Child labour in Preston’s mills

What life was like for children
when work started at age eight

The latest addition to the Preston History Library is Then & Now: The Illustrated Story of Preston’s Progress for Seventy Years (1841-1911). It is a collection of local history articles that William Pilkington wrote for the Preston Herald.

It contains a chapter of autobiography that reveals the harsh conditions in Preston’s mills in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign. William started work as a half-timer aged about eight in the 1840s when half-time meant 36 hours a week.

Here is an extract from the chapter:

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When I was about eight years of age I was sent to John Goodier’s factory, Brookfield-street, as a half-time creeler. Half-time was nominally thirty-six hours a week. My wage was one shilling and threepence per week, less than a halfpenny per hour. At that period the cotton mills ran from six o’clock in the morning until any time at night, usually half-past seven. Then there were no factory inspectors. Low wages and excessive hours of labour involved over-weighting anxiety. The all-absorbing question of that day was not how to educate the children, but how they should be employed to obtain money to keep the wolf from the door.

When I brought my first week’s wage home mother was very proud of the paltry one shilling and threepence, and said “My word, Will, though thy one shilling and threepence is little, it is better than nothing.” As soon as a shilling or two a week could be earned it had to be done, in order to help the family income. For this purpose I had to resort to a bit of trickery to pass full-time before I was twelve (full time age was thirteen). Inside my clog heels were filled with cotton to make me stand an inch higher than I really was, and the purpose was accomplished.

The only education I ever had was in St. Thomas’s School, Lancaster-road, as half-timer. Elijah Simmons was the master. At that early day I appreciated the value of learning, but did not get much. In those days lads got more cane than tuition. My small stock of learning has been acquired by my own industry, without tutor or assistant …

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Education was not only not valued for the children of the working class, it was seen as unfitting them for the world of work:

‘A right hon. gentleman in the year 1868 said that if children of poor folk were made to attend school until they were twelve or more years of age, their bones and muscles would become too stiff to allow them to bend themselves to the work of manual labour.’

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