Why is it so difficult to find out about Children’s working conditions?
By Simone Scully
What were children’s’
working conditions really like? The answer
is not easy to determine. It would seem
that if you found an eyewitness account, a painting, or an interview with a
child worker, that the information would be reliable but that is not always the
case. There are several sources that
have been found by historians about child labour, which have turned out to be
very unreliable.
To figure out how reliable a source is, there are questions
that we must ask ourselves and information we must find out:
Firstly, we must
look at the provenance (background) of the source, asking ourselves the famous
“W” questions: Who? Why? When?
Answering these questions about the provenance will give us some
idea of how reliable the source is.
(Who?) If we know that the source was produced by someone who was in
favour of child labour, we know that the source will most likely be biased, in
favour of child labour, and will make child labour not seem as bad as it truly
was. (Why?) If we know that the person
that produced the source was making it for a newspaper that was going to be
read by mine owners, or people that would benefit from child labour, that the
source would most likely also be supporting child labour. (When?)
If the source wasn’t produced during the time it refers to, then the
information is liable to be distorted by time.
Secondly, we must ask ourselves are about the content of
the source. We must look to see if the
source is mainly facts, or opinions. We
must look at the language of the source: is it emotive? We must consider the fact that the source
may have been edited, for example, the recorded answers to an interview may be
different from the answers that the children actually gave…
Finally, we must look to see if there are other sources,
which contradict or corroborate (agree with) the source?
All of these questions must be considered. Historical sources are biased, and
unreliable, however, by asking questions, considering the context, we can get
some amount of reliability.
Here is an example. The source below is an interview of a child
factory worker. This is one of the
hundreds of interviews that the government produced in the year of 1831; it was
trying to find out information about the children’s working conditions in
factories. The government had chosen
several commissioners to go to various factories and mills to interview the
children. They asked the children about their hours of work, wages, accidents,
health, beatings etc. The commissioners
were to bring back written reports of the interviews such as the one below:
________________________________________________________________________________________
At what age
did you begin work in the mills?
I
was nearly eight years old.
What were your
hours of working?
From half past
five in the morning till eight at night.
How often were
you allowed to make water (go to the toilet)?
Three
times a day.
Could you hold
your water (urine) all that time?
No. We were forced to let it go.
Did you spoil
and wet your clothes constantly?
Every
noon and every night.
Did you ever
hear of this hurting anybody?
Yes,
there was a boy that died.
Did he go home
ill with attempting to suppress his urine?
Yes,
and after he had been home a bit, he died.
Were you
beaten at your work?
If we looked off our work or spoke to another we were beaten
What time of
day was it you were most beaten?
In the morning
And when you were
sleepy?
Yes
Was the mill very
dusty?
Yes
What effect did it produce?
When
we went home at night and went to bed, we spit up blood.
Had you a cough
with inhaling dust?
Yes, I had a cough and spit blood
___________________________________________________________________________________________
The source above was believed for many years to be very
reliable as it was an official government report. However, the source is actually very unreliable in many ways.
Though the source is an interview, and we are certain that
the questions were asked to children that worked in the factories, there are
several things that tell us that the source is unreliable in the following
ways:
1.
It is clear that the questions in the interview
are leading questions, meaning that the interviewer was asking the question in
a certain way so that the children would give them the answer they wanted.
2.
It is suspected that factory reformers could
have told some of the children what to say, so as to make the conditions seem
worse.
3.
The commissioners were actually against child labour,
which means that they might have picked children that were more likely to give
the answers that they wanted to hear in their interviews.
4.
The children could not read or write, therefore
they were not the ones that wrote down the answers in the report. The commissioners could have edited the
answers, so that they sounded even more terrible.
5.
Children, when asked questions by adults, tend
to give the answers adults want to hear.
The children interviewed could have been afraid or intimidated by the
commissioner and did not want to get the commissioner angry with them, so
therefore the children gave him the answers they believed the commissioner
wished to hear.
However, the interview can provide reliable
information. Obviously, as it was
factory child workers that were being interviewed, as the information is
first-hand and eyewitness, the details from the source have to have
happened. Perhaps, it was not in the
same way as implied in the interview.
The interviews do give us details about what it was like in the
factories for child workers.
We do not know who the artist of the above picture is; so
we cannot be sure of the background behind the picture, and the context in
which it was made. However, we do know
that the picture was printed in a book called: The History of Cotton
Manufacture in Great Britain, which was published in 1835 and written by Edward
Baines.
Edward Baines was an
editor of a newspaper, which was mostly read by mill owners, and supporters of
child labour. We know that Edward
Baines often supported the mill owners’ point of view.
Although we don’t know who the artist was, we can guess
that he favoured child labour from content of the picture. The factory is too peaceful; it is women
that are doing the work (which gives the feeling that the work is easier);
there are very few children (the children that are working in the picture are
doing safe and easy work) and their clothes are of good quality and clean. We know that work in the mills was not this
way. Too many sources contradict that idea.
This picture is completely opposite of the previous one. Children are crawling under the machines;
the clothes worn by the workers are torn and dirty; there are overseers in the background;
the machines look more dangerous and the factory is not as clean looking as the
previous one.
Again, we do not know who the artist of this source is, though we
do know that the picture appeared in a novel in 1840, written by Frances
Trollope. This book, The Life and
Adventures of Michael Armstrong, was a fictitious story about an orphan boy,
who worked in a factory, and was very mistreated.
