Dickens's England: Life in Victorian Times

by Pritchard, R. E.

  In those divisions of the manufacturing towns occupied by the lower classes of inhabitants, whether engaged in mill-labour alone, or in mill-labour conjointly with hand-loom weaving, the houses are of the most flimsy and imperfect structure. Tenanted by the week by an improvident and changeable set of beings, the owners seldom lay out any money upon them, and seem indeed only anxious that they should be tenantable at all, long enough to reimburse them for the first outlay. Hence, in a very few years they become ruinous to a degree.

  One of the circumstances in which they are especially defective, is that of drainage and water-closets. Whole ranges of these houses are either totally undrained, or only very partially . . . The whole of the washings and filth from these consequently are thrown into the front or back street, which being often unpaved and cut up into deep ruts, allows them to collect into stinking and stagnant pools; while fifty, or more even than that number, having only a single convenience common to them all, it is in a very short time completely choked up with excrementitious matter. No alternative is left to the inhabitants but adding this to the already defiled street, and thus leading to a violation of all those decencies which shed a protection over family morals. . . . Most of these houses have cellars beneath them, occupied – if it is possible to find a lower class – by a still lower class than those living above them. . . .

  From some recent inquiries in the subject, it would appear that upwards of 20,000 individuals live in cellars in Manchester alone. These are generally Irish families – handloom weavers, bricklayers’ labourers, etc., etc., whose children are beggars or matchsellers in conjunction with their mothers. The crowds of beings that emerge from these dwellings every morning are truly astonishing, and present very little variety as to respectability of appearance; all are ragged, all are filthy, all are squalid . . .

  Peter Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of England (1833)

  EVIDENCE OF THE APPRENTICES’ MASTER, BACKBARROW, LANCASHIRE

  Were any children employed in those mills?

  There were 111 children employed when I went there first, and as many as 150 when I left. All parish apprentices, chiefly from London – the parishes of Whitechapel, St James’s and St Clement’s, I think. There was a few from Liverpool workhouse. Those that came from London were from seven to eleven; those from Liverpool were from eight or ten to fifteen. . . .

  Up to what period were they apprenticed?

  One and twenty.

  What were the hours of work?

  From 5 o’clock in the morning till 8 at night all the year through.

  What time was allowed for meals?

  Half an hour for breakfast and half an hour for dinner.

  Had they any refreshment in the afternoon?

  Yes, they had their drinking taken to the mill; their bagging, they call it. . . .

  They had no cessation after dinner till 8 o’clock at night?

  No. . . .

  What was the dinner hour?

  Twelve o’clock. They returned to the mill at half-past twelve.

  Did they, beyond working those 15 hours, make up for any loss of time?

  Yes, always. They continued working till 9 o’clock, sometimes later . . .

  What time did they rise from bed?

  I always got them up at half-past four to get them ready for the mill by five. . . .

  Did any children work on Sundays as cleaners of the machines?

  Yes; generally every Sunday. I do not know that they ever missed one Sunday while I was there. . . .

  Were they usually much fatigued at night?

  Yes, some of them were very much fatigued.

  Where did they sleep?

  In the apprentice-house.

  Did you inspect their beds?

  Yes, every night.

  For what purpose?

  Because there were always some of them missing, some sometimes might be run away, others sometimes I have found have been asleep in the mill, upon the mill floor.

  Did the children frequently lie down upon the mill floor at night when their work was done, and fall asleep before their supper? I have found them frequently upon the mill floor after the time they should have been in bed.

  At what hour did they go to bed?

  Nine o’clock was their hour, when they worked their usual time. . . .

  Were any children injured by the machinery?

  Very frequently. Very often their fingers were crushed, and one had his arm broken.

  Were any of the children deformed?

  Yes, several; there were two or three that were very crooked . . .

  How many died during the year you were at the mill?

  There was only one.

  ‘Report on Children Employed in Manufactories’, Parliamentary Papers, 1816, Vol. III

  CHILDREN IN THE MILL

  The party entered the building, whence – as all know who have done the like – every sight, every sound, every scent that kind nature has fitted to the organs of her children so as to render the mere unfettered use of them a delight, are banished for ever and ever. The ceaseless whirring of a million hissing wheels seizes on the tortured ear; and while threatening to destroy the delicate sense, seems bent on proving first, with a sort of mocking mercy, of how much suffering it can be the cause. The scents that reek around, from oil, tainted water, and human filth, with that last worst nausea arising from the hot refuse of atmospheric air left by some hundred pairs of labouring lungs, render the act of breathing a process of difficulty, disgust and pain. All this is terrible. But what the eye brings home to the heart of those who look round upon the horrid earthly hell, is enough to make it all forgotten; for who can think of villainous smells, or heed the suffering of the ear-racking sounds, when they look upon hundreds of helpless children, divested of every trace of health, of joyousness, and even of youth! Assuredly there is no exaggeration in this; for except only in their diminutive size, these suffering infants have no trace of it. Lean and distorted limbs – sallow and sunken cheeks – dim hollow eyes, that speak unrest and most unnatural carefulness, give to each tiny, trembling, unelastic form, a look of hideous premature old age.

