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
indigence, and, on his family, the visitation of calamities, so awful,
that it looked as if the avenging power of retributive justice had laid
its iron hand on him and them. In how short a time Blincoe’s career will
verify the prediction of the old sybil of Chapel-a-Frith remains to
be seen; but it is in the compass of probability, that he may, in the
meridian of his life, be carried as high, by the wheel of fortune, as the
days of his infancy and youth, he was cast low!!
In the year 1824, Blincoe had accumulated in business that sum of money
he thought would be sufficient to keep his family, with the exception
of his cotton-waste business; shortly after he gave up a shop which he
had occupied for a few years at No. 108, Bank-Top, Manchester, and took
a house in Edge-place, Salford, whilst living there, thought proper to
place some of the money he had saved by industry to the purchasing of
some machinery for spinning of cotton—and took part of a mill of one Mr.
Ormrod, near St. Paul’s-Church, Tib-street, in this he was engaged six
weeks, with the assistance of some mechanics, getting the machinery ready
for work—the first day it was at work, an adjoining room of the building
caught fire, and burnt Blincoe’s machinery to the ground, not being
insured, nearly ruined him.—Blincoe declares that he will have nothing to
do with the spinning business again—what with the troubles endured when
apprentice to it, and the heavy loss sustained by fire, is completely
sick of the business altogether.
_End of the Memoir of Robert Blincoe._
[1] Whilst Blincoe worked at Robinson’s old factory, Water-street,
Manchester, having, by denying himself even a sufficiency of the cheapest
diet, clothed himself more respectably than he had ever been—and having
two-pound notes in his pocket, he determined to spend a few shillings,
and see the diversions of a horse-race, at Kersal-Moor—but not being
aware that such beings as pick-pockets were in the world, he put his
pocket-book in his outside pocket, whence it was stolen by some of
the light-fingered gentry, and poor Blincoe had to lament his want of
caution.
_CONFIRMATIONS OF ITS VERACITY._
Ashton-under-Line, Feb. 24, 1828.