Are They Really Being Hurt Since the beginning of the industrial Revolution many people have migrated here to Britain to start working in towns and bigger factories. As the Revolution is occurring there have been alleged claims that Victorian factory owners are using child workers. I have investigated these claims and the results are true that children are being made to undergo various forms of hard physical labor. As there are no laws or rules to take action on this matter factory owners have taken advantage of this and employed children as they do not require much or any pay and work in almost unbearable and unhygienic conditions.
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Some of the jobs that children are spending long hours of labour doing are scavengers. Scavengers are children that crawl under machinery and pick up the dropped pieces of cotton. Many children also crawl through the narrow holes at the coal mines which are too small for adults. I have countless numbers of children running around in London working as errand boys, crossing sweepers, shoe blacks and selling matches, flowers and cheap goods. I was outraged when I saw the fatal accidents that occurred while I visiting these factories.
When I steeped into the match factory I could smell all the smoke and it made feel sick. Many children have described the conditions of the factory as awful one of them said ‘from working for sixteen hours five times a week, the smoke made my gums swollen and I was so dizzy ‘. A five-year-old little girl also said ‘ I breathed in so much dust that it got in my lungs and I fainted ‘. When I investigated these claims I also witnessed many children’s fingers and limbs cut of as they are cleaning under machinery while they are still in use.
A few even tragically died as they were decapitated. Most of the children working at the glassworks are regularly burned and blinded. Workers at potteries are also very vulnerable to poisonous clay dust. The punishments that these children go through are beatings from their owners or overlookers with whips or straps. They also heavily chained to prevent them from escaping or stealing. When children become over exhausted they fall asleep during work and if they are caught they get the whip. Most children are fed once and that’s during dinner.
Their meals are usually potato pie with bacon, groule and oatcake. As result of their poor diet most children suffered from malnutrition and died very young. The hours that children work are very long they usually work for about fifteen hours a day five times a week. This included very little pay or sometimes just a voucher from the factory. The reason being that factory and mill owners care about their own profit and not the consequences for the children. That is their needs to be new laws made.
