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A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an Orphan Boy: Sent from the workhouse of St. Pancras, London, at seven years of age, to endure the horrors of a cotton-mill, through his infancy and youth, with a minute detail of his sufferings, being the first memoir of the kind published. — John Shaqi

Philosophy

A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an Orphan Boy: Sent from the workhouse of St. Pancras, London, at seven years of age, to endure the horrors of a cotton-mill, through his infancy and youth, with a minute detail of his sufferings, being the first memoir of the kind published.

Name: A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an Orphan Boy: Sent from the workhouse of St. Pancras, London, at seven years of age, to endure the horrors of a cotton-mill, through his infancy and youth, with a minute detail of his sufferings, being the first memoir of the kind published.
Author: Brown, John

Brown, John

Blincoe, Robert, approximately 1792-; Child labor -- England -- Derbyshire; Cotton manufacture -- England -- Derbyshire; Derbyshire (England) -- Biography; Textile workers -- England -- Derbyshire -- Biography

imposed by his then condition, he should indulge so preposterous a
notion, as to prefer the wretched state of a sweeping-boy. Speaking on
this subject, Blincoe said to me, “If I could penetrate the source of my
exemption from the sorrow and consternation so forcibly expressed by my
companions, it would probably have been resolved by the peculiarity of my
destiny, and the privation of those endearing ties and ligatures which
cement family circles. When the friends, relatives, parents of other
children came to visit them, the caresses that were sometimes exchanged,
the joy that beamed on the faces of those so favoured, went as daggers to
my heart; not that I cherished a feeling of envy at their good fortune;
but that it taught me more keenly to feel my own forlorn condition.
Sensations, thus, excited, clouded every festive hour, and, young as I
was, the voice of nature, instinct, if you will, forced me to consider
myself as a moral outcast, as a scathed and blighted tree, in the midst
of a verdant lawn.”

I dare not aver, that such were the very words Blincoe used, but they
faithfully convey the spirit and tendency of his language and sentiments.
Blincoe is by no means deficient in understanding: he can be witty,
satirical, and pathetic, by turns, and he never showed himself to such
advantage, as when expatiating upon the desolate state to which his utter
ignorance of his parentage had reduced him.

During Blincoe’s abode at St. Pancras, he was inoculated at the Small Pox
Hospital. He retained a vivid remembrance of the copious doses of salts
he had to swallow, and that his heart heaved, and his hand shook as the
nauseous potion approached his lips. The old nurse seemed to consider
such conduct as being wholly unbecoming a _pauper child_; and chiding
young Blincoe, told him, he ought to “lick his lips,” and say thank
you, for the good and wholesome medicine provided for him at the public
expense; at the same time, very coarsely reminding him of the care that
was taken to save him from an untimely death by catching the small-pox in
the natural way. In the midst of his subsequent afflictions, in Litton
Mill, Blincoe, declared, he often lamented having, by this inoculation,
lost a chance of escaping by an early death, the horrible destiny for
which he was preserved.

A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an Orphan Boy: Sent from the workhouse of St. Pancras, London, at seven years of age, to endure the horrors of a cotton-mill, through his infancy and youth, with a minute detail of his sufferings, being the first memoir of the kind published.

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