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
With this digression, I close the present chapter.—In those that follow
there will be found a narrative of crimes which cannot fail to excite,
in an equal degree, horror and incredulity:—at the recital of acts of
wanton, premeditated, gross, and brutal cruelty, scarcely to be equalled
in the annals of the Inquisitorial tribunals of Portugal or Spain; yet
all those acts of murder and wanton cruelties, have been perpetrated by
a solitary master cotton-spinner, who, though perhaps one of the worst
of his tribe, did not stand alone; as will be shewn by evidence that
it cannot be successfully rebutted. Nor was it to be expected that the
criminality of that master spinner could fail to produce corresponding
depravity amongst the wretched apprentices subjected to his rude and
savage dominion. In the eventful life of W—— Pitt, the depth and extent
of that depravity will be strikingly illustrated!—It will be seen that
acts of felony were committed in the vicinity of Litton Mill, by the
parish apprentices, not, if I am rightly informed, from _dishonest
intention_; but from a desire to be transported to Botany Bay; deeming
even that alternative preferable to the endurance of the horrors of the
servitude, to which, as parish apprentices, they had been consigned.
CHAP. V.
Recurring to the description, given to me by Robert Blincoe, of the
dreadful state of thraldom, in which, with a multitude of juvenile
companions, he was involved at Litton Mill, I am instructed to say, that
as excessive toil, the want of proper time for rest, and of nourishing
wholesome food, gave rise to contagious disease, so a liberal supply
of good provisions and a cessation from toil, quickly restored many
to health; instead of taking warning by the results of these terrible
examples, no sooner were the invalids sent back to the mill, than the
system of over-toil, of boundless cruelty, starvation and torture, was
at once resumed. Let it not however be supposed, that any thing in the
shape of dainties had been dispensed to the sick. Wheaten bread, coarse
pieces of beef boiled down in soup, or mutton for broth, with good
milk or butter-milk, sparingly distributed, formed the extent of those
indulgences. This diet, luxurious as it was considered in Litton Mill,
did not surpass the ordinary standard of the daily fare, that Blincoe had
enjoyed at St. Pancras workhouse, and also, during the latter period of
his stay at Lowdham Mill.