The Children Who Built Victorian Britain

This video presents first-hand accounts of children who lived and worked during Britain's Industrial Revolution.

I lived partly with my father and
grandmother and partly in the workhouse.

When I was nine, I was then bound apprentice
to a man who turned me over to the colliers.

My father said to him, "I had rather
you'd tied a stone around his neck

"and drowned him."

[T.Rex "Children of the Revolution]

♪

♪ But you won't fool
the children of the revolution ♪

♪ No, no, wow! ♪♪

(female speaker)
Three great golden men

surveying their plans for the future.

Mathew Bolton, William Murdoch,
and James Watt.

All key figures in Britain's
Industrial Revolution.

This statue cast them as minor deities
lording it over their domain

and stands here in the center
of Birmingham,

a city that benefited greatly
from their combined genius.

There are monuments like this
all over the country

because when it comes
to the Industrial Revolution,

we all know who should get the credit.

It's the money men,
the manufacturers, the inventors,

the engineers, the great and the good.

Men like these.

But these 18th and 19th century
entrepreneurs and inventors

were only able to capitalize
on their brilliance

thanks to an all-important resource,

raw material found in plentiful supply.

It was children.

[Metallica - "Enter Sandman"]

Of course there's no memorial to their
contribution but the children

of the revolution, fortunately, have left
us something much more important

than stone and gold paint.

They've left us their own stories
in their own voices

and they can still speak up for themselves
down across the centuries.

Standing by my father with a knot
of whip cord in my button hole,

which showed that I had a desire
to work with horses, I stood there

waiting for the highest bidder for my services.

Before I'd left home,
I'd read Uncle Tom's Cabin

and when I saw us all lined up,
I remember thinking it was much the same

in England as it was in America
bar the whip.

(Humphries) "They called them
the white slaves of England.

What we just heard were the words
of Charles Bacon, hired off in the 1870s.

I'm professor of economic history
at Oxford University and a fellow

of All Souls College. And for the last
five years I've been searching for

and studying lost testimonies by the child
workers of the Industrial Revolution.

The children of the Industrial Revolution
were the first generation of ordinary

working-class British kids to have their thoughts
and experiences thoroughly documented.

Their stories are preserved in diaries,
letters, and in published

and unpublished autobiographies.

We also have government reports, parish
records and early newspaper interviews.

But outside of academia, few people
know these documents exist,

or appreciate how vast this treasure trove
of hidden voices really is.

I began to read and research these
eye-witness accounts of life in the age

of manufacturers as a way of looking at
child labor today in the developing world.

It's a sobering thought that the nearest
equivalent to the "Mumbai Slumdogs"

are the mud-larks and gutter-snipes of
18th and 19th century London.

But the more I read these children's
stories, the more it taught me

about the lives of those people who are
our great, great, great, great grandparents.

We always see them as victims, drudgers
and drones, but it's not the whole story.

The children's relationship
to the world of work was complex.

Their employment helped build up Britain's
industrial power but it also contributed

to our modern notions of childhood.

Mind you, there were many amongst
that first generation who signed up

for work without really knowing what
they were letting themselves in for.

A rumor circulated that there was going
to be an agreement between the overseers

of the workhouse and the
owner of a great cotton mill.

The children were told that when they
arrived at the cotton mill, they would be

transformed into ladies and gentlemen.

That they would be fed on roast beef
and plum pudding, and have plenty

of cash in their pockets.

In August 1799, 80 boys and girls
who were seven years old

became parish apprentices till
they had acquired the age of 21.

The young strangers were conducted
into a spacious room with long, narrow

tables and wooden benches. The supper
set before them consisted of milk-porridge

of a very blue complexion.

Where was our roast beef and plum pudding?

That was the con played on
eight year old Robert Blincoe,

as told to a journalist several years later.

He was bound apprentice
to a spinning mill like this one.

This is Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire,
founded in 1780.

It was built out in the sticks because it
needed the river that runs through the valley

to power the machines inside.

The downside of that decision was
that remote places like this were low

on available man-power.
So who would staff these mills?

Who would do the work?

The solution was to recruit the most
vulnerable elements in society.

Orphans.

The first wave of factory labour in
this country was made up of orphans.

They were the real life Oliver Twists,
left to the mercy of the parishers.

And their employment was nothing less
than state-sponsored slavery.

They were called parish apprentices

and aged as young as seven or eight,
were taken by cart from their homes

in the parishes of London and other
towns and cities and transported

hundreds of miles away to places like this.

On arrival, they would be piled
into dormitories like this one,

billeted near their workplaces,

and indentured to the mills
and factories as apprentices.

Once signed over, they had to stay here
until they were 21, sometimes 24 years old.

