http://www.cmhrc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/citm.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IRarmstrong.htm
http://www.pitwork.net/history1.htm
http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tuttle.labor.child.britain
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CHILDREN'S WORK and WELFARE 1780-1890. Pamela Horn. Cambridge University Press. Pbk 0 521 55769 0 - £7.95 (US$11.95). Hbk 0 521 55284 2 - £19.95 (US$39.95).
This short book examines the nature of child employment at a time when Britain was becoming the workshop of the world.
Further, the situation with regard to the rights of children can be the more easily understood if this is seen against the development of modern Britain over the last five hundred years. During the modern age, Britain developed from a slave-owning nation during the stage of mercantile capitalism to a colonizer nation during the stage of industrial capitalism (and the industrial revolution) through to imperialism. We may call the present age that of globalism, but we would do well to remember that slavery and its successor, indentured labour exploitation, sometimes called the second slavery, were global activities, and so were colonialism, industrial capitalism and pre-World War II imperialism. In each of these stages of economic activity, we can identify the oppressor and the oppressed.
The oppression of children in Britain increased dramatically during the stage of early industrial capitalism and followed on the heels of the enclosures and the agricultural revolution, when poverty was rife, the brutality of the ruling elite excessive and the execution of families sometimes carried out for the crime, for example, of stealing sheep. In the metropolitan heartland, children from the lower orders were expected to begin work early in life.
This book describes how at the end of the eighteenth century, one Mrs Trimmer, an educational writer and reformer declared that "it was a disgrace to any Parish, to see the Children of the Poor, who are old enough to do any kind of work, running about the streets ragged and dirty"; and the Philanthropic Society, set up about this time, to rescue criminal or abandoned children, regarded "indolence" as the prime source of evil and "industry" as the principal virtue. This encouraged acceptance of child labour in agriculture, mining, manufacture and, especially for girls, in domestic service. Individuals were encouraged to remain in their proper stations in life. The rationalisation and legitimation of evil practices is a lasting tradition. It was these conditions that caused E P Thompson to write scathingly of the rich who between 1790 and 1830 had described factory children as 'busy', 'industrious', 'useful'; they were kept out of their parks and orchards, and they were cheap.....The exploitation of little children, on this scale and with this intensity, was one of the most shameful events in our history.
The moral Puritanism characteristic of this approach to childhood was in marked contrast to that put forward in the late eighteenth century by the followers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These stressed the natural goodness and innocence oof the young and the loss of these qualities in adult life.
Throughout the middle of the nineteenth century, children (i.e. youngsters under the age of 14) were treated as subordinate members of society, lacking individual rights and under the absolute authority of their parents. Between 1780 and 1860, the need for the offspring of the lower orders to be employed was widely accepted. Even the passage of factory and mining legislation in the first half of the neneteenth century was designed to regulate but not to outlaw child labour.
