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
time, and when its adhesion was supposed to be complete, the _terrible
doctor_ used to lay forcibly hold of one corner and tear the whole scalp
from off his head at once! This was the common remedy; I should not
exaggerate the agonies it occasioned, were I to affirm, that it must
be equal to any thing inflicted by the American savages, on helpless
prisoners, with their scalping knives and tomahawks.
This same ruffian, (Robert Woodward) who, by the concurrent testimony
of many sufferers, stands depicted, as possessing that innate love of
cruelty which marked a Nero, a Caligula, or a Robespierre, used when
Blincoe could not, or did not keep pace with the machinery, to tie him up
by the wrists to a cross beam and keep him suspended over the machinery
till his agony was extreme. To avoid the machinery, he had to draw up
his legs every time it came out or returned. If he did not lift them
up, he was cruelly beaten over the shins, which were bare; nor was he
released, till growing black in the face, and his head falling over his
shoulder, the wretch thought his victim was near expiring. Then after
some gratuitous knocks and cuffs, he was released and instantly driven to
his toil, and forced to commence, with every appearance of strength and
vigour, though he were so much crippled, as to be scarcely able to stand.
To lift the apprentices up by their ears, shake them violently, and then
dash them down upon the floor with the utmost fury, was one of the many
inhuman sports in Litton Mill, in which the overlookers appeared to take
delight. Frequently has Blincoe been thus treated, till he thought his
ears were torn from his head, and this for very trivial offences, or
omissions. Another of these diabolical amusements consisted in filing the
apprentices’ teeth! Blincoe was once constrained to open his mouth to
receive this punishment, and Robert Woodward applied the file with great
vigour! Having punished him as much as he pleased; the brute said with a
sneer; “I do this to sharpen thy teeth, that thou may’st eat thy Sunday
dinner the better.”
Blincoe declared, that he had often been compelled, on a cold winter’s
day, to work _naked_, except his trousers, and loaded with two half
hundred weights slung behind him, hanging one at each shoulder. Under
this cruel torture, he soon sunk; when, to make the sport last the
longer, Woodward substituted quarter of hundred weights, and thus loaded,
by every painful effort, Blincoe could not lift his arm to the roller.
Woodward has forced him to wear these weights for hours together, and
still to continue at his work! Sometimes, he has been commanded to pull
off his shirt and get into a large square skip, when, the savage, being
sure of his mark, and that, not a blow would be lost, used to beat him
till he was tired! At other times, Blincoe has been hoisted upon other
boys’ shoulders, and beaten with sticks till he has been shockingly
discoloured and covered with contusions and wounds.