The History of Child Labor in England: From the Industrial Revolution to Reforms and Changing Attitudes

Summary

• Child labor was common in England before the Industrial Revolution, with children as young as 5 or 6 working in fields, apprenticeships, or as domestics.
• The Industrial Revolution led to a surge in child labor, with an estimated 50% of the English workforce under 20 years old by the 1820s, often working in dangerous conditions.
• Social activists like Richard Oastler and the Ten Hour Movement fought for child labor reforms, leading to the Factory Act of 1833, which prohibited employing children under 9 and limited work hours for older children.
• Changing societal attitudes towards childhood, along with further legislation, contributed to a significant decrease in child labor rates in England by the early 20th century.

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Children were part of the English workforce throughout its history. That children as young as five or six could be put to work in the fields or help with home-based businesses was unquestioned. In urban areas, boys as young as 13 were apprenticed to learn trades, while girls might be hired out as domestics.

When the Industrial Revolution began in the 1760s, manufacturers looked to young people as a potential workforce. Their smaller bodies, agility, and energy made them seem like a natural fit for factory work and mining. As a bonus for employers, they were often easier to control than their adult counterparts, and could be paid at lower rates. By the 1820s, an estimated 50% of the English workforce was under the age of 20.

Rethinking Child Labor

Many social and religious commentators viewed the employment of children positively. Children as wage-earners helped keep their families from falling into destitution, which in turn, kept poor families from relying on community aid. Because they were paid lower wages, child laborers helped factory owners keep the cost of production low, allowing them to generate greater profit. Others supporters of child labor argued that working kept children from idleness and vice.

But as early as the 1780s, social activists began to examine the often dangerous conditions under which children were working, and eventually turned their activism into legislation. A law preventing boys from working as chimney sweeps was passed by Parliament in 1788. Over the next 40 years, there were occasional moves to curb the exploitation of children in different industries, but most of these laws contained so many loopholes that they had little or no impact on employers.

A new wave of child labor laws began in parallel with the antislavery movement of the 1820s and 1830s. In 1830, a wealthy reformer name Richard Oastler (1789-1861) wrote a powerful condemnation of what he termed “Yorkshire slavery,” saying: “Innocent creatures drawl out, unpitied, their short but miserable existence…The very streets which receive the droppings of an ‘Anti Slavery Society’ are every morning wet with the tears of innocent victims of the accursed shrine of avarice.”

Oastler was a prominent voice in the Ten Hour Movement, which activists believed would help children by limiting their working hours to ten hours. This led to the establishment of a Parliamentary committee to study the child labor issue. In his testimony to Parliament, Oastler was unsparing:

I have refrained from exposing the worst parts of the system, for they are so gross that I dare not publish them. The demoralising effects of the system are as bad, I know it, as the demoralising effects of slavery in the West Indies. I know that there are instances and scenes of the grossest prostitution among the poor creatures who are the victims of the system, and in some cases are the objects of the cruelty and rapacity and sensuality of their master. These things I never dared to publish, but the cruelties which are inflicted personally upon the little children not to mention the immensely long hours which they are subject to work, are such as I am very sure would disgrace a West Indian plantation.

The Factory Act of 1833

After government studies confirmed some of the assertions made by Oastler and others, Parliament made its first real attempt to tackle the issue of child labor through the Factory Act of 1833. Among its provisions was a prohibition on employing children younger than nine, limiting the working hours of children aged 9-13 from working more than nine hours a day and limiting children aged 13-18 to a maximum of 12, and prohibited nighttime work for all age groups. Children also had to receive at least two hours of schooling per day. Critically, the law was to be enforced by factory inspectors assigned by the government.

Despite strong opposition from factory owners who relied on cheap child labor to maximize their profits, and even parents who disliked the idea of the government regulating their control over their children and might suffer from the loss this additional family income, the act passed through Parliament and became the foundational argument on which other reforms were built. Acts passed in 1844, 1847, 1850, 1853, 1867, and 1901 took on child labor issues in other industries and strengthened regulation.

Changes in Society

Child labor laws vulnerable, however, to many different loopholes that factory owners exploited. Still, the percentage of children in the workforce dropped dramatically over a fifty-year period. In 1851, about 38% of boys and about 20% of girls aged 10-14 were employed. By 1911, the numbers had fallen to about 18% of boys and 10% of girls.

New regulations alone could not entirely eradicate child labor. It also came from a shift in perceptions over the nature of childhood itself. Prior to the mid-19th century, children were seen more or less as small adults. But as the middle class grew, so did the view that childhood was a time of education and exploration, crucial to their development into moral and sober young adults. These attitudes were eventually adopted by much of the working class, and the traditional acceptability of children in the workforce faded away.

Cover Image: Children at work in a cotton mill (Mule spinning England 1835)

Further Reading

Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England: Diversity and Agency, 1750–1914. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2016.

Humphries, Jane. Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Kirby, Peter. Child Labour in Britain, 1750-1870. United Kingdom, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Updated: March 14, 2024