EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN.

HL Deb 24 July 1863 vol 172 cc1331-8

THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY

My Lords, in rising to call attention to the First Report of the Children's Employment Commission (Parl. Paper [1671]), it is not my intention to detain your Lordships long; but I think, that after hearing the short statement which I have to make, you will agree with me that it would not have been right to allow the Session to close without your attention being called to the state of things disclosed in that Report as existing in many parts of the country with reference to the employment of children. I am sorry to stand between the House and a debate on Poland; but the facts which I am about to state are very much akin to those which we witness in Poland. In one instance you see the evils which result from the lust of money, in another those which arise from the lust of power; and not even General Mouravieff, in the plenitude of his power at Kieff, can have inflicted more misery upon Poland and the children of that unhappy race than the commercial spirit has caused to tens of thousands, and almost hundreds of thousands, of children in England. About the year 1840 I moved for a Commission to inquire into the physical and moral condition of children and young persons employed in trades not protected by the Factory Acts. That Commission reported, and under it a certain amount of good was done. I was enabled to introduce the Colliery Act and the Print Works Act, and a Member of the other House has since introduced the Bleaching Works Act. But although the Report of that Commission disclosed some terrible facts as regarded the health and morals of the children, the country was not then ripe for propositions such as these, and the consequence was that I was very much obstructed in my endeavours to carry into effect many of the recommendations of that Commission. Since that time the mind of the country has made great progress, and the desire for the education of all classes has directed attention to the great disproportion between the number of children under instruction in this country and the number which receive education in America and other countries. The perusal of the Report to which I am about to call attention will explain this circumstance. These children of tender years are engaged day and night in the most destructive works; their moral and physical strength are absorbed by their employment, and they have neither time nor energy for the improvement of their minds. Two years ago I moved for the revival of that Commission—because some of the trades inquired into under the first Commission having become extinct, and some having become worse, and others better, it was necessary to have a fresh picture of the state of things, in order that the necessary remedies might be applied. I will refer to a few of the trades as to which the Commission has reported. The Commissioners in their first Report refer, among others, to the following works:—potteries, lucifer-match manufactories, percussion cap manufactories, paper-staining works, fustian-cutting works, and lace and hosiery manufactories. They also make observations and produce evidence upon the violation of the Act relating to chimney-sweeps or climbing boys. I will first call attention to the potteries. The number of children between the ages of six and eighteen, generally designated as children, and young persons employed in these works in Staffordshire, is 11,000; those in other places not mentioned may amount to half as many more. Their hours of work are from half past six o'clock in the morning until half past six o'clock in the evening, and sometimes even till eight or nine o'clock. One of the reporters states, that the places in which they work are perfectly intolerable on account of the dust and the total absence of all ventilation. Many children of tender years are constantly employed in the stoves, which the Inspector who visited them says are rooms, or rather ovens, twelve feet square and from eight feet to twelve feet high. Dr. Greenhow tried the heat of three of these rooms, and found that in one the thermometer stood at 120°, in another at 130°, and in another at 148°. This is the state of places in which children work from half past six in the morning till eight or nine o'clock at night. As to the moral effect of this system, the Inspectors report the existence of all the usual disorders arising from ignorance, neglect, and vice. As to education, out of 256 children in one school 138 could not read the Testament, and 127 could not write their names. Mr. Lodge, one of the Inspectors, examined in different factories no less than 243 children, of whom no less than 48 per cent did not know their letters. What is the physical effect upon these children? This is the evidence of medical men of great experience, resident on the spot. They say— The potters are, as a rule, stunted, ill-shaped, and frequently ill-formed in the chest. They become prematurely old, are short-lived, are especially prone to chest disease, pneumonia, phthisis and asthma. Scrofula is a disease of two-thirds or more." "Each generation," says Dr. Greenhow, "becomes more dwarfed and less robust and but for their occasional intermarriage with strangers this deterioration would proceed more rapidly. So much for the pottery. I will now direct your Lordships attention to a department of trade of which you may have heart much, but with respect to the details you may not be informed—I allude to lucifer-match making. That is an employment which began somewhere about 1833, but which at first made but little progress. About 1845, when it became more fully developed, a surgeon at Vienna discovered that it was one of the most dangerous and unwholesome of industrial pursuits. He found that it produced a peculiar