Settlement

Marsden Children – Their Work in the Mills

Childhood as we know it to-day is a surprisingly recent concept. We take for granted that our children will spend their early lives involved in learning and play, free from adult responsibilities and physical labour.

But consider the contemporary images we're all familiar with of third world children working in sweat shops or searching rubbish dumps for anything that can be sold. Their earnings are vital for their survival.

Before the advent of textile mills the dominant occupations in Marsden were hand loom weaving in the home and farming. Children worked alongside their fathers and mothers but the pace of work was controlled by the parents and must have been dependent on the physical abilities of the individuals concerned.

Look around the Colne and Holme Valleys and weavers' windows in the older properties are everywhere. Handloom weaving continued up to the mid 1800s and farming continues to this day.

We use the phrase industrial revolution to describe the move from cottage to mill but actually it could be more accurate to describe the process as industrial evolution. Textile mills started to be built in Marsden from the mid 1700s. They were small and initially were limited to a single process. However, industrial evolution resulted in the development of their growth and sophistication in eventually enabling the complete production of cloth from fleece to the finished product.

When the mill became the place of work, and handloom weaving ceased, working in the mill was the principle source of income. Children were regarded as equal workers and their lives changed dramatically.

We are fortunate to have two reports dated 1797 and 1803 describing exactly what living and working conditions were then considered normal and acceptable for children

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Joseph Moser's Report 10/4/1797

The Situation of the Children Apprenticed to the Churchwardens, Overseers, and Governors of the Poor of the United Parishes of St. Margaret and St. John in the City of Westminster.
To the Cotton Manufactory of Messrs. Haigh
At Marsden in the County of York
Addressed to the Workhouse Board of the said parishes.

Three Marsden brothers, John, Thomas and Samuel Haigh were cotton manufacturers operating from six mills which they owned or rented in the village. Between 1792 and 1803, 108 children between the ages of 6 and 15 were apprenticed to John Haigh from poor houses in London and Halstead in Essex.

Read Sophie Kaye's notes on the children's origins and life after their apprenticeship?

Each child was indentured as an apprentice up to the age of 21. The indenture for Sarah Stock, 'a poor child of the Parish of Halstead aged 14 or thereabouts', dated 15th August 1799, requires her to serve John Haigh as an apprentice until she reaches the age of 21 years.

It states that John Haigh 'shall and will teach and instruct her or cause her to be taught and instructed in the best way and manner that he can'. Further Haigh is required to 'provide sufficient Meat, Drink, Apparel, Lodging and Washing and other Things necessary and fit for an Apprentice;'. She was required to 'serve her master faithfully in all lawful Businesses according to her Power, Wit and Ability and honestly, orderly and obediently in all things'.

Read a transcipt of the Sarah Stock's indenture

The children were carried from poor houses to Marsden and put to work in the mill. The supervision of the children at their place of work was put in the hands of an overseer whose interpretation of the best way of training them to become textile operatives appears to have involved extreme physical cruelty. They had to work 12 hours a day. One of the group labelled only by his initials T.K. ran back to the Workhouse in London and told the Board about the treatment that children were subjected to. Joseph Moser and a colleague visited Marsden to investigate the allegations.

Their report dated 10th April, 1797 gives a comprehensive summary of their findings. They found the village to be,

Surrounded by mountains and moors, cold and dreary
The houses and inclosures are of stone,
The fields bald and rocky and the whole face of the country
Has a wild and romantic appearance.

What a difference this must have been for the children who came from the slums of London - not to mention grappling with the very strong local dialect. Moser found that prior to the allegations about the treatment of the children 'much severity had been used by the Overseer towards the children, however, following the complaint a considerable relaxation had taken place' and he felt that the children no longer had any reason to complain. Evidence was taken from the children both at the mill and after they had finished work when they visited Moser and his companion at their lodgings in the village.

The children maintained that 'they liked their employment and had sufficient food and clothes'. However they mentioned the severity of the manager and said that they had neither the time nor the means to learn to read and write which deprived them of the opportunity to communicate with their families in London. The report concluded that 'except for those general ones relating to their education and the former severity of the overseer their objections were frivolous.'

