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
Needham’s could only be excited by the prospect of
a loss of capital! This solicitude was proportioned to the extent of
that risk; and as parish children and destitute orphans could be had
at a less price than sheep or pigs, to supply the place of those that
died, it followed, that they were less thought of. I would not willingly
exaggerate the atrocities I am depicting. I would not act so unwisely as
to overcharge the picture I am drawing; and it is with some degree of
diffidence, I state, in consequence of combined and positive testimony,
that no nurses or _nursing_ was allowed to the sick, further than what
one invalid could do for another! That neither candle nor lamp-light
was allowed, nor the least sign of sympathy or regret manifested! These
facts I admit, are so repugnant to every feeling of Christian charity,
that they wear the aspect of greatly embellished truths, or what is but
little worse, of malignant fabrications. If they are such, the fault is
not mine; for repeatedly, and in the most impressive manner in my power,
I admonished Blincoe and his fellow-sufferers, to abstain from falsehood,
telling him and them, it would be sure to be detected and lead to their
disgrace. What I thought might have more influence with such persons,
I also urged the triumph, such baseness on their part, could confer on
the master cotton spinners, most distinguished by cruelty and tyranny;
yet, still Blincoe and the whole of his former comrades perseveringly
and consistently adhered to the truth of the horrid imputations, and
declared, if they were called upon, they would at any time confirm
their statement. I was bound to give them publicity—if they are founded
in truth. If their great features are correctly delineated, no lapse
of time ought to be allowed to shelter the delinquents. They should
be brought to a public trial; for the imputations extend to too many
acts of torture and of wilful deliberate murder; and to the indulgence
of propensities, as to overpower scepticism. They embrace atrocities
exercised upon poor and friendless boys and girls, of a nature no less
abominable than the worst of those which apply to that disgrace to
womanhood, Elizabeth Brownrig, or more recently, to the unhappy culprit,
Governor Wall. There are yet living, perhaps a hundred witnesses who
have been partakers of these ferocious inflictions. Many of them, though
in the prime of life, are reduced to such a state of decrepitude, as to
flash conviction upon the most incredulous, that it could have resulted
from nothing but the most unexampled and long continued cruelty. From
the continued and relentless exercise of unlimited despotism upon the
truly insulted and most friendless of human beings, upon those, for
whose especial protection, a law had been then recently enacted, which,
had it been enforced, would have efficiently prevented the occurrence
of these crimes, and if I were to assert, that it would be difficult,