This is the girls' dormitory.

It's bigger than the boy's dormitory next door.

It looks a little bit primitive, doesn't it?

However, inside the factories,
things were far from basic.

State of the art machinery shook
and pounded the walls of these mills

from dawn till dusk.

And all the while children kept
time with the relentless beat.

So Chris, how many people
would be working this machine?

Typically two men and a young child to a pair.

The machine that we have here
represents only half of that pair.

- Was it dangerous?

- Oh yeah. Injuries generally
occurred in the last two hours of the day.

- So, injuries happened when
people lost concentration? (Chris) Yeah.

I see over here in this picture,
the boy's not wearing any shoes.

No, you weren't allowed to wear your clogs
which were the footwear of that period.

You weren't allowed to wear them, simply
because with these machines running

all the time you get a level of cotton dust
that builds up on the floor almost as if

it's been snowing and obviously with
your clogs if your clog iron was to catch

the railing on the floor, the possibility
of a spark and you would set fire to the

factory floor and you'd burn the mill down.
So mill room work was always barefooted.

I heard that there was a fatality
associated with this machine in the past.

Yes, there was a 13-year-old boy.

One of the most important tasks that he
was involved in was that of wiping down.

The men who were in charge of these
machines would draw the carriages out

onto the end of the railings and then apply
a brake to prevent the carriage retracting.

The children then had to go round the back
of the mule and crawl underneath on their

hands and knees. On this occasion, the guy
in charge of this mule took his brake off

and commanded the child to get out,
and the child either didn't hear him

or he didn't get out in time and
consequently, he was crushed

in a roller beam and killed instantly.
- Terrible.

Parish apprentices were often called
pauper apprentices because the new

factories provided the powers that be with
a cheap way of dealing with poor children.

Work became a substitute for social welfare.

Katrina Honeyman is a history
professor at Leeds University

and an expert on parish apprentices.

Our image of child labor
is almost entirely negative.

Does that really cover the experience of
the pauper apprentices in this time period?

(Honeyman) Many children went off
to their apprenticeship, whether it was

factory or elsewhere, quite excited
at the possibility of becoming

an independent worker, learning a skill.

They had regular meals,
even if they weren't great.

-Yes
They got education.

They had a roof over their heads.

But right from the start they would
be working 14 or 15 hours a day,

sometimes more, with
the possibility of overtime,

for which they might get a little money.
Otherwise they weren't paid.

This free labour was integral to
the rise of the new industries

Managers didn't want adults who were
used to less regimented ways of working.

Children could be made to adapt.

Not only that, but many machines were
designed to be operated by small children

with their nimble fingers.

Can we see these children as pivotal to the
emergence of this new form of enterprise?

It's difficult to see how the industry could
have expanded in the way that it did

without the quantity and the nature
of the child labour that was available.

The master carder's
name was Thomas Birks.

Tom the Devil, we called him.

He was a very bad man.

Everybody was frightened of him.

He once fell poorly and very glad we were.

We wished he might die.

We were always locked up out of mill hours

for fear any of us should run away.

One day the door was left open.

Charlotte Smith said she would be
ringleader if the rest of us would follow.

She went out but no one followed her.

The master found out.

There was a carving knife
which he took and, grasping her hair,

he cut it off close to the head.

This head-shaving was a dreadful punishment.

We were more afraid of it than any other

for girls are proud of their hair.

(Humphries) Rural and picturesque,
This place seems a world away

from scary urban factories
but Quarry Bank had its runaways too

In 1856 a girl called Esther Price
was caught escaping.

She was sent up here to the
punishment room in the attic of the house.

Here it is. This is the punishment room.

The windows would be blacked out.

Her bed is a blanket on the floorboards.

She got supper and breakfast

but was locked away here
for a whole week on her own.

Poor little mite.

As an added and coincidental cruelty,
as she was taken up here, she had

to pass by the corpse of an adult
who had died earlier that day and was

laid out in the attic for collection.

Alone in the dark, stomach empty,
a corpse for company.

No wonder she wanted to run away.

This siphoning off of poor and orphaned
children from state care was not going to

sustain the huge industrial expansion
that Britain was experiencing.

The country needed lots and lots of cheap labour.

So the order came from the very top -
use the children.

During the war with revolutionary France,
Prime Minister William Pitt was warned

that British manufacturers
were unable to pay their taxes.

They blamed high wages.

With one in ten men away fighting,

able adult workers came
at a premium and cut into profits.

Pitt's advice was short and simple.

He is supposed to have told them,
"Yoke up the children."

Luckily for Pitt and for Great Britain PLC,

for the first time in its history,
the country was awash with children.

In the mid 1700's, the population
of Britain was small

and stationary around 5.7 million.