The Rev. Lancelot Bellas, incumbent of Marsden, was interviewed by Moser who expressed his dissatisfaction with the absence of education for the children. He pointed out that 'The small portion of learning they were possessed of before they left the workhouse suffered to be dissipated' . Bellas promised to approach John Haigh and ask him to grant the children time away from work for them to receive an education which Bellas said he would provide free of charge. It seems unlikely that John Haigh would have been willing to pay for his apprentices to be given time away from work to be taught to read and write. There is no record to confirm that the children were given any time off work to attend classes.

Moser's report described the children as being 'assiduously employed '. He said 'There is no part of the business that appeared to us to be laborious. It is divided into the different branches of picking and preparing the cotton for the machines, spinning and weaving all of which, excepting the two first are by the effect of mechanism; rendered much easier than the ordinary method of performing them.' Bear in mind the ages of the children and that they were working for 12 hours a day.

The children lived in a lodging house at Throstle Nest which was run by a Matron. Moser observed the dinner which was served to the children. He reported that their meal consisted of a 'kind of stew or porridge, a sort of oatbread and potatoes' . On the second day he noted that the children were given 'a sufficiently large portion of fine boiled beef and a quantity of mashed potatoes' . It is remarkable that the food was so much better when the Matron had prior notice that Moser would be present. Moser comments that the children's diet was wholesome and similar to that provided in the workhouses of the day.

He found that the children's clothing was 'not worse than the generality of labouring people'. Three or four of the boys were without shoes or stockings but said that it was by their own choice. The girls' Sunday wardrobe was superior to the dresses of others in their situation in the village. Moser next examined 'their sleeping rooms and beds.' The apartments of the girls were clean, their beds tolerable but without sheets. He noted that 'neither the rooms or beds in which the boys slept were so clean as those of the girls' . Apparently, in my experience, nothing changes. The report is an interesting insight into the living conditions of the working class at that time.

The difference between the pauper apprentices and the village children is that all the imported children were brought a large distance away from their families to work in the mill for long hours with little rest during their shifts and were beaten when they lagged behind in their duties through tiredness. There were probably also some village children who worked in local mills but they had the protection of their own parents which must have influenced the treatment that they experienced. During Moser's interview with John Haigh, he said that he preferred to employ pauper apprentices from London or places adjacent rather than village children.

The report quotes him as saying,
'If we were to employ children of persons in the neighbourhood we should have their parents continually complaining of their being kept too many hours at work, of their food, their clothing and many other matters. All these disagreeable consequences are prevented by having apprentices from a remote distance and by taking them from persons who consign them entirely to our management and direction.'

John Haigh and his brothers were from one of Marsden’s leading families. He was a churchwarden and yet he appears to show no shame in his exploitation of the pauper children. This was true of millowners throughout the country as a whole at that time.

The second report was made six years later for the Governors of the Poor. They interviewed three men, John Kettle, George Johnson and William Howard, who had come to work for John Haigh as pauper children. This second report found that the extremely cruel treatment of the children had, in fact, continued unabated.

One young man who was interviewed was 'very much deformed in his legs and knees which he said was due to his standing to work for more hours than his strength could bear and, when too ill to work, was carried to the mill and compelled to work the usual number of hours'. This lad was perfectly straight-limbed when sent to the factory. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1802 which ruled that pauper children who were apprenticed to factory owners shouldn’t work for more than 12 hours a day with no night-shift work.

J.B. Robinson, in his Marsden Memorials, describes the 'dreadful suffering' for the child working in the mill. He cites George Kaye who, when he was 6 years old in 1816, worked from 6.00 a.m. until 8.00 p.m. every week day and until 4.00 p.m. on Saturdays. George started his working life at Wood Bottom Mill as a Billy Piecner, a process involving joining cardings by rolling the soft ends together on a slanting board with the back of the hand. 'The consequence of the continual operation was that the skin was worn away and the fingers were nearly always bleeding from the friction.'

The long hours of work caused the children to be utterly exhausted. It was not unknown for them to be carried to work whilst still asleep by a parent or older sibling. They were beaten if their work was unsatisfactory. A meal break of perhaps half an hour was allowed but the children had to remain at their place of work whilst eating their food. The only chance of any kind of education for these children was for them to attend Sunday School but, after working a possible 80 hour week, it must have been too great an effort for most of them to avail themselves of classes in reading and writing. Only the children whose parents could afford to keep them at home would be able to go to a day school.

