From the whole of the evidence which has been collected under the present Commission . . . relative to the EMPLOYMENT and the PHYSICAL CONDITION of the Children and Young Persons . . . who are engaged in Trade and Manufactures, we find:
1. That instances occur in which children begin to work as early as three and four years of age; not infrequently at five, and between five and six; while, in general, regular employment commences between seven and eight; the great majority of the children having begun to work before they are nine years old. . .
2. That in all cases the persons that employ mere Infants and the very youngest children are the parents themselves, who put their children to work at some processes of manufacture under their own eye, in their own houses; but children begin to work together in numbers, in larger or smaller manufactories, at all ages, from five years old and upwards. . .
4. That in a very large proportion of these Trades and Manufactures female children are employed equally with boys, and at the same tender ages: in some indeed the number of girls exceeds that of boys; . ..
6. That in the great majority of the Trades and Manufactures the youngest children as well as the young persons are hired and paid by the workmen, and are entirely under their control; the employers exercising no sort of superintendence over them, and apparently knowing nothing whatever about them. . . .
9. That in some Trades, those especially requiring skilled workmen, . . apprentices are bound by legal indentures, usually at the age of fourteen, and for a term of seven years, the age being rarely younger . . . but by far the greater number are bound without any prescribed legal forms, and in almost all these cases they are required to serve their masters, at whatever age they may commence their apprenticeship, until they attain the age of twenty-one, in some instances in employment in which there is nothing deserving the name of skill to be acquired, and in other instances in employment in which they are taught to make only one particular part of the article manufactured ; so that at the end of their servitude they are altogether unable to make any one article of their trade in a complete state.
10. That a large proportion of these apprentices consist of orphans, or are the children of widows, or belong to the very poorest families, and frequently are apprenticed by boards of guardians[i.e., officials regulating poor relief].
11. That the term of servitude of these apprentices may, and sometimes does commence as early as seven years of age, and is often passed under circumstances of great hardship and ill-usage, and under the condition that, during the greater part, if not the whole, of their term, they receive nothing for their labor beyond food and clothing. . . .
13. That in these districts it is the practice among some of the employers to engage the services of children by a simple written agreement, on the breach of which the defaulter is liable to be committed to gaol, and in fact often is so without regard to age. . . .
17. That in all the districts the privies are very commonly in a disgusting state of filth, and in great numbers of instances there is no separate accommodation for the males and females; but in almost all the buildings recently constructed a greater attention has been paid to the health and the decent comfort of the workpeople than in those of older date. . . .
19. That in some few instances the regular hours of work do not exceed ten, exclusive of the time allowed for meals; sometimes they are eleven, but more commonly twelve; and in great numbers of instances the employment is continued for fifteen, sixteen, and even eighteen hours consecutively.
20. That in almost every instance the children work as long as the adults; being sometimes kept at work sixteen, and even eighteen hours without any intermission.
21. That in the case of young women employed in the millinery and dress making business in the metropolis, and in some of the large provincial cities, even in what are considered the best regulated establishments, during the busy season, occupying in London about four months in the year, the regular hours of work are fifteen; but on emergencies, which frequently recur, these hours are extended to eighteen; and in many establishments the hours of work during the season are unlimited, the young women never getting more than six, often not more than four, sometimes only three, and occasionally not, more than two hours for rest and sleep out of the twenty-four, and very frequently they work all night; there being in fact no other limit to the duration of their labor than their physical inability to work longer. . .
23. That in some processes of Manufacture, as in winding for lace machines, the children have no regular and certain time whatever for sleep or recreation, being liable to be called upon at any period during sixteen, twenty, or twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four, while they have frequently to go from one place of work to another, often at considerable distances, at all hours of the night, and in all seasons. . .
27. That in the cases in which the children are the servants. of the workmen, and under their sole control, the master apparently knowing nothing about their treatment, and certainly taking no charge of it, they are almost always roughly, very often harshly, and sometimes cruelly used; . . . the treatment of them is oppressive and brutal to the last degree. . .
29. . . . that accidents--such as hands contused, fingers cut off, jammed between wheel- cogs, or drawn in between rollers, and arms caught in straps--are, however, in some establishments, by no means uncommon; that sometimes the straps, wheels, etc., are so crowded and exposed that the utmost care is required on the part of the workpeople to escape injury; and that, in by far the greater number of instances, accidents might be prevented, if proper attention were paid to the disposition and fencing of the machinery. . .
31. . . . that, from the early ages at which the great majority [of children]commence work, from their long hours of work, and from the insufficiency of their food and clothing, their "bodily health " is seriously and generally injured; they are for the most part stunted in growth, their aspect being pale, delicate, and sickly, and they present altogether the appearance of a race which has suffered general physical deterioration.
32. That the diseases which are most prevalent amongst them, and to which they are more subject than children of their age and station unemployed in labor, are disordered states of the nutritive organs, curvature and distortion of the spine, deformity of the limbs, and diseases of the lungs, ending in atrophy and consumption.
[Here follows an investigation of conditions relative to the conduct, behavior and opportunities for education of the children of the poorer classes working in mines, collieries ( i.e., in above-ground work buildings associated with the mine) and workshops]
From the whole of the evidence collected under the present Commission relative to the MORAL CONDITION of the Children and Young Persons included within its terms, whether employed In COLLIERIES and Mines or in TRADES and MANUFACTURES, we find:
1. That there are few classes of these children and young persons "working together in numbers," of whom a large portion are not in a lamentably low moral condition.
