Child Labor in British Factories and Mines

Child labor was one of the most disturbing features of the early Industrial Revolution. Children as young as five or six worked in the new factories and mines, often for twelve to sixteen hours a day, and they suffered accidents, exhaustion, and disease at alarming rates. The campaign against child labor was one of the defining social movements of the nineteenth century, and it eventually led to the Factory Acts and the Mines Acts that restricted the employment of children and improved the conditions of their work.

The Extent of Child Labor

Child labor was widespread in the early Industrial Revolution, and it was particularly common in the textile mills and the coal mines. In the cotton mills of Lancashire, children as young as five or six were employed as scavengers, doffers, and piecers, working alongside adult workers and often performing the most dangerous and unpleasant tasks. In the coal mines of the North East, the Midlands, and Scotland, children worked as trappers, opening and closing the ventilation doors, and as hurriers, pulling coal wagons through the narrow tunnels.

The article on children in mines describes the conditions in the mines in more detail. The article on factory conditions describes the conditions in the factories.

The extent of child labor was shocking even by the standards of the time. The 1819 census found that about half of the workers in the cotton mills of Manchester were children under the age of fifteen, and similar proportions were found in other industries. The 1842 Children’s Employment Commission, which investigated the conditions in the mines and factories, found that children as young as four or five were working in some industries.

The Conditions of Child Workers

The conditions under which children worked were often brutal. In the cotton mills, children worked the same long hours as adults, often from five or six in the morning until seven or eight at night, with only brief breaks for meals. The work was physically demanding, and the children were often exhausted by the end of the day. The machines had no safety guards, and accidents were common, with children losing fingers, hands, and sometimes their lives.

In the coal mines, the conditions were even worse. The mines were dark, damp, and dangerous, and the work was physically exhausting. The “trappers,” who sat alone for up to twelve hours a day in the dark, opening and closing the ventilation doors, often suffered from loneliness, depression, and physical deformities. The “hurriers,” who pulled coal wagons through the narrow tunnels, often suffered from spinal deformities, joint problems, and chronic pain.

The physical and psychological toll of child labor was devastating. Many children developed permanent disabilities, and many died young. The article on child labor in the Industrial Revolution describes the long-term effects of child labor in more detail.

The Campaign Against Child Labor

The campaign against child labor was one of the defining social movements of the nineteenth century. The campaign was led by a coalition of reformers, including evangelical Christians, utilitarians, trade unionists, and politicians, who argued that the state had a responsibility to protect children from exploitation.

The campaign drew on a number of intellectual traditions, including the evangelical Christian emphasis on the duty to protect the weak and the vulnerable, the utilitarian emphasis on the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and the romantic emphasis on the importance of childhood. The reformers used a variety of tactics, including parliamentary petitions, public meetings, the publication of pamphlets and reports, and the lobbying of individual members of Parliament.

The most important figure in the campaign was Lord Ashley (later the Earl of Shaftesbury), who devoted much of his career to the cause of factory reform. Ashley was a deeply religious man who was appalled by the conditions in the factories and mines, and he used his position in Parliament to press for reform.

The Factory Acts and the Mines Acts

The campaign against child labor eventually led to a series of laws that restricted the employment of children and improved the conditions of their work. The Factory Act of 1833 was the first major piece of legislation, and it limited the working hours of children in textile mills. The Mines and Collieries Act of 1842 banned women and girls of any age, and boys under ten, from working underground in mines. The Factory Act of 1844 reduced the working hours of children further, and the Ten Hours Bill of 1847 limited the working day of women and children in factories to ten hours.

The article on the Factory Acts describes this important legislation in more detail.

The Factory Acts and the Mines Acts were not always effective, and the conditions in many factories and mines continued to be harsh. But over time, the regulations helped to reduce the worst abuses of child labor, and they laid the foundation for the modern welfare state.

The Long-Term Effects of Child Labor

The long-term effects of child labor on the children who experienced it were often devastating. Many children who worked in the factories and mines developed permanent physical disabilities, and many suffered from chronic health problems. The educational opportunities of working children were also severely limited, and many children grew up without the basic skills of literacy and numeracy.

The campaign against child labor was also important for the development of the modern education system. The requirement in the Factory Acts that children receive some schooling helped to spread basic education to the children of the working class, and it laid the foundation for the development of the modern school system. The article on education acts and child labor reform describes this important development in more detail.

The campaign against child labor was also important for the development of the modern labor movement. The campaign helped to build the trade unions, and the trade unions were important supporters of further reforms. The article on labor movements and unions describes these connections in more detail.

The Legacy of the Campaign Against Child Labor

The campaign against child labor was one of the great moral and political movements of the nineteenth century, and its legacy continues to shape the modern world. The principle that the state has a responsibility to protect children from exploitation, established in the early nineteenth century, is now a fundamental part of international law, and it has been extended to cover issues such as child labor in the developing world today.

The Continuing Question

The interesting question about industrial child labour is not whether it was bad — it was — but whether the moral indictment and the quantitative evidence actually agree. The moral indictment, going back to the 1830s Sadler Committee and given its modern form in the work of E. P. Thompson, was that the factory system corrupted children, broke their bodies, and condemned them to illiteracy and poverty. The quantitative revisionism, developed by Clark Nardinelli in Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution (1990) and given its most ambitious form in Jane Humphries’ Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England (2010), is more complicated. Humphries used pauper letters, school-board records, and household budget data to show that children in factory towns were often earning 20-30 percent of household income, that family decisions about child employment were often rational responses to the available wage structure, and that the picture of the “lost childhood” of the industrial period has been overdrawn. The interesting current question is whether the children who went to work in 1830 were worse off than the children who went to work in 1730 in the much-less-regulated cottage industry, and the answer seems to be: probably not by much, in the short run, and probably a great deal worse, in the long run, because the schools they would have attended were the schools of the new industrial towns. The policy question raised by Carolyn Tuttle’s Hard at Work in Factories and Mines (1999) and by the ILO’s 1999 Convention 182 is whether the 21st-century fight against child labour in the supply chains of Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Côte d’Ivoire has the same shape as the 19th-century fight against the British mill, or whether the comparison breaks down.

Selected Sources

Jane Humphries, Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England: Diversity and Agency, 1750–1914 (2010).
E. Royston Pike, Hard Times: Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution (1966).
Clark Nardinelli, Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution (1990).
Robert H. Bremner (ed.), Children and Youth in America: A Documentary History (1970–74).