disorder affecting the jaw, which ended in what is called necrosis. The number of children and young persons between six and eighteen years of age employed in this trade is 1,800, and the general statement with regard to it is that the hours of work are frequently prolonged deep into the night. The Reports with respect to the places in which the work is carried on state that some are good, and the tendency to disease is abated; but of forty-eight of those places visited by Dr. White only fourteen were found to be tolerably safe, the others, be stated, being conspicuously the contrary. The moral effects produced upon the children engaged in the trade are, in the terms of the Report, as follows— The mental state of the children and young persons calls for an effort to remove a dark blot from this portion of society. It would be difficult to find an average state of intelligence so low as that exhibited by the answers to the questions addressed to these children. A very small proportion can be said to have been taught. The ignorance of a great many, indeed, considering their age, and that they live in the midst of a society keenly alive to social and political duties, cannot be contemplated without pain and sorrow. Such is the Report of the Commission, and I now beg your Lordships' to listen to an account of the condition of these wretched children in relation to the physical effects of the occupation in which they are employed. The Report says they suffer from the usual and various results of intense labour and bad air; but the peculiar disease is the phosphorous disease, or 'necrosis of the jaw.' Dr. Letheby, to whom tire country is so much indebted for the great intelligence and labour which he has brought to bear on the subject, has delivered lectures on this disease, and he says, in describing its effects, that he knows it to be one of the most terrible which can afflict humanity, and that it ends frequently in death. He adds— The pain is followed by inflammation of the jaw, abcesses about the gums, and finally necrosis. It is in many cases followed by death, in others by the removal of the jaw by surgical operation. Mr. Pegg says— The sufferings of a patient in the earlier stages of the disease, until the jaw be quite dead and exposed, are intolerable. This evidence is confirmed by several other eminent surgeons, among them being the late Mr. Stanley. I now come to the percussion-cap manufacture, the total number of children and young persons employed in which is, I find, 665, of whom 566 are females, there being about 150 children and young persons. The condition of these children may be summed up in the words of Mr. White, the Inspector, a gentleman who discharges his duties in the most admirable manner, and who says— The manufacture is very limited in extent. It is carried on mainly by female labour, including that of many young girls, and is, perhaps, the most dangerous of all general manufactures. An explosion occurred in Birmingham three days after the visit of the Inspector, which caused the death of nine persons, and wounded upwards of forty, many of whom were young girls. Surely such a state of things as this, existing in the case of a large number of females of a tender age, is well worthy of the consideration of the Government. The next trade to which I will advert is the paper-staining, in which the total number of children and young persons engaged is 1,150. The effects of the work are thus described— The labour," says Mr. Lord, "is not in itself injurious, but it is made so by the length of overtime, being protracted oftentimes late into the night. Next comes fustian-cutting, in which the numbers under the age of eighteen employed is 1,563, the hours of work being fourteen hours daily, but oftentimes, "to bring up arrears," eighteen or twenty hours. The nature of the work is described as— Nothing in itself prejudicial, but, as at present conducted, it is productive of the very worst results of prolonged labour, both as regards health and education. Then there is a very important branch of industry, which is the machine-lace finishing, which employs no less than 10,000 children and young persons in various factories. The state of the workplaces is spoken of by Mr. White as being— Generally injurious to health, hot and ill ventilated. He has noticed crowded places in which the space gave only 100, 92, 90, and even 67 cubic feet for each person, it being considered necessary to give a soldier in barracks from 500 to 600, and patients in hospitals 1,200 each. I now come to the pillow-lace making, in which children of five years of age and even younger are engaged. Its effects are that it causes the children to Suffer considerably in health from closeness of confinement and bad air, as well as in their eyesight from the mode of working. In many cases they have become irretrievably and hopelessly blind. I beg now to call your Lordships attention to the state of the great mass of those ordinarily called chimney-sweepers and climbing boys, for whose protection an Act of Parliament has been passed, which has been systematically, openly, and pertinaciously violated in the country districts. The Act itself is imperfect, but it is rendered still more so by the magistrates neglecting to inflict the proper penalties when it is proved that its provisions have been violated. In the country, it appears, the number of these climbing hoys is on the increase, while in London, with a population of 3,000,000, there are, I believe, but one or two to be found. The cause of the increasing number. I believe, is to be found in the fact that the proprietors of houses and mills in many cases insist upon having the climbing boys instead of the machine. The number of these climbing boys throughout the country is 2,000, and they begin to work about eight years of age—some as young even as