But by the end of the century it had shot
up by more than 50% to 8.7 million.

So, what changed?

The answer's in here.

This is St Michael's in Madeley,
Shropshire, built by that great man

of the industrial age,
Thomas Telford, in 1796.

There's been a church on this site
since Norman times.

The marriage registers are long
and very well maintained.

Ah, now these are beautiful records.

You can see here somebody's not been able to sign their name

so they've put their mark,

and elsewhere, they've struggled
to write their signatures.

Now a study of these and other records
have shown that as the 18th century

progressed, more people were marrying younger.

Now, why was that?

Previously, men and women were employed
to work the land and "lived in" with their

employer, usually a farmer
or big local landowner.

These men liked to keep their young
employees single because married

employees had children
and were more of a burden.

But advances in farming practice meant
less people were needed to grow food.

So fewer people "lived in"

and more were kicked out.

Of course, that meant that there was no
master to ask for permission to wed.

These liberated workers began traveling,
earning their wages in new industries.

The pay wasn't great but it wasn't based
on the sliding scales of farm work.

They reached their peak potential earnings
at younger ages and so were tempted

to marry and start a family sooner.

Women with jobs found their earnings
could shore up new families, adding again

to the temptation to marry younger.

As for those women who couldn't find work,

well, they were eager to marry young
and gain financial protection.

The result?

In the early 1700's, the average age of
British brides had been nearly 27.

By 1800, it had fallen to 23 ½.

Those three additional years
of married life were crucial.

Girls were at their most fertile and could
produce two additional babies.

[T.Rex singing "Bang the Gong"]
♪ Get it on, ♪

♪ Bang the gong, get it on! ♪

So at the very moment that Britain
was prepared to take the giant

technological leap into the machine age,
it had its largest, youngest population.

And it was a mobile population,
able to adapt to change.

Everything was tailored towards
delivering the industrial future.

But that industrial future needed feeding

and children played a role in that too.

We tend to think of children from this
time as working in mines and factories,

but, in fact, child labor was ubiquitous.

Almost every workplace would
have had children in it.

And the biggest employer
was actually agriculture.

Agriculture accounted for about
a third of children's jobs,

often on small set ups like this one.

This farm was attached to the local rectory

and worked by a small team
including boys and girls.

(snort)

(cows mooing)

Of course, agriculture is one area where
we still see children working today,

ushered into the life of the farm
under the watchful eye of their parents.

The children of the industrial revolution
rarely enjoyed such a gentle introduction.

Unlike the factory apprentices,
child farm workers were often

the only children employed
on an establishment.

They were also housed with their master
or another adult worker, and there was

no one looking over the shoulders
of these men to see how

they were treating their child employees.
As a result, these children were often

more vulnerable than the children
who worked in factories.

For example, men's reminiscences tiptoe
around the topic of child sexual abuse.

But in the testimonies I've read,
there are two cases where boys

were probably molested.

And both involved lonely little farm
workers consigned to the care of

other adults, far from the
protection of friends and family.

Just like the heavy industries,
agriculture had a job for every age group.

The entry level into farm work began
at six years old, when children could be

employed as human scarecrows.

When I was six and two months old,
I was sent off to work.

I do not think I shall ever forget those long,
hungry days in the fields scaring crows.

You can imagine the feeling of loneliness.

Hours and hours passed without
a living creature coming near.

I cried most of the time.

In desperation I would shout as loud
as I could, "Mother! Mother! Mother!"

But Mother could not hear.

She was working in the hay field two miles away.

By my seventh birthday I was driving the plow.

Any repairs to plow or harness
had to be taken to tradesmen.

Once, after working all day long,
I had to carry a plow horse collar

that required whittling, and the plow coulter,
that needed repairs at the blacksmith.

These two heavy things made a burden
far too much for me, but I had to trudge

with them as best I could the mile
and a half across the fields to Everdon.

William Arnold was just six years old
when he went to work on that farm

in Northamptonshire.

This is a horse collar like the one he carried.

Let me show you just how heavy this is.

Now we need the coulter,
because he also carried that.

This is part of the plough.

40 pounds! That probably
weighs more than he did!

In many ways, the "crow scarers"
and the children fetching and carrying

for farm laborers were on the
lowest rung of the employment ladder.

But many testimonies tell us that
even at that level and at a young age,

the children saw these punishing
labors as an opportunity.

They were proper workers
and they wanted to get on.

In our village there was a wealthy
banker and justice of the peace.

I began to drive a pair of horses
and plow for him.

After a bit, thinking I suppose,
that I was a smart, likely lad,

he made me a sort of stable boy and gave
me eight shillings a week to start with.

