The condition of these unfortunate pauper children was wretched in the extreme. They were “sent down from the workhouses of London and other great towns to any manufacturer who would take them, a small premium being usually paid as an inducement. There was no system of control or inspection from outside; the factories were frequently set up in some remote glen or lonely valley where a waterfall or stream provided cheap power for the machinery and where the restraint of public opinion and observation was almost entirely absent. There can be no reasonable doubt that these unhappy children were often worked almost or entirely to death by their masters or by their overseers whose interest it was to work the apprentices to the utmost, their pay being in proportion to the labour they could extract. Sir Samuel Romilly says in his diary that he had known cases where the apprentices had been actually murdered by their masters in order to get fresh premiums with new apprentices.”[37] The Act of 1802, the first on this subject, dealt only with apprentices and only with the textile trades. It limited the hours of work to twelve a day, forbade night work, and required a modicum of elementary instruction; moreover it provided for inspection. By and by, it became apparent that the evils at which this measure had been aimed were not confined to any one group of child workers. As late as 1844, Sir Robert Peel told the House of Commons that in the potteries, “children worked in a temperature of from 100 to 130, carrying pieces weighing 3 lbs, and each child carrying two pieces at a time. The calculation is that the child will carry per day some thousands of pounds weight. In manufactures other than cotton, work might sometimes be continued thirteen, fifteen, even seventeen or eighteen hours consecutively.”[38]