How old is the youngest child worker on your family tree?

[Liz from Lancs]

While I am beavering away at my friend's tree in Oswaldtwistle, Lancs, I keep being surprised at how young the children are who are working in the coal mines and mills. I think 8 years old is the youngest so far.

I know logically there were lots of child workers but when you see it in the families you are researching, it really brings it home, doesn't it.

[Tony Cummings]

Don't know when he started work but a GG Uncle died in a coalmine explosion in 1860 aged 10!

[Olde Crone Holden]

Liz

I strongly suspect that there were many under 8, but by that time it was illegal, so they just put "scholar" on the census.

As schooling wasn't compulsory till the 1880s, you can bet your life that young children weren't just allowed to stay at home and play!

OC

[Liz from Lancs]

Tony + OC - they must have been at risk of all the medical conditions associated with their workplace - and I remember watching a documentary where it showed the children in the mills clearing up I think under the looms. Their safety wasn't an issue for the employers.

My friend's grandfather John Wm. Pickup was 11 in 1881 and worked as a Brick labourer. You wonder what hours they worked...

Wonder whether they collected stats when they were building a case to stop child workers? How many died, were killed like your ancestor, Tony.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Yes, they did try to collect stats to make a case, but they were not reliable statistics as they were largely self reporting. No Employer was going to admit how much child labour he used and many parents desperately needed the few pence a child worker brought home - just like the Third World today, where there is a very similar covering up of the real facts.

Certainly before 1836, children as young as THREE were sent from the workhouse to work in local mills or coal mines, and pauper apprenticeships started at age 7.

My late MIL, born in 1910, was working by age 10 (illegally). A carefree childhood spent playing is a new concept for the poor and only possible since the introduction of the welfare state in the 1940s.

OC

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Difficult to say, as we only get a snapshot of our families, once every 10 yrs.
The youngest one I know about is my gt-grandfather's older sister. She was 7 yrs old in 1841 and is recorded TWICE, once in the parental home and again at a farm on the outskirts of the village, at the end of the list of servants.
(There is no doubt that it was the same child, an infrequent surname with the forename Dinah and the age matches.)

Jay

[Mary from Italy]

Wonder whether they collected stats when they were building a case to stop child workers?

Yes, certainly.

The Factory Acts (which were passed to limit the working hours of women and children) were a great step forward, but initially, lace factories were excluded, and they were often sweatshops employing child workers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_Acts

Unfortunately, one of my ancestors ran a factory of this kind in Nottingham.

You can read a bit about child exploitation in the lace factories and the introduction of the Factory Acts in this article I wrote about him for the magazine:

http://ftfmagazine.lewcock.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=184:concrete-and-old-lace&catid=44:february-2009

Karl Marx is also very interesting on this subject; I thought Das Kapital would be very tedious, but it's actually quite interesting, because he quotes from interviews with the people actually involved:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm

Have a look at the section entitled "Branches of English industry without legal limits to exploitation".

[Liz from Lancs]

OC - I hadn't appreciated children as young as 3 were sent out to work from the Workhouse. My pal who is nearly 80 was a refugee from the Liverpool blitz, coming to Padiham, nr Burnley with his family. His late wife's mother recalled going to work in the mills at 12. He thought they went part time at first.

Did anyone see that documentary a while back about the NHS and how everyone came out of the woodwork when it started, having new teeth, glasses and chronic conditions at last treated free? There was some good b + white newsreels of the time.

Janet - You can imagine if the children weren't working outside the home, a lot was expected of them to pull their weight in the home, caring for younger sibs and doing chores. Was that when children were seen and not heard...

Mary - thank you for those interesting links. I will have a good read soon...am in the throes of this research for my friend.

[Richard]

I had one in my tree I can't remember if he was 6 or 8, but do remember he was working down the mines as one of the trappers, opening and shutting the doors for the miners. I found it a horrific thought one so young spending their days in the darkness, breathing nothing but acrid coal dust air. Bad enough for the adults. I always try to bare this in mind when I hear people moaning about how bad we have it today, and how things were better in the old days. OK the worlds not perfect by a long shot..but we have come so far when you consider how most of us were living just a century or so ago.

[Liz from Lancs]

Richard - I couldn't word what I wanted to say and you have put it there for me.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Liz

I remember my horror, reading about a group of workhouse children, some as young as four, who were abandoned on Morecambe beach. they had been sent by cart from the workhouse to pick cockles from the beach, but the carter had not been paid for the trip so just abandoned the children. They were found by a Clergyman who was so horrified that he wrote to the Times (LOL!) and questions were asked in parliament.

It was this incident, along with the Andover workhouse incident, which directly led to the reform of the poor law and to the introduction of the Union Poor Law Act in 1836, which attempted to prevent some of the worst incidences of childhood labour. It only partly succeeded and workhouses continued to send out very young children in work parties for many years afterwards.

When I see a young servant girl on a farm, maybe 9 or 10, I think "Oooh, lucky girl, you didn't get sent to the Mill". At least working on a farm you got fresh air and good food.

It is true to say that many earnestly good people were appalled at the exploitation of children, but they were up against the might of the factories and the need to produce profit at any cost.

I remember reading one case study, a widowed father and his three young children, all of whom worked 14-18 hours a day in the mill, the youngest a five year old girl. The girl was very small for her age and the father said this was because she was too tired to eat and fell asleep - he had to carry her to and from work. I must admit when I read this, I thought "Well why don't you leave her at home then, you've already said money isn't a problem, she's just too tired to eat."

OC

[Liz from Lancs]

OC - I have become much more interested in social history thanks to entering the genealogy world, albeit as a novice. At school, history wasn't taught in a way that engaged my imagination.

Thank goodness for all the reformers who fought the might of industry to bring about change in attitudes and conditions. Like you said earlier, we have just exported it all to India and ?China.