Here was a rise for a lad who was set on
rising as fast and as much as he could.

There were no slack half hours for me,
no taking it easy with the other lads.

To make more money, to do more,
to know more, to be a somebody

in my little world was my ambition.

They might not have had much choice
about their employment,

but many children were determined to seize
what opportunities come along with a level

of determination and enthusiasm that is
astonishing, if sometimes hard to imagine.

For some jobs really did require
huge amounts of courage.

With a view of immediately testing my
capabilities, my new master persuaded me

to climb a chimney on my very first
morning. With feet standing upon the grate,

the body would nearly fill up the width
of a chimney. I climbed with my right arm

lifted above the head, the left down
by my side. The elbows were pressed hard

against the brickwork to hold the body
suspended until the knees were drawn up.

Then the knees on one side and the
bare heels on the other held me secure.

While the right hand applied the scraper
to bring down the soot, the knees and elbows,

through the constant pressing and the
friction with the brickwork, became peeled,

thus allowing soot to penetrate.
It caused ugly, festering sores which

took several weeks to heal. Breathing
was always more or less a difficulty.

A hood, called a climbing cap, was drawn
over the head and tucked in at the neck.

But even with that protection, I was
subject to the taste and inhalation

of every kind of soot
into my throat and lungs.

Where fires had only just been put out,
the sulfurous fumes were sufficient

to stifle one. Once the fumes were so
strong that I fell from top to bottom,

nigh insensible.

Yes, they really did put kids up chimneys.

This is the kind of normal chimney that
George Elson would have been dealing with.

That one is so wide that you would have
had no challenge from that.

He'd have been up and down
there like greased lightning.

What really tested boys' mettles were chimneys
that measured nine inches by nine inches,

which is this size.

To get into and wriggle through
and clean something like this

seems practically impossible.

Martin Glynn is president of the
National Association of British Chimney Sweeps.

So, Martin, here's a very old chimney, right here.

This is the kind of thing those
boys would have to clean.

So, tell us, how did they
go about doing it?

Well, the little boys were known as climbing boys,

apprenticed to the trade at
seven years old in some cases.

They used to use their elbows and knees
to scamper up inside the chimney.

In many cases they stripped naked.

Although they have some sort of early
uniform, the soot use to fill the pockets,

and because the chimney design
was so small, they became wedged.

So they used to strip naked so they could
escape back down the chimney after cleaning.

So what equipment did they have?

The little climbing boys, and in
some cases girls, they used to use

a small scraper such as this, a little
metal scraper with a wooden handle,

and the traditional sweep's hand brush,

which would literally, they would scrape
the soot away and brush with the hand brush.

The exploitation of climbing boys
and girls was rightly seen at the time

as a national scandal.

However, even when new technology
was introduced in the form of jointed

chimney brushes and sweeps no longer
needed children, it didn't mean the boys

and girls were spared.

There was still a great reluctance for the
master sweeps of the day to do away

with boys. And it was far cheaper to
purchase a small boy from a family

for a guinea or two, a few shillings
from the poorer families,

and in some cases little girls as well.

(Humphries) So boys and girls
were cheaper than brushes.

- Absolutely, at the time.

In one horrible incident in Dover
in Kent, where a master had sent a boy

up the chimney with a wet tarpaulin
to extinguish a chimney fire,

and apparently he climbed into the flue,
very reluctantly, the master threatened

to beat him, he attempted to climb
further into the chimney, became stuck

in the chimney, wedged, and apparently
they heard his screams for over two miles.

Not exactly "Chim chiminey cher-ree" Mary Poppins, is it now?

It shows how hard life was and how few
opportunities there were that many

climbing boys quit the trade and went
off to serve in the armed forces.

The scandal of boy soldiers is something
today that we associate with the most

callous regimes in the developing world.

But putting boys into war zones was
actually an old British tradition.

For example, there were 13 of them
who fought at the Battle of Trafalgar

on this ship, HMS Victory.

One of them was a 16 year old
midshipman, Lieutenant William Rivers.

His father was also on board, and William
first went to sea with him on Victory

aged six and a half! And he immediately
saw action and was wounded off Toulon.

I had the honor of serving
in three general actions.

In the first, I received two
wounds in my right arm.

And In the latter, while receiving orders
from his Lordship, Admiral Nelson

I received a wound on my face,

which was shortly followed by a gunshot
wound which carried away my left leg.

Both William the father and William the son
appear in that famous painting,

"Death of Nelson" by Benjamin West,

with William Jr being dragged
off the deck on the bottom corner.

Altogether, 720 boys fought in that battle,

and they served at every
single level of the ship society.

Matthew Sheldon is head archivist at
Portsmouth's Royal Naval Museum.

