Produced by deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printing errors have been corrected, but old spelling (e.g. villian, ancles, truely) has not been changed. 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. BY JOHN BROWN. [Illustration] MANCHESTER: PRINTED FOR AND PUBLISHED BY J. DOHERTY, 37, WITHY-GROVE, 1832. PUBLISHER’S PREFACE. The various Acts Of Parliament, which have been passed, to regulate the treatment of children in the Cotton Spinning Manufactories, betoken the previous existence of some treatment, so glaringly wrong, as to force itself upon the attention of the legislature. This Cotton-slave-trade, like the Negro-slave-trade, did not lack its defenders, and it might have afforded a sort of sorry consolation to the Negro slaves of America, had they been informed, that their condition, in having agriculturally to raise the cotton, was not half so bad, as that of the white infant-slaves, who had to assist in the spinning of it, when brought to this country. The religion and the black humanity of Mr. Wilberforce seem to have been entirely of a foreign nature. Pardon is begged, if an error is about to be wrongfully imputed—but the Publisher has no knowledge, that Mr. Wilberforce’s humane advocacy for slaves, was ever of that homely kind, as to embrace the region of the home-cotton-slave-trade. And yet, who shall read the Memoir of Robert Blincoe, and say, that the charity towards slaves should not have begun or ended at home? * * * * *