Factory Working Conditions PDF

Factory Working Conditions 1. Cruel discipline – frequent ‘strapping’ (it was claimed that children had been thrashed to death). 2. Women and children were easily bullied. One witness claimed that he had seen an iron bar driven through the cheek of one girl. Other alleged punishments included hangin...

Factory Working Conditions 1. Cruel discipline – frequent ‘strapping’ (it was claimed that children had been thrashed to death). 2. Women and children were easily bullied. One witness claimed that he had seen an iron bar driven through the cheek of one girl. Other alleged punishments included hanging iron weights around children’s necks, hanging them from the roof in baskets, nailing a child’s ear to the table, and dowsing them in water butts to keep them awake. What was the treatment like for the workers in factories? – describe two types. Do you think that it was a fair way to treat the workers? Factory Working Conditions 3. Fierce systems of fines – fines were imposed for things like talking or whistling, leaving the room without permission, of having a little dirt on a machine. 4. Deformities – many children who were forced to stand for long hours grew up with conditions such as knock-knees and bow legs. Do you think that worker’s today are treated differently Factory Working Conditions 5. Accidents – children were forced to crawl into dangerous, unguarded machinery – often when they were so tired they were falling asleep on their feet. 6. Health – cotton thread had to be spun in damp conditions at 70ºF. Going straight out into the cold night air led to many cases of pneumonia. The air was full of dust, which led to chest and lung diseases and loud noise made by machines damaged workers' hearing. Life in the factory... “I worked from five in the morning till nine at night. I lived two miles from the mill. We had no clock. If I had been too late at the mill, I would have been quartered. I mean that if I had been a quarter of an hour too late, a half an hour would have been taken off. I only got a penny an hour, and they would Elizabeth Bentley, born in Leeds in 1809, started have taken a halfpenny.” working in a mill aged 6. I worked at Mr. Braid's Mill at Duntruin. We worked as long as we could see. I could not say at what hour we stopped. There was no clock in the mill. There was nobody but the master and the master's son had a watch and so we did not know the time. The operatives were not permitted to have a watch. There was one man who had a watch but it was taken from him because he told the men the time. Q. Write a short paragraph describing the importance of time to mill and factory workers.. William Hutton, born 1723 in Derby. Started working in a silk mill aged 7. Life in the factory... Punishments. Sarah Carpenter, factory worker, Derbyshire, 1849 We were always locked up out of mill hours, for fear any of us should run away. One day the door was left open. Charlotte Smith, said she would be ringleader, if the rest would follow. She went out but no one followed her. The master found out about this and sent for her. There was a carving knife which he took and grasping her hair he cut if off close to the head. They were in the habit of cutting off the hair of all who were caught speaking to any of the lads. This head shaving was a dreadful punishment. We were more afraid of it than of any other, for girls are proud of their hair. When I was seven years old I went to work at Mr. Marshalls factory at Shrewsbury. If a child was drowsy, the over looker touches the child on the shoulder and says, "Come here". In a corner of the room there is an iron cistern filled with water. He takes the boy by the legs and dips him in the cistern, and sends him back to work. Samuel Downe, born in Shrewsbury in 1804. Dr. Michael Ward was a doctor in Manchester was 30 years during the time of the Industrial Revolution. He faced many cases like the ones he describes opposite. When I was a surgeon in the infirmary, accidents were very often admitted to the infirmary, through the children's hands and arms having being caught in the machinery; in many instances the muscles, and the skin is stripped down to the bone, and in some instances a finger or two might be lost. Question: Do more accidents take place at the latter end of the day? Answer: I have known more accidents at the beginning of the day than at the later part. I was an eye-witness of one. A child was working wool, that is, to prepare the wool for the machine; but the strap caught him, as he was hardly awake, and it carried him into the machinery; and we found one limb in one place, one in another, and he was cut to bits; his whole body went in, and was mangled. John Allett started working in a textile factory when he was 14 years old. Opposite is part of an interview that he took part in the House of Commons in 1832. A girl named Mary Richards, who was thought remarkably handsome when she left the workhouse, and, who was not quite ten years of age, attended a drawing frame, below which, and about a foot from the floor, was a horizontal shaft, by which the frames above were turned. It happened one evening, when her apron was caught by the shaft. In an instant the poor girl was drawn by an irresistible force and dashed on the floor. She uttered the most heart-rending shrieks! Blincoe ran towards her, an agonized and helpless beholder of a scene of horror. He saw her whirled round and round with the shaft - he heard the bones of her arms, legs, thighs, etc. successively snap asunder, crushed, seemingly, to atoms, as the machinery whirled her round, and drew tighter and tighter her body within the works, her blood was scattered over the frame and streamed upon the floor, her head appeared dashed to pieces - at last, her mangled body was jammed in so fast, between the shafts and the floor, that the water being low and the wheels off the gear, it stopped the main shaft. When she was extricated, every bone was found broken her head dreadfully crushed. She was carried off quite lifeless. Accidents in the factories... A visitor’s observation: In 1842 a German visitor noted that he had seen so many people in the streets of Manchester without arms and legs that it was like "living in the midst of the army just returned from a campaign." TASK • Students, in groups of 2 - 3, will create a protocol to deal with accidents at work in a factory IN THE AGE OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. • They must indicate the type of accident, step by step to follow to attend to the victim, responsible for logistics and the person in charge of the worker's well-being until his recovery. • The more explicit you are, the more lives you can save!