Children's Exploitation Of Children During The Industrial Revolution

During the industrial revolution around 1750 – 1840 in Great Britain, there was revolutionary change in the way people worked and lived. There was massive widespread with the growth of factories, mass production, manufactured good, it was a period of significant economic growth the Industrial revolution changed people's health and how they lived and worked. Mechanical devices are extremely important, even though they created major health issues for people in short term, it was essential for the long term. With children working in factories, even if a child did the same amount of work as an adult, factory owners lowered the child wage. This allowed factory owners to save their money which meant that they could profit more from children then

This exploitation of children had negative impacts on children such as long-term health issues. Whilst children were left suffering, factory owners were impacted positively by employing children instead of adults. As explained by Professor of history Jeff Horn “children begin to work as early as three and four years of age; not infrequently at five, and between five and six; while, in general, regular employment commences between seven and eight; the great majority of the children having begun to work before they are nine years old …", They were working extremely long hours, doing work that drain an adult from energy. Children often worked in hazardous places such as flour mills and glassmaking factories, this includes had to climb on top and under running machines. This includes children as young as 5 years old operating hot machines with no fences or face coverings. Carolyn Tuttle’s website tells us that E.P Thomspon described the mills as “places of sexual license, foul language, cruelty, violent accidents, and alien manners”. Some factory owners personally punished children that arrived late to work, A history crunch source says, “Factory owner with a horse whip standing outside the mill when the children have come too late [and] he lashed them all the way to the mill.” Even in the mines if young children were caught sleeping whilst doing their 12 or 16 hour shift, they

Just one of the many place people had to work in was the flour mill, the flour mill was one of the most dangerous jobs you could work in, people had to grinding grain on huge millstones to turn it into flour. The air was filled with dust and many workers struggled to breath when working. The combination of flour which ignites easily, and buildings made from wood led to many fires in flour mills. A job at the metal works involved 12 hours shifts in sweltering heat workers breathed in poisonous fumes which affected