five. In the smaller towns the hours of work vary from eight and nine hours a day, in the larger towns from twelve to sixteen; I shall now submit to your Lordships' notice not one-twentieth part of the evidence contained in these volumes with respect to this employment. These boys arc, in the first place, subject to a most frightful disorder called the chimney-sweeper's cancer. I have been in hospitals and seen cases of it myself. I would now ask your Lordships to listen for a moment to the evidence given on the point by Mr. Ruff, of Nottingham, who was himself a master-sweep, and who, be it said to his credit, has come forward to give testimony against the continuance of this abominable system. Mr. Ruff's evidence is as follows:— No one knows the cruelty which a boy has to undergo in learning. The flesh must be hardened. This is done by rubbing it, chiefly on the elbows and knees, with the strongest brine, close by a hot fire. You must stand over them with a cane, or coax them by the promise of a half-penny, &c., if they will stand a few more rubs. At first they will come back from their work with their arms and knees streaming with blood; then they must be rubbed with brine again. Is this a state of things, my Lords, which is to be permitted to go on? Are we to call ourselves a free and Christian country, knowing that 2,000 of our fellow-creatures, just as good as ourselves, are doomed to the most excruciating and intolerable agony, because some gentlemen say they will have sweeping-boys and will not use machines, and because magistrates refuse to act upon the clearest and most indisputable breaches of the law being proved before them? Another master-sweep, Mr. Stansfield, says, "In learning a child you must use violence that I shudder to think of." I will not detain your Lordships. There is much more of the same evidence, and many more witnesses might be brought forward to show the physical Buffering which these poor children undergo. But what is their moral condition? "They are bought, sold, and leased by their parents and guardians." "They areas completely slaves," says Mr. Ellis, a magistrate of Leicester, "as any negro children in South Carolina." I have received from America at various times letters from persons rebuking me for the part which I have taken, and which, with the blessing of God, I always will take, in favour of the extinction of slavery—rebuking me and at the same time asserting that a state of things exists in England with regard to young children ten times worse than anything which exists in relation to negro children in any part of South America. I should like to know, indeed, where we can find children treated like these white children of this country are treated, with all our boasted civilization. I remember when that admirable lady Mrs. Beecher Stowe was in this country, at my house, she spoke to the late Lord Campbell on the subject, and Lord Campbell replied, "What you say is strictly true. The only difference between America and us is this. With America it is permitted by law. With us it is forbidden by law; but the law is constantly and openly violated, and we cannot get the Legislature to come forward with sufficient vigour to maintain its own acts, and to put an end to this cruelty and violence." Another master chimney sweep says, "I have hired a lad for £1 a year, and I have bought lads myself, giving the parents so much a year further." Great efforts have been made in Scotland to suppress this system, and I believe that, greatly to the credit of that country, it is very nearly extinguished. Let me call your Lordships' attention to the words of Lord Cockburn, in passing sentence on a chimney sweeper at Glasgow. Lord Cockburn said— It was a scandal to the law to allow the sweeping of chimneys by children—it was indeed monstrous to allow any child to be employed in such a way; and if the trade were but once put down, it would be looked upon with so much horror that it would be difficult to convince the next generation that it had ever existed in a country claiming to be Christian. What is there in such a declaration as that to which, in your consciences, your Lord- ships cannot say "Amen." There is not one evil among those which I have mentioned which is not capable either of entire removal or of very considerable abatement. Let us now be guided by foreign countries. We set them the example. Our factory legislation preceded theirs, but they have pushed it further, and applied it to a number of trades. No less than twelve foreign countries have introduced regulations and enactments limiting the hours of labour, providing instruction, and suppressing the cruelty practised towards these little and helpless children. My Lords, I think I have said sufficient to show your Lordships what there is for study during the recess, and what inducements there are for this House coming forward early next Session to blot out so great a reproach and so great a disgrace to the civilization and honour of this country. I am most anxious that these facts should go forth to the public. I hope what passes here will meet with a response out of doors. I hope that at the commencement of the next Session, either by myself, if life and strength be spared to me, or by the Government, whose duty it is to undertake the task, some effort will be made to remove this great abomination. This first Report includes only six trades, and applies to 27,000 children of tender years. Other Reports will bring up the number to 100,000. Although every child has a claim on our attention, when the number is swollen to 100,000, the claim, besides resting on the ground of humanity, rests also on political considerations, because the welfare and well-being of so many future citizens are involved. With many thanks to your Lordships, I now commit what I have said to your judgment and consideration.