The employment of children reduced the job opportunities for adults and it is known that some households relied on the earnings of the children of the family when the adults were unable to find employment. By employing a child wherever possible at less than half the wage of an adult the mills could produce cloth more cheaply. Although some mill owners acknowledged the inhumanity of the children’s working conditions they claimed they were forced to ignore them in order to remain competitive.

It was not until 1847, some 45 years later that the hours of work in textile mills were reduced to 10 hours a day. The champion of the 10 Hour Bill was a local man, Richard Oastler, known affectionately as King Richard by local textile workers.

One evening he was dining with a friend, John Wood, who was a Bradford millowner. They were discussing the campaign to abolish the slave trade and realised that the use of child labour in the mills was an equally iniquitous practise. Oastler resolved to fight the cause of the children. He wrote to the Leeds Mercury and his letter was published on 29th September, 1830. He said 'Thousands of little children both male and female from 7 years of age are daily compelled to labour from 6 o’clock in the morning to 7 in the evening with only, Britains blush while you read it, with only 30 minutes allowed for eating and recreation.' His campaign was under way and was so vigorous that, only 2 years later, a Parliamentary Committee was set up to enquire into the working conditions of children in factories.

The 1833 Factory Act partially met Oastler's demands as it prohibited children under 9 from working in the mills and restricted the working hours of children under 13 to no more than 48 hours a week. Children were to be given two hours education each day either at their place of work or in local schools.

However many mill owners ignored the act's provisions and Oastler continued to press for a 10 hour working day. His campaign lasted for 17 years until, in 1847 the 10 Hour Act was passed. No man, woman or child had to work more than 10 hours a day. Very sadly Oastler was in prison for debt when the act was passed.

Legislation involving the age at which children could be employed had to be balanced with the imposition of compulsory education but, until education was provided free of charge, it was virtually impossible to impose on families. Marsden's first purpose built school opened in 1820. It was promoted and generously funded by non-conformist men of good standing in the village.

An ad was placed in the Leeds Mercury inviting men of 'exceptional character for ability and industry'.

To Schoolmasters

Wanted a person qualified to teach Reading, Writing, Grammar and arithmetic and etc with a wife capable of teaching needle-work. The successful candidate will be accommodated with a good new house and a plot of Ground adjoining well adapted for a garden.

The interview produced a clear winner in 25 year old Joseph Webster. In addition to his academic prowess he showed that he was able to make and mend a quill pen quickly and well. He was unmarried so his mother came with him. At the school's foundation the charges per week were 4d for reading, 8d for reading and writing, 10d for reading, writing and arithmetic and reading, writing, arithmetic and grammar 1 shilling.

Joseph Webster remained in post until his death aged 81.

There was always competition between the Non-Conformists and the Anglicans and the Rev. Edwards, incumbent of the Parish Church, began raising funds to build a church school. This was accomplished in 1829 and was on the site of the present-day lych gate. We then had two schools providing for children of similar ages. On the one hand was the Town School which was (and I quote) free from the indoctrination of the Established Church and on the other hand was the Church School which was sectarian, intent on promoting the teachings of the Church of England.

As the population of Marsden increased both schools became inadequate. The Town School was rebuilt to accommodate more children and moved their nursery department into the library. The Church built a completely new school at the bottom of Old Mount Road. It was funded by the National Society which had been created specifically to give grant aid to Anglican Schools. The opening was extensively reported in the Huddersfield Examiner and it was noted that the new school was built of rough stone with chiselled dressings. From the centre of the roof a wooden bell turret which, besides being ornamental and campanologically useful, will be made to serve for a principal ventilator. The vicar of Slaithwaite was so impressed by the building that 'he could not help comparing it to Westminster Hall'.

In 1902 the free provision of education for all children up to the age of 12 became the responsibility of the state through Local Education Authorities. It was no longer in private hands.

The Church School was condemned and closed. Plans were initiated to build a large Council School on Manchester Road. This was opened in 1910 and a wholesale reorganisation of schools by age was initiated.

We still have nursery and infants age attending the Town School and the Council School became the province of junior school age children when Colne Valley High School opened in 1956. So that takes us up to the present day although changes may still continue to be made.

One thing for sure is that children of today lead far different lives from those poor little souls who worked 12 hour shifts in the mills.

Judi Thorpe. November, 2025.

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