  But in the room they entered, the dirty, ragged, miserable crew were all in active performance of their various tasks; the overlookers, strap in hand, on the alert; the whirling spindles urging the little slaves who waited on them to movements as unceasing as their own; and the whole monstrous chamber redolent of all the various impurities that ‘by the perfection of our manufacturing system’ are converted into ‘gales of Araby’ for the rich, after passing in the shape of certain poison through the lungs of the poor. . . . The miserable creature to whom the facetious doctor pointed was a little girl about seven years old, whose office as ‘scavenger’ was to collect incessantly from the machinery and from the floor the flying fragments of cotton that might impede the work. In the performance of this duty, the child was obliged, from time to time, to stretch itself with sudden quickness on the ground, while the hissing machinery passed over her; and when this is skilfully done, and the head, body and outstretched limbs carefully glued to the floor, the steady-moving but threatening mass may pass and re-pass over the dizzy head and trembling body without touching it. But accidents frequently occur; and many are the flaxen locks rudely torn from infant heads in the process.

  Frances Trollope, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy (1840)

  IN THE IRON-WORKS

  In a large and lofty building, supported by pillars of iron with great black apertures in the upper walls, open to the external air; echoing to the roof with the beating of hammers and roar of furnaces, mingled with the hissing of red-hot metal plunged in water, and a hundred strange unearthly noises never heard elsewhere; in this gloomy place, moving like demons among the flame and smoke, dimly and fitfully seen, flushed and tormented by the burning fires, and wielding great weapons, a faulty blow from any one of which must have crushed some workman’s skull, a number of men laboured like giants.
Others, reposing upon heaps of coal or ashes, with their faces turned to the black vault above, slept or rested from their toil. Others again, opening the white-hot furnace doors, cast fuel on the flames, which came rushing and roaring forth to meet it, and licked it up like oil. Others drew forth, with clashing noise, upon the ground, great sheets of glowing steel, emitting an insupportable heat, and a deep dull light like that which reddens in the eyes of savage beasts.

  LOST IN THE BLACK COUNTRY

  A long, flat, struggling suburb passed, they came, by slow degrees, upon a cheerless region, where not a blade of grass was seen to grow, where not a bud put forth its promise in the spring, where nothing green could live but on the surface of the stagnant pools, which here and there lay idly sweltering by the black roadside.

  Advancing more and more into the shadow of this mournful place, its dark depressing influence stole upon their spirits, and filled them with dismal gloom. On every side, and as far as the eye could see into the heavy distance, tall chimneys, crowding on each other, and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly form which is the horror of oppressive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air. On mounds of ashes by the wayside, sheltered only by a few rough boards or rotten penthouse roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like tortured creatures; clanking their iron chains, shrieking in their rapid whirl from time to time as though in torment unendurable, and making the ground tremble with their agonies. Dismantled houses here and there appeared, tottering to the earth, propped up by fragments of others that had fallen down, unroofed, windowless, blackened, desolate, but yet inhabited. Men, women, children, wan in their looks and ragged in attire, tended the engines, fed their tributary fire, begged upon the road, or scowled half-naked from the doorless houses. Then came more of the wrathful monsters, whose like they almost seemed to be in their wildness and their untamed air, screeching and turning round and round again; and still, before, behind, and to the right and left, was the same interminable perspective of brick towers, never ceasing in their black vomit, blasting all things living or inanimate, shutting out the face of day, and closing in on all these horrors with a dense dark cloud.

  But, night-time in this dreadful spot! – night, when the smoke was changed to fire; when every chimney spirted up its flame; and places, that had been dark vaults all day, now shone red hot, with figures moving to and fro within their blazing jaws, and calling to one another with hoarse cries – night, when the noise of every strange machine was aggravated by the darkness; when the people near them looked wilder and more savage; when bands of unemployed labourers paraded the roads, or clustered by torchlight round their leaders, who told them, in stern language, of their wrongs, and urged them on to frightful cries and threats; when maddened men, armed with sword and firebrand, spurning the tears and prayers of women who would restrain them, rushed forth on errands of terror and destruction, to work no ruin half so surely as their own – night, when carts came rumbling by, filled with rude coffins (for contagious disease and death had been busy with the living crops); when orphans cried, and distracted women shrieked and followed in their wake . . . who shall tell the terrors of the night to the young wandering child!

  Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)

  A VISIT TO THE UNDERWORLD

  The William Pitt mine [in Whitehaven] was the scene of my adventure, the last opened and said to be the best planned work of the kind . . .

  As far as I could ascertain as I groped my way through the darkness, the mine appeared, in the meeting and crossing of its numerous passages, to resemble the streets of a city – and of a city of no mean extent . . . A dreariness pervaded the place which struck upon my heart – one felt as if beyond the bounds allotted to man or any living being, and transported to some hideous region unblest by every charm that cheers and adorns the habitable world. We traced our way through passage after passage in the blackest darkness sometimes rendered more awful by a death-like silence, which was now and then broken by the banging of some distant door, or the explosion of gunpowder . . .

