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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: *Sandra* on Thursday 18 May 23 08:10 BST (UK)
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Interesting article.
The harrowing lives of England's 'pauper apprentices': Scientists discover the skeletons of 150 children in Yorkshire who were forced into labour 200 years ago.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12094389/The-harrowing-lives-Englands-pauper-apprentices.html
Sandra
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That's interesting. Part of our oft forgotten history. Fanny Trollope wrote a really interesting novel - my view :) - about child slave labour in the factories/mills. Although she came under a lot of criticism at the time she also brought the issue to a previously unaware public which apparently raised support for the 1844 Factory Act.
"The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong - The Factory Boy" Well worth a read.
Brie
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The original article, an excellent combination of history and archaeology, can be seen at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284970
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An interesting paper on Foundling Hospitals and Apprentices
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03071022.2023.2179747
The Rev Thomas Trant mentioned as associated with the Ackworth Foundling Hospital in the 1740s was my 5xGreat Grandfather
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Richard Ostler & Fergus O'Conner highlighted the problems of the children working in the mill & their biographies are good reading.
The difference was child labourers worked long hours for little money, doing menial jobs which were dangerous & hazardous to health. An apprentice was being taught a trade, they did not get paid, the masters just had to feed them & give them a set of clothes once a year, (they did not have to be new clothes so a lot of them got hand me downs).
John
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Richard Ostler & Fergus O'Conner highlighted the problems of the children working in the mill & their biographies are good reading.
The difference was child labourers worked long hours for little money, doing menial jobs which were dangerous & hazardous to health. An apprentice was being taught a trade, they did not get paid, the masters just had to feed them & give them a set of clothes once a year, (they did not have to be new clothes so a lot of them got hand me downs).
John
Pauper apprentices were not usually being taught a trade, they were nothing more than slave labour.
https://www.genguide.co.uk/source/apprenticeship-indentures-parish-poor-law/
Also;
https://www.workhouses.org.uk/education/apprenticeship.shtml
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Here in Ramsbottom where I live, there is an “ Apprentice House” ,for orphans ,often from the Manchester slums that Engels wrote about .
These children were like commodities, and as with the little chimney sweepers in The Water Babies, were exploited often in the name of charity.
I believe Styal Mill was less than philanthropic (despite generally having a better reputation than many others, ) when it comes to the system that employed orphan children who had no one to champion them.
They were employed,but wages?—- in the cotton mills here .
I can imagine their food and shelter were all they got .
Respectable Victorian industrialists used them I suppose as cheap labour,crawling under moving machinery for example to gather the fluff -which was highly combustible - from the various processes.
They had no rights and were untaught, until some education reforms came about.
Sadly the original burial ground if St.Paul’s Church is grassed over so as far as I know( I will ask on Sunday )none are buried there- the nearest burial ground to at least one mill ,owned by the Ashton Family and close to the Apprentice House.
A sad history, we don’t know we are born!
Viktoria.
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Thanks for that David, a very interesting read. And a salutary reminder that child exploitation continues.
Am halfway through the article Marmalady posted and will work my way through the rest.
Brie