. I would not act so unwisely as
to overcharge the picture I am drawing; and it is with some degree of
diffidence, I state, in consequence of combined and positive testimony,
that no nurses or _nursing_ was allowed to the sick, further than what
one invalid could do for another! That neither candle nor lamp-light
was allowed, nor the least sign of sympathy or regret manifested! These
facts I admit, are so repugnant to every feeling of Christian charity,
that they wear the aspect of greatly embellished truths, or what is but
little worse, of malignant fabrications. If they are such, the fault is
not mine; for repeatedly, and in the most impressive manner in my power,
I admonished Blincoe and his fellow-sufferers, to abstain from falsehood,
telling him and them, it would be sure to be detected and lead to their
disgrace. What I thought might have more influence with such persons,
I also urged the triumph, such baseness on their part, could confer on
the master cotton spinners, most distinguished by cruelty and tyranny;
yet, still Blincoe and the whole of his former comrades perseveringly
and consistently adhered to the truth of the horrid imputations, and
declared, if they were called upon, they would at any time confirm
their statement. I was bound to give them publicity—if they are founded
in truth. If their great features are correctly delineated, no lapse
of time ought to be allowed to shelter the delinquents. They should
be brought to a public trial; for the imputations extend to too many
acts of torture and of wilful deliberate murder; and to the indulgence
of propensities, as to overpower scepticism. They embrace atrocities
exercised upon poor and friendless boys and girls, of a nature no less
abominable than the worst of those which apply to that disgrace to
womanhood, Elizabeth Brownrig, or more recently, to the unhappy culprit,
Governor Wall. There are yet living, perhaps a hundred witnesses who
have been partakers of these ferocious inflictions. Many of them, though
in the prime of life, are reduced to such a state of decrepitude, as to
flash conviction upon the most incredulous, that it could have resulted
from nothing but the most unexampled and long continued cruelty. From
the continued and relentless exercise of unlimited despotism upon the
truly insulted and most friendless of human beings, upon those, for
whose especial protection, a law had been then recently enacted, which,
had it been enforced, would have efficiently prevented the occurrence
of these crimes, and if I were to assert, that it would be difficult,
if not impossible, from the record of sufferings inflicted upon Negro
slaves, to quote instances of greater atrocity, than what I have, or am
about to develope, I should not exaggerate, nor should I be guilty of
bombast, were I to affirm, that the national character has been, and is
seriously dishonoured by that system of boundless commercial avarice, in
which these detestable crimes originated. It will continue thus shaded,
till a full and fair investigation takes place. There never yet was
a crisis, when, in the commercial world, the march of avarice was so
rapid, or its devastations so extensive upon the morals and well being of
society, as within the period embraced by this narrative; a march that
seems to acquire celerity in proportion to the increasing spread of its
malific _influence_, and to derive _impunity_ from the prodigious wealth
it accumulates in the hands of a few great and unfeeling capitalists,
at the expence of the individual happiness, health, and morals of the
million. This iniquitous system is the prolific parent of that tremendous
flood of vice, which has saturated the manufacturing populace, with the
most appalling depravity. This has reduced those many hundred thousand
weavers, to a state of destitution so extreme, as to render the condition
of the most destitute portion, incomparably worse than that of the
field-slave in the West India plantations, who has the good fortune to
belong to a humane proprietor. This baleful and wide wasting system
throws upon the crown the undeserved odium of being the cause or the
abettor of these dreadful evils, by which the poor weaver is oppressed—an
impression that has neutralized the loyalty of myriads, and fitted them
to become, in the hands of unprincipled demagogues, the source of popular
commotions, of foul and iniquitous conspiracies, of deep and radical
disloyalty. So indurated, so inveterate, is the loathing and aversion
cherished towards the executive government, in all its ramifications,
by a large portion of weavers, that it has induced multitudes wholly to
renounce, to vilify in every practicable manner, to degrade christianity!
I do not, in this declamation, indulge in light, personal, or selfish
motives; for whatever I assert, as positive matter of fact, I hold myself
morally responsible, and stand publicly pledged to substantiate my
assertion, by adducing, if requisite, not alone the authorities on which
I make them, but also to _prove_ the validity of those authorities.
With this digression, I close the present chapter.—In those that follow
there will be found a narrative of crimes which cannot fail to excite,
in an equal degree, horror and incredulity:—at the recital of acts of
wanton, premeditated, gross, and brutal cruelty, scarcely to be equalled
in the annals of the Inquisitorial tribunals of Portugal or Spain; yet
all those acts of murder and wanton cruelties, have been perpetrated by
a solitary master cotton-spinner, who, though perhaps one of the worst
of his tribe, did not stand alone; as will be shewn by evidence that
it cannot be successfully rebutted. Nor was it to be expected that the
criminality of that master spinner could fail to produce corresponding
depravity amongst the wretched apprentices subjected to his rude and
savage dominion. In the eventful life of W—— Pitt, the depth and extent
of that depravity will be strikingly illustrated!—It will be seen that
acts of felony were committed in the vicinity of Litton Mill, by the
parish apprentices, not, if I am rightly informed, from _dishonest
intention_; but from a desire to be transported to Botany Bay; deeming
even that alternative preferable to the endurance of the horrors of the
servitude, to which, as parish apprentices, they had been consigned.