Matthew, you've actually got William Rivers' diary.

(Matthew) Yeah, it's quite unusual to
actually have a kind of personal account

from this date for someone who was young.

He went to sea actually
at the age of, I think, six and a half.

And he then actually stays on the ship,
on Victory, for the next 10 years,

right up to the Battle of Trafalgar.

(Humphries) He was exceptional,
but probably not unique.

- I'm sure he wasn't unique, no.
We've got another case on the people

who were on board Trafalgar with a father
and a son on board, so that did happen.

So certainly not an exception,
but I think six and a half is quite young.

What are the other materials here?

This is a prize money register. When ships
were in action, if they captured a ship,

the value of the ship was
divided among the ship's crew.

Here we see it being shared out
after the Battle of Trafalgar.

And I particularly like this one for
Samuel Robbins here, who is getting

his one pound seventeen and sixpence,
and so there you have a kind of

15 year old Marine Society boy.
Did he get educated?

- Well, he can certainly sign.
- Absolutely.

Did he get educated by the Society or
actually did he get some learning on board?

Marine Society boys were the naval
equivalent of the parish apprentices.

They were boys who were dependent
on the state for their welfare

and who instead of being sent to cotton
mills found themselves in naval barracks

and trained for the sea.

Not all of these raw recruits
were orphans, however.

Many were just kids who found
themselves in a spot of bother.

(Pietsch) The Marine Society were
concerned about the growing number

of teenagers they saw hanging around
on the streets, seemingly unsupervised.

A bit like the sort of ASBO kids we have
today. So they're like something must

be done. The solution was, why not send
them to the sea? They seem quite lively.

That would be the kind of boys initially,
but also generally just people

struggling to care for their children.

(Humphries) "So sometimes parents
would bring their children to the Society?"

(Pietsch) Sometimes parents, friends.
Sometimes masters who would be

dissatisfied with their apprentices would
come up and say, "Look, he is incapable of

learning the trade. He wants to go
to sea. Can you take him?"

(Humphries) What was it like for these boys
when they found themselves on board ship?

It was obviously a tough change.
They lost their home.

They lost any attachment figure
they would have had before

and were thrown into this community
of sailors, not exactly choirboys,

being 13 or 14 years old only, so it
was surely very intimidating at first.

(Humphries) But we heard horrible cases
in battle of boys being injured and people

being killed around them.

They all remember their
first encounter with death.

It seems something that
sticks with them forever.

The first time that they see someone's
head blown away by a cannon shot,

that sticks.

But then what is remarkable from then on,
they all say that they're numbed to

the horrors of war.

We had not fired two broadsides before an
unlucky shot cut a poor man's head right off!

The horrid sight, I must confess,
did not help raise my spirits.

The ship that struck us

was so much disabled that
she could not live upon the water.

It gave a dreadful reel.

We were afraid to send any boats to help
because they would have been sunk

by too many souls getting in her at once.

You could plainly perceive the poor
wretches climbing over to windward

and crying most dreadfully.

Even our own men were in tears,
groaning, "God bless them."

(Humphries) But were
they really numb to it?

(Pietsch) We've got testimonies that sailors
are apparently having seven times more

likelihood of ending up in a lunatic
asylum. So really, the signs are that they

very much struggled afterwards, that
while they were on board it was all fine

and covered up, but when back on land
and alone, then the truths maybe came out

and it really showed like if they ever
digested or if they locked it up in like

a sea chest deep down in their soul
and hope never to open it again.

Obviously these hellish
experiences left their mark.

But the testimonies demonstrate that
the harshness shown to the children

of the revolution did not stop them
from acting selflessly towards others.

Take the older brother of the
young Alexander Somerville,

the wonderful William.

William was a stripling when
I was born, and worked for

such wages as a youth could
obtain in that part of the country.

When he came home at night
he would strip off his coat,

take off his hat, put on his nightcap
and get down the elshin box and sort

through the old hemp and scraps of leather.

He'd examine all the children's
feet to see which of them had

shoes most in need of mending.

And then he would sit down and cobble
the shoes by the light of the fire

until near midnight.

(rooster crows)

He would rise at four o'clock in the
mornings and do the heaviest part

of James' work amongst the farmer's
cows and other cattle before going to do

his own day's work two or three miles distant.

James was too young for the heavy
task of cleaning, so William got up every

morning to do that part of his work
and so keep James in employment.

The one overriding motivation for these
children was helping the warm heart

that was at the center of their lives.

Their mothers.

My brother and I had the deep
satisfaction of knowing it was not

through any fault of our mothers
that we were forced to go through

so much privation.

For she was a good angel in the home,
and the one on whom we all had to lean.

