The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-09-28 00:00:00

FACTORY CHILDREN.

A very few passages of evidence will best explain the deep
obligation of good men to the earnest and holy energy with
which Lord Ashley has for years continued the good tight in
defence of the infant slaves of white complexion, whose
wrongs and sufferings move no sympathy because they are
near home, and form no passport to liberal subscriptions.
We are the more induced to publish the subjoined passages,
as they afford a criterion by which to try the sincerity of those
gentlemen, who go so rapidly up and down the country
striving to bring ruin upon the whole agricultural body, under
pretence of tenderness for the poor. It will be well, wherever
these artists next appear, to put to them the question whe-
ther charity with them, which seems to travel so far, has
first begun at home? British feeling, we know, is somewhat
warm, sometimes restive, and in its indignation still is honest ;
from which we infer that the question, if not agreeable, will
at least be very useful. We now supply extracts from the
evidence taken on the factory commission, and from the
mouth of one of Mr. Marshall's operatives :
"I am thirteen years old. I began to work at Mr. Mar-
shall's flax-mill when I was near eight years old. Vie worked
from six in the morning to seven at night. We had forty
minutes allowed for dinner. We had no allowance for break-
fast or afternoon drinking. I was very much tired and fa-
tigued. As soon as I went home I fell asleep directly. We
were not allowed to sit down at the mill during the whole
day 1! ! If we did we should be beaten !!! It is a common
thing for children to be beaten !!! I had a sister who worked
at Mr. Marshall's, and she got killed there."
Jonathan Downe, in his evidence before the same commis.-
aims, says—
" It is the usual practice to prepare mills previous to their
inspection by strangers. It is a frequent thing at Mr. Mar-
shall's mill, where the least children are employed—provided
a child should be drowsy, the overlooker walks round the
room with a stick in his hand, and he touches that child on
the shoulder, and says, ' Come here.' In the corner of the
room there is an iron cistern; it is filled with water; he takes
the boy up by the legs and dips him overhead in the cistern,
and sends him to Isis work for the remainder of the day,
and that boy is to stand, dripping as he is, at Isis work!
He has no chance of drying himself. We have a vast number
of cripples, many from standing too long.
Again, Mark Best, an overlooker, gives the following
evidence :

" The regular hours for work are from six to seven. When
they are ' throng,' from five to nine at night ! They only
allow forty minutes at dinner ! No time is allowed for
breakfast or drinking. The children put the food on one
side, and eat it as they can. Sometimes, when the work is bad,
they are prevented from getting it at all ; they have then to
take it home again. Sometimes it is so dirted that it is
rendered unfit to eat. The dust flies about till they can
scarcely see each other. In the card-rooms the refuse hangs
about their mouths while they are eating their food. * * *
The masters know very well the children are thus beaten and
strapped; they encourage the overlookers to do it. The
straps are about a foot and a half long, and there is a stick at
the end of some of them ; and the end of the strap they
beat them with is cut or slit into five or six thongs. They
are regularly made for the purpose ! !
So that Manchester machinery is not complete without a

machine for thrashing children!
The Sabbath-day--the only day these poor, helpless, suf-
fering, ill-used, and oppressed infants have whereon to rest
their strained and aching limbs, is thus described by a factory
boy, William Dodd .
" Even Sunday—that day of rest to the weary and op-
pressed—shone no sabbath-day for me ; for, although I was
no longer urged on and kept in motion by the fear of the
strap and the billy-roller, yet the leisure tints afforded to
think and to reflect upon my situation only made me more
miserable! If Sunday was very bad, Monday morning was
worse still—it was horrible ! Even now it makes me trem-
ble to think upon the sufferings of those mornings! My
joints were then like so many rusty hinges that had lain by
for years : I had to get up an hour earlier, and, with the
broom under one arm as a crutch, and a stick in my hand,
walk over the house till I had got rukioints in working order,
and this day of the week was generally the most painful of
the seven.
Let any honest man now take the case home to himself,
and just imagine that this was the lot of his own child—as it
may be, for aught he knows, that of his grandchild—a.ud then
he will understand, and we very much mistake if he du not
second, the exertions of Lord Ashley.

HOAR N,Ev. STowm.—This case of libel, which has
attracted so much attention in the Roman Catholic world,
has been postponed, for further consideration, until next
November.
SELKIRKSHIRE.—We have much pleasure in stating that.
Alexander Pringle, Esq., one. of the Lords of the Treasury,
was, on Tuesday, again elected member for this county with-
out opposition.

In consequence of the failure of Messrs. Hobhouse and
Co., of Bath, Mr. H. Hobhouse, the Whig Member for
Hereford, has determined to accept the Chiltern Hundreds.
There will be a contest, with the best chance for a conser-
vatiTe.

A magnificent volcano, 12,400 feet above the level of the
sea, vomiting flame and smoke, was discovered in the South
Seas on the 27th of January last, by H.M.S. Erebns ; it re-
ceived the name of Mount Erebus, and is in lat. 77. 32. S.
and long. 167. 0. E.

Edward Liddle, the paper pellet and coarse gunpowder
man, murder Lord
man, who was charged with attemptingHowick at Sunderland, has been fined .ta for an assault, and
bound over to keep the peace. It seems that the mob pelted
his house (and he says a stone hit him on the head before he
letlfly the pellets.)
TILE MURDER. IN EASTCHEAP.—BexIey, the murderer,
has not yet been apprehended, and the opinion gains ground
that he has drowned himselt in the Thames. He was traced
to the lower stairs where all trace of him was lost. His wife
is not expected to survive.
DEATH FROM Tar; BURSTINIS op A GUN.—On Thurs.
day the principal manager of the Thames Plate Glass Com-
pany, Blackwall, was killed by the accidental bursting of a
gun which be held in his band.
He
and the contents of the gun entered tue
was found by a person
in the same employ',
forehead of the deceasedwho lingered )
accident.