Since the book is
fictitious, not all the events necessarily happen and some may have been
exaggerated. However, some of the
events in the book had to be true or it would not have accepted. Also, we know that some of the facts in the
book had to be true because the author based her book on a real factory
apprentice called Robert Blincoe.
Two other sources that
contradict each other are the following:
The picture above
shows child labour in fields and that it was exhausting. It suggests that
children got very little rest (shown from the boy that collapsed). Also, there is an overseer in the background
watching and making sure that they continue working. This source is completely different from the next one:
In this
picture, the work looks voluntary: there is no overseer, and the children in
the picture seem to be resting. There is
plenty of food, so it gives the impression that if they wish to rest and eat,
they may. In the front of the picture,
two people appear to be talking amiably.
It is very clear that the two sources contradict each
other. Even in terms of style. One is in black and white, making the work
seem hard and dreary, while the other one is in colour, with a blue sky above,
making it look peaceful.
The source that follows is an extract from a burial register in
Somerset:
_______________________________________________________________________________
30 August 1820
Frederick William Bond age
twelve
Head fractured by kick from
a horse in Clandown coal pit
14 December 1821
William Bourne age nine
Killed by falling down
Ludlow coal pit 24 fathoms (122 feet)
26 November 1824
George Chappel age eight
Killed by falling down
Ludlow coal pit
4 October 1835
John Ashman age eleven
Killed by falling down
Tyning coal pit
16 November 1842
Joseph Parfitt age nine
Killed by bad air in coal
pit.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Burial registers are very useful. They tell us about the different ways in which
child workers died.
But this source can also unreliable. It is hard to believe that only five
children died in 22 years. This makes us believe that the burial register did
not record all child workers’ deaths.
It is very possible that some of the deaths were not recorded because
the mine owners were ashamed and didn’t want to admit that that many children
could die in the mines or perhaps the deaths were also not recorded because the
children were poor, or orphans.
The next source is different, though it does
corroborate in many ways the burial register.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Janet Cumming,
A coal bearer, eleven years
old
I
go down with the women at five in the morning and come up at five at
night. I carry the large bits of coal
from the wall face to the pit bottom.
It is some weight to carry. The
roof is very low. I have to bend my
back and legs and the water comes frequently up to the calves of my legs. Have no liking for the work. Father makes me like it. Never got hurt, but obliged to scramble out
of the pit when the bad air was in.
Alexander Gray,
A pump boy, ten years old
I pump out the water in the
under bottom of the pit to keep the men’s rooms (coal face) dry. I am obliged to pump fast or the water would
cover me. I had to run away a few weeks
ago as the water came up so fast that I could not pump at all. The water frequently covers my legs. I have been two years at the pump. I am paid 10d. a day. No holiday but the Sabbath. I go down at three, sometimes five in the
morning, and come up at six or seven at night.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
The previous source is an extract of a royal commission, which was
set up in 1840 by the government to find out about the working conditions in
the mines. It took two years for these
reports to be finished. Today, these
documents provide us with some very interesting information. Back in 1842, people who were against the
reforms claimed that these reports exaggerated the bad conditions. They claimed that the children lied about
their work, that the commissioners asked leading questions and that the people
interviewed were the very worst cases of child labour in the mines.
All these
claims about the commission could possibly be true. The questions were not
written down, so therefore, we do not know if they were leading questions. Also, the ages written down in the source
could be false, because at that time, there were no birth certificates to prove
people’s ages. The children could, for
example, have claimed that they were ten, but there is no proof that they
actually were.
As in all
written sources, or interviews, there is the possibility that the commissioners
could have edited the answers to make the report of what is was like sound
worse, so that the government would do something about it.
As I said,
this source in many ways corroborates the burial register. Both talk about bad air, and that the work
in mines was dangerous. This source
also corroborates other sources as well, such as the other interview source
(about the mills). Even though that
source is not about the mines, both say that child labour was horrible and both
say that the children worked long fatiguing hours.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
The
commissioners expected and desired to find ill treatment of children. Their instructions were to examine the children
themselves, artful boys and ignorant young girls, and to put questions in a
manner, which suggested the answer.
The
trapper is generally cheerful and contented, and to be found occupied with some
childish amusement, such as cutting sticks, making models, and drawing figures
with chalk on his door.
_______________________________________________________________________________
The source
above is very critical of the commissioners and their interviews of young
children. It is an extract of the Marquess of Londonderry speech, when in 1842 he
attacked the report from the House of Lords.
The Marquess of Londonderry owned many pits in the northeast of England,
and was strongly against the reform of child labour. If the government decided
to stop children working in mines, his profits would fall, along with the
profits of many other mine owners.
This source is
in disagreement with many other sources.
It is very unreliable, especially in regards to the trapper. It was dark in the pits, and the children
could see very little. It is clear to us
that there is no way that the children could have cut sticks, made models or
drawn on the doors.
From all of
these sources, historians can make some assumptions about what child labour was
actually like. It takes many sources
for historians to make conclusions on what has happened in the past, such as
child labour. Today, we still aren’t
sure about what child labour was exactly like, though we can certainly make
good guesses, and we are very certain that it was dangerous and cruel. Many, many children died, became ill or were
injured very severely, loosing legs and arms.
The answer to
the question: what were children’s working conditions really like, is not easy
to answer. Why is it so difficult? It is difficult to find out the answer
because historians must be careful.
They must beware of propaganda and opinions.
In the future,
some hundred years from now, historians will be asking similar questions about
our working conditions. How reliable
will their sources be?
