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 Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
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 Stuart Mill · en
At this period, Blincoe had served about four years of his time, and
had learnt to wind rovings, and spin at the throstle, and certainly
earned as much money for his master in the week as would suffice to keep
him a month or longer, in meat, drink and clothes; but he had not been
instructed in any part of the stocking-trade, nor had he acquired such a
degree of knowledge of the cotton-spinning, as might enable him to gain
his bread elsewhere.
At this juncture, if justice had been done, the apprentices would have
reverted to Saint Pancras parish, and not been abandoned as they were,
and turned over to a new master, without any care being taken, that he
should, if he took them, abide by the condition specified in their first
indentures, and act up to the regulations introduced at Lowdham Mill.
Blincoe said, he believed the Messrs. Lamberts wrote to the parish
officers of Saint Pancras, informing them of the situation of the
children, in order that their friends might take back whom they
pleased to claim, and if, in this conclusion, Blincoe is right, and
these officers neglected to take proper measures for the safety and
protection of so large a body of children, as they had sent to Lowdham
Mill, all healthy and straight limbed, they are morally responsible for
the unparalled sufferings to which they were afterwards exposed. When
the subject shall again come before parliament, it will be requisite
to have the conduct of the parish officers on this occasion thoroughly
investigated, not so much from a wish to have their offences visited
with any legal penalty, if such were practicable, as to shew the
necessity of abrogating the power invested in them by act of parliament,
to place children beyond a given distance from the place of their
birth or settlement:—and secondly, to deprive them altogether of the
power of tearing away children from their parents, and sending them
into any manufactories whatever, without the knowledge and consent of
their parents, or next of kin. If the parish officers think proper to
apprentice them to any of the ordinary and established trades, they
ought to have that power independently of their parents. In the mill,
where Blincoe was next consigned, the _parish children_ were considered,
treated, and _consumed as a part of the raw materials_; their strength,
their marrow, their lives, were consumed and converted into money! and as
their livestock consisting of parish apprentices, diminished, new flocks
of victims arrived from various quarters, without the cost of purchase to
supply their place!