"Mother, Mother, I have earned
half a sovereign and all of it myself!

"And it is yours, all yours!

"Every bit is yours!"

(older brother) In time my wages
went up to nine shillings a week

and I was able to be a real
help to our little household

and lighten somewhat the burden of care

resting on my mother's shoulders.

Boys and their mothers, eh?

But moms became the centers of their
world because more often than not

Dads were away or missing.

Their absence was prompted
by poverty, death, travelling for work,

and in the case of 10%
of the male population,

because of being called away to
fight abroad in the Napoleonic wars.

Feckless fathers were often blamed
for exploiting their children by the

politicians and the upper classes,
but in many ways men were the first

victims of industrialization.

Machines took away their skills and livelihoods

and called upon their children,
who were cheaper and more docile.

Those fathers were left behind.

It was when I was about eight years old
that our family misfortune fell to our lowest ebb.

The saddling trade in London had been
going worse and men were short of work.

The large army contracts for cavalry
saddles had now gone to the factories.

It was the beginning of 1876
when my father was turned off

from his work and became unemployed.

The effect of these undeserved
fortunes on my father was, however,

noticeable to me then and later.

After 1876, he became more
and more silent, and even morose.

There is no greater trial to a
self-suspecting and good workman

than that of finding his services are
not needed, leaving him to spend his days

trying to secure a job, only to be met
by the sign: "No hands wanted."

Add to this the misery and
poverty when he returns home,

and it is not surprising that even a
strong-minded man should break down.

Given the frequency of broken families,
the grinding poverty, and the need to work,

these children could never have enjoyed
a childhood as we might know it.

But there again, this was an era where
the concept of childhood remained fluid.

People were at odds about what childhood
meant, when it started and when it finished.

Even the children were sometimes confused.

In 1850, the journalist Henry Mayhew
interviewed a nameless eight year old

watercress seller in London's East End.

On and off, I've been very near
12 month in the streets.

Before that, I had to take care
of a baby for my aunt.

No, it wasn't heavy, only two months old.

But I minded it for ever such
a time until it could walk.

Before I had the baby, I used to help
my mother who was in the fur trade,

and if there were slits
in the fur, I'd sew them up.

All my money I earned, I puts in a club,
and draws it out to buy clothes with.

It's better than spending it on sweet stuff
for them, that's got a living to earn.

I ain't a child, and I shan't
be a woman until I'm 20.

But I'm past eight, I am.

(male speaker) A lot of children,
when they started work full-time,

and, of course, the watercress girl had been
full-time work since about the age of five,

ceased to think of themselves as children.

And sometimes, they felt much better about
themselves when they did start working.

(Humphries) So, what motivated them?

(Cunningham)
I think that just comes automatically.

You're not earning, of course, for yourself.
You're earning to tip up the earnings

to your mother, who might give you a little
bit back but it's basically for the family.

And if you can think, as some people do,
my money went towards the joint on Sunday,

the only meat we get in the week,
then you're going to feel a sense

of self-esteem and pride.

(Humphries) By the middle of the
19th century, there seems to have been

a groundswell of concern that as
a society, we were not allowing kids

to be just children.

(Cunningham) As early as the
1830s, people are talking about

these children being
children without childhood.

Now, I think the origin of this, the most
immediate origin is the romantic poets,

and it's difficult actually to exaggerate
the impact which Wordsworth had.

Wordsworth got away entirely
from the idea of original sin.

He thought children came from heaven,
trailing clouds of glory, famously.

So they can actually rescue
adults who have gone astray.

If you begin to internalize this kind
of view of childhood, then the lives

of these children at work are anathema.

People are beginning to say, when a child
starts work he or she ceases to be a child.

And that is completely different -
- Certainly that innocence would be lost.

- Certainly the innocence would
be lost because they'd be mixing with adults,

who ... but they'd be having their
childhoods taken away from them.

The only way they would have their
childhoods handed back to them

would be if Parliament intervened.

And that was something that initially
seemed highly unlikely.

It is not surprising that the first
official reports into child labor

were supportive, and written in a
stomach-churning, rose-tinted way.

I have visited many factories
and I never saw a single instance

of corporal chastisement inflicted on a child,

nor, indeed, did I ever
see children in ill humor.

They seemed to be always cheerful and alert,

and the work of these lively little elves
seemed to resemble a sport.

As to exhaustion of their day's
work, they evinced no trace of it

emerging from the mill in the evening,
to commence their little amusements

with the same alacrity
as boys issuing from school.

So why did things change?

Why did this place, the Houses of Parliament,
start to legislate against child labor?

When did Britain begin to think that
working kids to death was a bad idea?

Parliament had largely been happy
to keep its nose out of the issue

of child employment.

