In the early nineteenth century, thousands of children, some as young as four, worked in the mills. Many were paupers and orphans, sent from other parts of the country to the mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire to be taken on as apprentices. Some mill children received only eighteen pence a week in 1831, but the mill provided food which their parents could not otherwise afford.

One mill owner noted how his workers spent the whole day bent double over their machines and never straightened up again. Another said of the mill children: “Many of them became dwarfs in body and mind, and some of them were deformed”.

It was exhausting work for the children. A piecer could walk twenty miles in a twelve hour shift. Some fell asleep on the mill floor. Conditions improved slowly. After the Factory Act of 1833, it became illegal for a child under the age of nine to work in the mill. After the Act in 1847, no-one under the age of eighteen was allowed to work more than a ten hour day.

In many mills, any children who were considered to be lazy, misbehaved or made mistakes were severely beaten with a strap. Parents often had to witness their own children being treated cruelly. They were in desperate need of the family wage and did not dare complain, in case they were sacked.

Overseers carried leather thongs or heavy iron sticks. They beat children to keep them awake and alert towards the end of a long day. Some overseers threw water in the children’s faces. Others gave them a pinch of snuff, to make them sneeze.

Poor children, sent from workhouses to the mill, had to sign indentures, which were contracts binding them as apprentices to the mill for a certain number of years. The mill owner liked the cheap labour, and the parish was pleased to pass on the cost of feeding the children.

Some mills had apprentice houses where up to one hundred exhausted children slept. Boys and girls slept in one room, six to each bunk.

Mill owners were supposed to provide schools, but many apprentices found themselves cleaning toilets and tending the mill garden instead of studying. Those that ran away were pursued and caught. They had their hair cut off as punishment, and were returned to the apprentice house.