Parliamentary Evidence of Richard Oastler on 'Yorkshire Slavery,’ 1832
(Report from the Committee on the Bill to regulate the labour of children in the mills
and factories ... 1832: Parliamentary Papers, 1831-1832, XV, pp. 454-455; in A.
Aspinall and E. Anthony Smith, eds., English Historical Documents, XI, 1783-1832, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1959,.pp. 740-42 Richard Oastler (1789-1861), a
Methodist and the steward of a Yorkshire landowner who became known as a Tory
Radical, launched a campaign in 1830 against working conditions in factories. His
campaign against “Yorkshire Slavery” built support for another Factory Act in 1833. This
act provided government inspectors in an attempt to actually enforce factory legislation.)
Has your mind been latterly directed to the consideration of the condition of the
children and young persons engaged in the mills and factories of this country, with a view
to affording them permanent legislative relief? -It has....The immediate circumstance
which led my attention to the facts, was a communication made to me by a very opulent
spinner that it was the regular custom, to work children in factories 13 hours a day, and
only allow them half an hour for dinner; that that was the regular custom, and that in
many factories they were worked considerably more. I had previously observed a
difference in the working classes of the West Riding of the county of York, I mean in. the
clothing districts. I had observed an amazing difference from what they are now, in
comparison of what they were when I was a youth; but I must say that my attention had
not been particularly called to the subject of the factory system, until I had that fact
communicated to me.... I resolved from that moment that I would dedicate every power
of body and mind to this object, until these poor children were relieved from that
excessive labour; and from that moment, which was the 29th of September 1830, I have
never ceased to use every legal means, which I had it in my power to use, for the purpose
of emancipating these innocent slaves. The very day on which the fact was
communicated to me, I addressed a letter to the public, in the "Leeds Mercury", upon the
subject. I have since that had many opponents to contend against; but not one single fact
which I have communicated has ever been contradicted, or ever can be.... I have refrained
from exposing the worst parts of the system, for they are so gross that I dare not publish
them. The demoralizing effects of the system are as bad, I know it, as the demoralizing
effects of slavery in the West Indies. I know that there are instances and scenes of the
grossest prostitution amongst the poor creatures who are the victims of the system, and in
some cases are the objects of the cruelty and rapacity and sensuality of their masters.
These things I never dared to publish, but the cruelties which are inflicted personally
upon the little children not to mention the immensely long hours which they are subject
to work, are such as I am very sure would disgrace a West Indian plantation. On one
occasion I was very singularly placed; I was in the company of a West India slave master
and three Bradford spinners; they brought the two systems into fair comparison, and the
spinners were obliged to be silent when the slave-owner said, "Well, I have always
thought myself disgraced by being the owner of black slaves, but we never, in the West
Indies thought it was possible for any human being to be so cruel as to require a child of
9 years old to work 12 1/2 hours a day; and that, you acknowledge, is your regular
practice." I have seen little boys and girls of 10 years old, one I have in my eye
particularly now, whose forehead has been cut open by the thong" whose checks and lips
have been laid open, and whose back has been almost covered with black stripes; and the
only crime that that little boy, who was 10 years and 3 months old, had committed, was
that he retched three cardings, which are three pieces of woollen yarn, about three inches
each long. The same boy told me that he had been frequently knocked down with the
billy-roller, and that on one occasions he had been hung up by a rope round the body, and
almost frightened to death; but I am sure it is unnecessary for me to say anything more
upon the bodily sufferings that these poor creatures are subject to. I have seen their
bodies almost broken down, go that they could not walk without assistance, when they
have been 17 or 18 years of age. I know many cases of poor young creatures who have
worked in factories, and who have been worn down by the system at the age of 16 and
17, and who, after living all their lives in this slavery, are kept in poor-houses, not by the
masters for whom they have worked, as would be the case if they were negro slaves, but
by other people who have reaped no advantage from their labour. These are the particular
facts which I wish to state; and one which I would also call the attention of the
Committee to, is the domestic system of manufacture which obtained in the West Riding
of Yorkshire, when I was a boy; it was the custom for the children at that time, to mix
learning their trades with other instruction and with amusement, and they learned their
trades or their occupations, not by being put into places, to stop there from morning to
night, but by having a little work to do, and then some time for instruction, and they were
generally under the immediate care of their parents; the villages about Leeds and
Huddersfield were occupied by respectable little clothiers, who could manufacture a
piece of cloth or two in the week, or three or four or five pieces, and always had their
family at home: and they could at that time make a good profit by what they sold; there
were filial affection and parental feeling, and not over-labour; but that race of
manufacturers has been almost completely destroyed; there are scarcely any of the oldfashioned domestic manufacturers left, and the villages are composed of one or two or in
some cases of three or four, mill-owners, and the rest, poor creatures who are reduced and
ground down to want, and in general are compelled to live upon the labour of their little
ones; it is almost the general system for the little children in these manufacturing villages
to know nothing of their parents at all excepting that in a morning very early, at 5 o'clock,
very often before 4, they are awakened by a human being that they are told is their father,
and are pulled out of bed (I have heard many a score of them give an account of it) when
they are almost asleep, and lesser children are absolutely carried on the backs of the older
children asleep to the mill, and they see no more of their parents, generally speaking, till
they go home at night, and are sent to bed. Now that system must necessarily prevent the
growth of filial affection. It destroys the happiness in the cottage family, and leads both
parents and children not to regard each other in the way that Providence designed they
should.... With regard to the fathers, I have heard many of them declare that it is such a
pain to them to think that they are kept by their little children, and that their little children
are subjected to so many inconveniences that they scarcely know how to beat their lives;
and I have heard many of them declare that they would much rather be transported than
be compelled to submit to it. I have heard mothers, more than on 10 or 11 occasions,
absolutely say that they would rather that their lives were ended than that they should live
to be subjected to such misery. The general effect of the system is this, and they know it,
to place a bonus upon crimes; because their little children, and their parents too, know
that if they only commit theft and break the laws, they will be taken up and put into the
House of Correction, and there they will not have to work more than 6 or 7 hours a day.
Such being the general state of things in the manufacturer's cottage, I think we need not
be surprised at the present discontented, nay, one might almost say the disaffected state of
the working classes. I think that arises from no other circumstance but that complete
inversion of the law of nature making the little children into slaves to work for their
fathers and mothers, and leaving their fathers destitute in the streets to mourn over their
sorrows; I believe that is the foundation of the disaffection and unpleasantness of the
present age....