CHAP. V.
Recurring to the description, given to me by Robert Blincoe, of the
dreadful state of thraldom, in which, with a multitude of juvenile
companions, he was involved at Litton Mill, I am instructed to say, that
as excessive toil, the want of proper time for rest, and of nourishing
wholesome food, gave rise to contagious disease, so a liberal supply
of good provisions and a cessation from toil, quickly restored many
to health; instead of taking warning by the results of these terrible
examples, no sooner were the invalids sent back to the mill, than the
system of over-toil, of boundless cruelty, starvation and torture, was
at once resumed. Let it not however be supposed, that any thing in the
shape of dainties had been dispensed to the sick. Wheaten bread, coarse
pieces of beef boiled down in soup, or mutton for broth, with good
milk or butter-milk, sparingly distributed, formed the extent of those
indulgences. This diet, luxurious as it was considered in Litton Mill,
did not surpass the ordinary standard of the daily fare, that Blincoe had
enjoyed at St. Pancras workhouse, and also, during the latter period of
his stay at Lowdham Mill.
I have not yet done more than to mention the cuffs, kicks, or scourging,
to which, in common with many other of his unhappy comrades, Blincoe
stood exposed, since, by his account, almost from the first hour in which
he entered the Mill, till he arrived at a state of manhood, it was one
continued round of cruel and arbitrary punishment. Blincoe declared, he
was so frequently and immoderately beaten, it became quite familiar; and
if its frequency did not extinguish the sense of feeling, it took away
the terror it excited on his first entrance into this den of ignorance
and crime. I asked him if he could state an average number of times
in which he thought he might in safety say, he had suffered corporeal
punishment in a week. His answer invariably was, that his punishments
were so various and so frequent, it was impossible to state with any
thing approaching to accuracy. If he is to be credited, during his ten
years of hard servitude, his body was never free from contusions, and
from wounds inflicted by the cruel master whom he served, by his sons, or
his brutal and ferocious and merciless overlookers.
It is already stated, that he was put to the back of a stretching-frame,
when he was about eleven years of age, and that often, owing to the
idleness, or the absence of the stretcher, he had his master’s work,
as well as his own to perform. The work being very coarse, the motion
was rapid, and he could not keep up to the ends. For this he was sure
to be unmercifully punished, although, they who punished him knew the
task assigned was beyond what he could perform. There were different
stretchers in the mill; but, according to Blincoe’s account, they were
all of them base and ferocious ruffians. Robert Woodward, who had
escorted the apprentices from Lowdham Mill, was considered the worst of
those illiterate vulgar tyrants. If he made a kick at Blincoe, so great
was his strength, it commonly lifted him off the floor. If he struck him,
even a flat-handed blow, it floored him; If, with a stick, it not only
bruised him, but cut his flesh. It was not enough to use his feet or his
hands, but a stick, a bobby or a rope’s-end. He and others used to throw
rollers one after another, at the poor boy, aiming at his head, which,
of course was uncovered while at work, and nothing delighted the savages
more, than to see Blincoe stagger, and to see the blood gushing out in a
stream! So far were such results from deterring the monsters, that long
before one wound had healed, similar acts of cruelty produced others, so
that, on many occasions, his head was excoriated and bruised to a degree,
that rendered him offensive to himself and others, and so intolerably
painful, as to deprive him of rest at night, however weary he might be.
In consequence of such wounds, his head was over-run by vermin. Being
reduced to this deplorable state, some brute of a quack doctor used to
apply a pitch cap, or plaister to his head. After it had been on a given
time, and when its adhesion was supposed to be complete, the _terrible
doctor_ used to lay forcibly hold of one corner and tear the whole scalp
from off his head at once! This was the common remedy; I should not
exaggerate the agonies it occasioned, were I to affirm, that it must
be equal to any thing inflicted by the American savages, on helpless
prisoners, with their scalping knives and tomahawks.
This same ruffian, (Robert Woodward) who, by the concurrent testimony
of many sufferers, stands depicted, as possessing that innate love of
cruelty which marked a Nero, a Caligula, or a Robespierre, used when
Blincoe could not, or did not keep pace with the machinery, to tie him up
by the wrists to a cross beam and keep him suspended over the machinery
till his agony was extreme. To avoid the machinery, he had to draw up
his legs every time it came out or returned. If he did not lift them
up, he was cruelly beaten over the shins, which were bare; nor was he
released, till growing black in the face, and his head falling over his
shoulder, the wretch thought his victim was near expiring. Then after
some gratuitous knocks and cuffs, he was released and instantly driven to
his toil, and forced to commence, with every appearance of strength and
vigour, though he were so much crippled, as to be scarcely able to stand.
To lift the apprentices up by their ears, shake them violently, and then
dash them down upon the floor with the utmost fury, was one of the many
inhuman sports in Litton Mill, in which the overlookers appeared to take
delight. Frequently has Blincoe been thus treated, till he thought his
ears were torn from his head, and this for very trivial offences, or
omissions. Another of these diabolical amusements consisted in filing the
apprentices’ teeth! Blincoe was once constrained to open his mouth to
receive this punishment, and Robert Woodward applied the file with great
vigour! Having punished him as much as he pleased; the brute said with a
sneer; “I do this to sharpen thy teeth, that thou may’st eat thy Sunday
dinner the better.”