  Occasionally a light appeared in the distance before us, which advanced like a meteor through the gloom, accompanied by a loud rumbling noise, the cause of which was not explained to the eye till we were called upon to make way for a horse, which passed by with its long line of baskets, and driven by a young girl, covered with filth, debased and profligate, and uttering some low obscenity as she hurried by. We were frequently interrupted in our march by the horses proceeding in this manner with their cargoes to the shaft, and always driven by girls, all of the same description, ragged and beastly in their appearance, and with a shameless indecency in their behaviour, which, awe-struck as one was by the gloom and loneliness around one, had something quite frightful in it, and gave the place the character of a hell.

  All the people whom we met with were distinguished by an extraordinary wretchedness; immoderate labour and a noxious atmosphere had marked their countenance with the signs of disease and decay; they were mostly half naked, blackened all over with dirt, and altogether so miserably disfigured and abused, that they looked like a race fallen from the common rank of men, and doomed, as in a kind of purgatory, to wear away their lives in these dismal shades. . . .

  After rambling about for nearly an hour through the mazes of the mine, occasionally meeting a passenger, or visiting a labourer in his solitary cell, we were conducted to a spacious apartment, where our ears were saluted with the sound of many voices mingling together in noisy merriment. This was a place of rendezvous whither the baskets of coal were brought from the workings and fixed on the trams, and a party of men and girls had met together here, who were joining in a general expression of mirth, that was strangely contrasted with the apparent misery of their condition, and the dreariness of the spot where they were assembled.

  There was an unusual quantity of light in this chamber which showed its black roof and vaults, and shone upon the haggard faces and ruffian-like figures of the people, who were roaring with laughter at a conversation which outraged all decency, and resembled, as it appeared to my imagination, a band of devils. Some coarse jokes levelled at myself and my companion, which we did not think it prudent either to parry or return, drove us from this boisterous assembly, and we were soon again in the silent and lonely depths of the mine.

  Richard Ayton, A Voyage round Great Britain undertaken in the Summer of 1813 (1814)

  WORKING ALONE BELOW

  A man all black with coal-dust, and naked from the waist upwards, took hold of Flashley, and . . . led him away into the darkness, lighted only by a candle stuck in a lump of clay which his conductor held in the other hand. . . . The passage through which they were advancing was cut out of the solid coal. It was just high enough for the man to walk upright, though with the danger of striking his head occasionally against some wedge of rock, stone or block of coal, projected downwards from the roof. . . . The pathway was for the most part a slush of coal-dust, mixed with mud and slates, varied with frequent knobs and snags of rock and iron-stone. In this path of intermittent ingredients, a tram-road had been established, the rails of which had been laid down at not more than 15 inches asunder; and moving above this at no great distance, Flashley now saw a dull vapoury light, and next descried a horse emerging from the darkness ahead of them . . . his guide made him stand with his back flat against one side of the passage – and presently the long, hot, steamy body of the horse moved by, just moistening his face and breast in passing. He had never before thought a horse’s body was so long. At the creature’s heels a little low black waggon followed with docility. The wheels were scarcely six inches high. Its sides were formed by little black rails. It was full of coals. A boy seemed to be driving, whose voice was heard on the other side of the horse, or else from beneath the animal’s body, it was impossible to know which.

  They had not advanced much further when they came to a wooden barricade, which appeared to close their journey abruptl
y. But it proved to be a door, and swung open of its own accord as they approached. No sooner were they through, than the door again closed, apparently of its own careful good will and pleasure. . . . More Sesame doors were also opened and shut as before; but Flashley at length perceived that this was not effected by any process of the black art, as he had imagined, but by a very little and very lonely imp, who was planted behind the door in a toad-squat, and on this latter occasion was honoured by his guide with the title of an ‘infernal small trapper’, in allusion to some neglect of duty on a previous occasion. It was, in truth, a poor child of nine years of age, one of the victims of poverty, of bad parents, and the worst management, to whose charge the safety of the whole mine, with the lives of all within it, was committed; the requisite ventilation depending on the careful closing of these doors by the trapper-boys after anybody has passed. . . .

  Several horses and waggons were met and passed after the fashion already described. On one occasion, the youth who drove the horse walked in front, waving his candle in the air, and causing it to gleam upon a black pool in a low chasm on one side, which would otherwise have been invisible. He was totally without clothing, and of a fine symmetrical form, like some young Greek charioteer doing penance on the borders of Lethe for careless driving above ground. As he passed the pool of water, he stooped with his candle. Innumerable bubbles of gas were starting to the surface. The instant the flame touched them, they gave forth sparkling explosions, and remained burning with a soft blue gleam. It continued visible a long time, and gave the melancholy idea of some spirit, once beautiful, which had gone astray, and was forever lost to its native region. It was as though the youth had written his own history in symbol, before he passed away into utter darkness. . . .