I went to him and said, if that boy was mine I'd give him a better threshing than ever he had in his life. It was reported to Mr. S. Wilson, and he told me I had better mind my own business, and not meddle with the overlookers. I never heard that the parents complained. Mr. S. Wilson is dead now. Mr. W. Wilson said to me afterward, I had made myself very forward in meddling with the overlookers' business. I was to have come into the warehouse at Nottingham, but in consequence of my speaking my mind I lost the situation. I never had any complaint about my work while I was there, nor at Mr. Strutt's. I left Mr. Strutt's in hopes to better myself. I came as a machine smith. I went back to Mr. Strutt's, at Milford, after I left Wilson, for two years. The men never had more than twenty-five minutes for their dinner, and no extra pay for stopping there. I dressed the top cards, and ground them. I never heard that Mr. Wilson proposed to stop the breakfast hour, and that the hands wished to go on. I don't think such a thing could be. Whilst I worked there we always went in at half-past five, and worked till nigh half-past seven. We were never paid a farthing overtime. At Strutt's, if ever we worked an hour overtime, we were paid an hour and a half. I have seen Smith take the girls by the hair with one hand, and slap them in the face with the other; big and little, it made no difference. He worked there many years before he was turned away. He works in the mill again now, but not as an overlooker. I never knew of any complaint to the magistrate against Smith. I had 12_s._ when I was there for standing wages. It was about nine in the morning my boy was beat. I think it was in the middle of the day the boy's ear was pulled. The work was very severe there while it lasted. A boy generally had four breakers and finisher-cards to mind. Such a boy might mind six when he had come on to eleven or twelve; I mean finishers. A boy can mind from three to four breakers. Any way they had not time to get their victuals. I don't know what the present state of the mill is as to beating. Men will not complain to the magistrates while work is so scarce, and they are liable to be turned out; and if they go to the parish, why there it is, 'Why, you had work, why did you not stay at it?'" Robert Blincoe, a small manufacturer, once an apprentice to a cotton mill, and one who had seen and suffered much in factories, was sworn and examined by Dr. Hawkins, on the 18th of May, 1833. In the evidence, which follows, it will be noted that most of the sufferers mentioned were parish children, without protectors of any kind:— "'Do you know where you were born?' 'No; I only know that I came out of St. Pancras parish, London.'