2. That this low moral condition is evinced by a general ignorance of moral duties and sanctions, and by an absence of moral and religious restraint, shown among some classes chiefly by coarseness of manners, and the use of profane and indecent language; but in other classes by the practice of gross immorality, which is prevalent to a great extent, in both sexes, at very early ages.
3. . . . their low moral condition . . often having its very origin in the degradation of the parents, who, themselves brought up without virtuous habit, can set no good example to their children, nor have any beneficial control over their conduct.
4. That the parents, urged by poverty or improvidence, generally seek employment for the children as soon as they can earn the lowest amount of wages ; paying but little regard to the probable injury of their children's health by early labor, and still less regard to the certain injury of their minds by early removal from school . .
5. That the girls are prevented, by their early removal from home and from the day- schools, to be employed in labor, from learning needlework, and from acquiring those habits of cleanliness, neatness, and order, without which they cannot, when they grow up to womanhood, and have the charge of families of their own, economize their husbands' earnings, or give to their homes any degree of comfort ; and this general want of the qualifications of a housewife in the women of this class is stated by clergymen, teachers, medical men, employers, and other witnesses, to be one great and universally-prevailing cause of distress and crime among the working classes. . .
7. . . .the children and young persons generally, of both sexes, not only work together in the same room, but being often in closer proximity to each other than they are in the factories of cotton, wool, silk, and flax; and all classes of witnesses concur in attributing to this circumstance a highly demoralizing influence. . .
12. That the means of secular and religious instruction, on the efficiency of which depends the counteraction of all these evil tendencies, are so grievously defective, that, in all the districts, great numbers of children and young persons are growing up without any religious, moral, or intellectual training; nothing being done to form them to habits of order, sobriety, honesty, and forethought, or even to restrain them from vice and crime.
13. That neither in the new Colliery and Mining towns which have suddenly collected together large bodies of the people in new localities, nor in the towns which have suddenly sprung up under the successful pursuit of some new branch of Trade and Manufacture, is any provision made for Education by the establishment of Schools with properly qualified teachers . . .; nor in general is there any provision whatever for the extension of educational and religious institutions corresponding with the extension of the population.
14. That there is not a single district in which the means of instruction are adequate to the wants of the people, while in some districts the deficiency is so great that clergymen, and other witnesses, state that the schools actually in existence are insufficient for the education of one- third of the population.
15. That, were schools ever so abundant and excellent, they would be wholly beyond the reach of a large portion of the children employed in labor, on account of the early ages at which they are put to work.
16. That great numbers of children and young persons attend no day-school before they commence work; that even those who do go for a brief period to a day-school are very commonly removed to be put to labor at five, six, seven, and eight years old; and that the instances are extremely rare in which they attend an evening-school after regular employment has once begun. . . .
18. That, in all the districts, many children and young persons, whether employed in the mines of coal and iron, or in trades and manufactures, never go to any school, and some never have been at any school. . . .
23. That in all the districts, great numbers of those children who, had been in regular attendance in Sunday-schools for a period of from five to nine years, were found, on examination, to be incapable of' reading an easy book, or of spelling the commonest word; and they were not only altogether ignorant of Christian principles, doctrines, and precepts, but they knew nothing whatever of any of the events of Scripture history, nor anything even of the names most commonly occurring in the Scriptures. . . .
32. That there are parents who not only anxiously endeavor to afford their children, even at the expense of some personal sacrifice and self-denial, good and sufficient food and clothing, but also the best education within their reach., and who themselves superintend, as well as they are able, their children's education and conduct; but this attention to their moral condition is rare.
35. That from the whole body of evidence it appears, however, that there are at present in existence no means adequate to effect any material and general improvement in the Physical and Moral Condition of the Children and Young Persons employed in labor.
. . . It was no part of the duty prescribed to us by the terms of Your Majesty's Commission to suggest remedies for any grievances or evils which we might find to exist, because it was deemed necessary to obtain the fullest information as to the real condition of the persons included in the inquiry, before the consideration of remedies could be entertained with any prospect of advantage. This information we have now collected; and the picture which, in the faithful performance of this duty, we have been obliged to present of the physical and moral condition of a large portion of the working classes appears to us to require the serious consideration of Your Majesty's Government and of the Legislature.
. . . Westminster, January 30th, 1843.
[It would be heartening to be able to report that the evidence disclosed by the Commission was productive of much ameliorative legislation. However, there followed only the 1844 Factory Act which set regulations for the fencing-off of machinery in order to avoid accidents and, in 1845, an Act, applicable to printing shops only, that forbade the hiring of children under eight. Nevertheless, by 1847 the famous Ten Hours Act was realized that limited the employment of children and young persons (including women) to not more than ten work- hours per day, though this regulation applied only to the textile factories. Thus, the myriad small workshops and 'sweatshops' throughout Britain, such as those covered by the 1843 Commissioners' report above, for the most part escaped regulation until well into the 1860s and after]
[Ref.: British Parliamentary Papers, 1843, Vol. 13, #430 (Children's Employment Commission, pp. 195-204]
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