Thursday, March 23, 2006

So you think you got troubles ...

At least you're not working in one of Richard Arkwright's textile factories:

Richard Arkwright's employees worked from six in the morning to seven at night. Although some of the factory owners employed children as young as five, Arkwright's policy was to wait until they reached the age of six. Two-thirds of Arkwright's 1,900 workers were children. Like most factory owners, Arkwright was unwilling to employ people over the age of forty.

There's more here

2 comments:

  1. My daughter, being in year 6 at primary school and hence studying the victorians, has been suitably shocked by all of this. She and her classmates recently performed an assembly where Jenny (my daughter) had to get her hand chopped off on a loom in a factory. She liked this as it was the most dramatic role. At the end, Lord Shaftesbury came along and saved the day.

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  2. This was an interesting article, only because it is history. If it had been a current event...and I know there are some like it, I would have been appalled and dismayed1

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