Crucially, though, the times were a-changing.

The children who had survived the mines
and factories were growing up, and getting

organized into early trade unions.

Popular culture also began
to report on the worst abuses.

Dickens started his serializations
of Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

And he knew a bit about child labor -
at 12, he'd worked 12 hour shifts

in a blacking factory
with a boy called Fagin.

Slowly reform began to maneuver
itself onto the political agenda.

In 1831, radical MP John Hobhouse tried
to introduce a bill restricting child labor.

He proposed that no child under nine
should work in a factory

and that 9 to 18 year old's hours of work
should be limited to 12 a day or 66 a week.

Radical!

In response to his efforts, workers
around the country formed short time

committees to promote the cause
and argue for more legislation.

(male speaker) Is it not a shame
and disgrace that, in a land called

"The Land of the Bibles", children of a
tender age should be torn from their beds

by six in the morning and confined
in pestiferous factories

until eight in the evening?

Ten hours a day, with eight
on Saturdays, is our motto...

may it be yours.

In 1832, MP Michael Sadler became the main
spokesman for the Short Time Committees.

Mass meetings in the factory districts drew
crowds of 100,000 and more in support.

And while Parliament continued to resist
reform, it did give Sadler the authority

to launch an inquiry.

That commission interviewed 48
child workers and when his findings

were published in 1833, they
shocked genteel British society.

(male speaker) While I am earnestly
pleading the cause of these oppressed

children, what numbers of them
are still tethered to their toil, confined

in heated rooms, stunned with the roar
of revolving wheels, poisoned by

the noxious effluvia of grease and gas,
till weary and exhausted, they turn

shivering to beds from which a relay
of their young work fellows have just risen.

The same year, 1833, the first
Factory Act was passed.

Unfortunately, it only applied
to the textile industry.

However, it did ban children under nine
from working, and limited the hours

of work of children aged nine to
thirteen to nine a day.

But its real significance was that it laid
down a marker for future reform.

Reports from the front line of child labour
began to filter back to the middle classes.

Most shocking of all were accounts of
underground work in Britain's coal mines.

But what caused the uproar was not
the hazardous work of children

in these pits, it was topless ladies.

In some pits, it was the practice
for women and young boys to be chained

to the carts that the miners filled with coals.

They then dragged them to the surface
through black, hot, filthy tunnels

where the heat was so fierce they
usually stripped to the waist to cope.

When these artists' recreations
of their working conditions

were published, they caused a furor.

This is the Big Pit in Blaenavon,

It's one of the places industrial Britain
was born in iron, coal, and steel.

The pit was started in 1840 and it's
a museum now, but you can still

get underground, and see
some of the old seams.

And when you get down there,
you get a real sense of what was asked

of the child miners.

(male guide) There we go.
OK, this way everyone, please. Thank you.

Come on in.

(Humphries) This is gloomy, down here.

(guide) This is how it was.
(Humphries) So, a little boy or girl would be -

- Yeah, a little boy or girl would stand ...
- Sitting right there?

- Sitting by the side of the door, and what
they would do, they would listen for horses.

And when the horses come along,
they would open the door, they would

let the horses go through, they would
close the door. For 10 hours a day.

And of course, back in those days,
they had company in the timber work.

They would have insects, cockroaches.
- Ugh.

And then running around their feet, rats.
- I thought you were going to get to the rats.

- But mostly, the children they worked
in the dark. They had no lights.

-Did they not have a candle or ...

If the families could afford candles.
But as you can imagine, candles were

a naked flame. Candles were dangerous with gas.

So what we're going to do now,
we're going to turn our lights out

then I'm going to ask you to take one
of your hands, put it against your nose

and tell me if you can see your fingers.
- Alright.

Shall we try that now, please?
Take one of your hands against your nose.

Can you see your fingers?
- I cannot see anything.

So, imagine these children
in this for 10 hours a day.

I'm a trapper in the Gawber Pit.

It does not tire me, but I have to
trap without a light and I'm scared.

I go in at four and sometimes half-past three
in the morning and come out at half-past five.

I never go to sleep.

Sometimes I sing when I've light,
but not in the dark.

I don't like being in the pit.

So after the scandal of the climbing boys,
the sacrifice of the child soldiers,

and the shame of the pit and factory girls,

parliament finally began
to face up to the situation.

Even then, though, it was a struggle.

The story of that struggle
is locked away in here,

the Victoria Tower in the Houses of Parliament.

It's not so hard to understand why
there were so many twists and turns

in Parliament's relationship with child labour.

After all, it was a Parliament that was
not only sympathetic to the interests

of manufacturers and mine owners,

it was largely made up of
manufacturers and mine owners!

But is still staggering
that reform took so long.

