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
his own description, he felt with extreme sensibility the loneliness
of his condition, and, at each stage of his future sufferings, during
his severe cotton-mill servitude, it pressed on his heart the heaviest
of all his sorrows—an impassable barrier, “a wall of brass,” cut him
off from all mankind. The sad consciousness, that he stood alone “_a
waif on the world’s wide common_;” that he had no acknowledged claim
of kindred with any human being, rich or poor—that he stood apparently
for ever excluded from every social circle, so constantly occupied his
thoughts, that, together with his sufferings, they imprinted a pensive
character on his features, which probably neither change of fortune, nor
time itself, would ever entirely obliterate. When he was six years old,
and, as the workhouse children were saying their Catechism, it was his
turn to repeat the Fifth Commandment—“Honour thy father and thy mother,
&c.,” he recollects having suddenly burst into tears, and felt greatly
agitated and distressed—his voice faltering, and his limbs trembling.
According to his statement, and his pathetic eloquence, in reciting his
misfortunes, strongly corroborated his assertion, he was a very ready
scholar, and the source of this sudden burst of grief being inquired into
by some of his superiors, he said, “I cry, because _I cannot_ obey one of
God’s commandments, I know not either my father or my mother, I cannot
therefore be a good child and honour my parents.”
It was rumoured, in the ward where Robert Blincoe was placed, that
he owed his existence to the mutual frailties of his mother and a
reverend divine, and was called the young Saint, in allusion to his
priestly descent. This name or appellation he did not long retain, for
he was afterwards called Parson; often, _the young Parson_; and he
recollected hearing it said in his presence, that he was the son of
a parson Blincoe. Whether these allusions were founded in truth, or
were but the vile effusions of vulgar malice, was not, and is not, in
his power to determine, whose bosom they have so painfully agitated.
Another remarkable circumstance in his case, was, that when he was sent
in August, 1799, with a large number of other children, from Saint
Pancras workhouse, to a cotton-mill near Nottingham, he bore amongst his
comrades, the name of _Parson_, and retained it afterwards till he had
served considerably longer than his FOURTEEN YEARS, and then, when his
Indentures were at last relinquished, and not till then, the young man
found he had been apprenticed by the name of Robert Blincoe. I urged the
probability, that his right indenture might, in the change of masters
that took place, or the careless indifference of his last master, have
been given to another boy, and that to the one given to him, bearing the
name of Blincoe, he had no just claim. This reasoning he repelled, by
steadily and consistently asserting, he fully recollected having heard