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.Brown, John
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.
Brown, John
Blincoe, Robert, approximately 1792-; Child labor -- England -- Derbyshire; Cotton manufacture -- England -- Derbyshire; Derbyshire (England) -- Biography; Textile workers -- England -- Derbyshire -- Biography
When this sly fox of a tailor found he could eat no more, still
blockading the door, to question Blincoe as to the object of his journey,
which the latter frankly explained,—“Aye, I thought so,” said the
detestable hypocrite, “young parson, I thought so,—I saw Satan behind
thee, jobbing his prong into thy ****!—I saw thee running headlong into
h—ll, when I stept forth to save thee!” This avowal aroused all Blincoe’s
indignation, and he was determined to have a scuffle with his perfidious
host; but he had swallowed so large a portion of butter-milk, and eaten
so much oaten bread, he felt he had lost half his speed! Disdainful,
however, of fraud or denial, he again avowed his intention, and its
cause. The tailor then commenced an harangue upon the deadly sin of a
breach of covenant,—assured Blincoe he was acting under the influence of
Satan! that he was liable to be sent to Bridewell, to be flogged, and,
when sent back to his work, to be debarred of all liberty, and led to and
from the mill with a halter round his neck! Blincoe was neither convinced
by this reasoning, nor intimidated by these denunciations—but, alas! his
gluttonous appetite had disabled him for flight, and being thus disabled,
and thus doubly a captive, he made a merit of necessity, and agreed to
go back, if his host would be his mediator with Mr. Baker, the manager.
This was the precise point to which the jesuitical tailor wished to bring
him. Without relinquishing his seat, the treacherous knave doffed his
paper cap, and skeins of thread that still hung round his long, shaggy
neck,—he combed his black, greasy locks, that hung straight as candles
round his lanthorn jaws,—tied a yellow cotton handkerchief round his
neck,—put on a pair of shoes,—took a _crab-tree_ stick, full of knots,
in his right hand, and grasping Blincoe’s very tight in his left, he
sallied forth on a _work of charity_ as the loathsome hypocrite called
his having entrapped and betrayed a poor oppressed orphan child, fleeing
from slavery and oppression. “In my heart,” said Blincoe, “I detested
the wretch with greater bitterness than my task-master; but he held me
so tight, I could not escape—and the sight of the bit of crab-tree which
he brandished, as he chaunted hymns of thanks-giving, had also no small
share of influence in overawing me,—in short, into the counting-house
this second Judas led me. After an admonition to beware how again I
made an attempt of the kind, the manager gave me a severe but not cruel
chastisement.” As to the _hospitable_ tailor, when he had delivered him
up, he slung away, not waiting to receive Blincoe’s thanks. Whether he
took the _five shillings_, which Blincoe was afterwards told was the
standing reward of those who brought back run-away apprentices, or let it
stand till he had five pounds to receive for such services, he cannot
ascertain; but he was told, this peeping Tom of Burton, had rendered many
a poor child the same sort of kindness. “In consequence of this scurvy
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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