Inside this sealed vault is
every piece of legislation

passed by Parliament since 1460.

Each of these rolled-up scrolls is a bill,

and even the organisation of these
scrolls shows what an infuriating time

the reformers had in effecting change.

Now we can see how frustrating
and prolonged this struggle really was.

This document down here is the first
protective labour legislation for children,

the Parish Apprentices Act of 1802.

Limited to parish apprentices
and largely toothless.

These documents are arranged chronologically.

It's like walking through legislative history.

We have to go all the way down there
and come all the way back here,

still in the 1800's but there's a long
way to go before we get to any more

protective labour legislation.

OK. 1810. 1815...

Aha! 1819, The Cotton Factories Act.

I'm not going to get it down
for obvious reasons,

but that Act tried to limit the age
of starting work to nine years old.

1820's ... more 1820's.

Into the 1830's ...

To here. 1833. The first piece
of protective labour legislation

that's really effective, limiting
the length of the working day.

But we actually have to go next door
for the material that really bites.

As you see, they've changed
the system by this time.

But here we have it.
This is the Factory Act of 1884.

It limited the length of the working day
for children under 13 to six and a half hours.

41 years of argument, debate,
struggle, and investigation

for three and half hours of children's working time.

Meanwhile, out in the real world,

there's huge sectors of employment
which were totally unregulated

and crying out for reform.

For example, construction.

I worked at a brick and tile works
that was three miles from our home.

Each day, a six-mile walk was added
to the day's work of 12 hours.

The work was heavy for a lad of my age.

Each brick weighed about nine pounds,

and in the course of a day I carried
several tons of clay bricks.

We usually started work at six
in the morning, when I would pick up

the bricks from the floor of the shed.

For this I received seven shillings a week.

My mother said that the work was
too hard and the distance too long

for me to walk every morning and night.

She told me the money would be
missed. Someone would have to go short.

But it was no use being slowly
killed by such work as I was doing,

and it was making me hump-backed!

It was not until I had been away
from the work for several weeks

that I was able to straighten myself out again.

In those reminiscences, Will Thorne
recalled being a nine-year-old worker

in the 1860's.

This brick-making kiln is similar to the
one that would have employed Will.

And this barrow is like the one that he'd
have to move, loaded with bricks.

There's 25 bricks here, which
would have been a child's load.

Adults moved 50.

I think I'm supposed to try and move this.

Whoa. This isn't easy.

It's not easy at all!

The bricks I've just smashed were made here

at Bliss Hill Victoria Museum,
by Tony Mugridge, the last

independent travelling brickmaker in Britain.

Well I'm standing back here out of the
splatter path because this is kind of messy.

But, Tony, we are interested in how
they managed to get round the uh ...

the child labour legislation in the brick
fields and maintain children's employment.

- There's a very clever thing.

What would happen is that
the people would be employed,

that is the workers, men
and women in the brick fields.

They would be employed by the brickmaker.

But if the brickmaker employed
children, he'd be breaking the law.

So what he did, he'd employ the people
to employ their own children.

And by doing it that way,
they got round it all.

(Humphries) And what kind
of jobs did the kids do then?

What they would do is the children would be
preparing the clay down in the soap pit over there.

And then they would pick the clay up
and carry it to the work benches.

The clay is very heavy.

A lump like this...

- I believe you! I believe you!

We are probably talking somewhere in the
region of 12 to 14 lb weight there in clay.

By the time they are 8, 9 and 10, they are
able to move the brick barrows easily

and then by the time they are sort of
11 and 12, they're making bricks.

(Humphries) Will is a great example
of how the child workers were far

bolshier than we give them credit for.

He first went on strike
at the ripe old age of six!

Not surprisingly, he grew
up to be a union leader

and then later a member of parliament.

He enjoyed a distinguished career
until he retired in 1946, aged 84.

The industrial generation powered
Britain's journey towards wealth

and influence, and then set about
improving the lot of those youngsters

who followed on behind.

As that generation grew up, they began
to organize into trade unions

and to campaign for changes in employment law.

As a result, kids started to
disappear from the workplace

and slowly parliament began to back
a new solution to the problem

of what to do with the children.

School.

Labour is replaced by learning and childhood
becomes defined by a new rite of passage.

Education.

By the end of the 19th century,

school leaving age provides a clear
boundary, and one enshrined in law.

(children shrieking)

Instead of being seen as fuel for the future,

children became the future.

In effect, that old romantic
notion finally came of age.

Childhood is important.

It needs protecting.

Children are special.

And the children who survived the first
industrial revolution were even more so.

We've always given these children our pity

but it's our respect they deserve.

They were heroes, whether
there's a statue to them or not.