The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-03-22 00:00:00

CRUELTY IN A FACTORY

The following case came before the bench of magistrates
at Halifax, on Saturday last—George Pollard, Esq., being
the chairman :

A respectable-looking young man, named Jonas Booth,
was charged with assaulting Mary Haigh, a delicate little
child of about twelve years of age. She said she worked at
Mr. Ambler's mill, in Shaw-lane, Ovendon, at which Booth
was an overlooker, and the assault consisted in " setting her
up," that is, making her hold a brush above her head for an
hour and forty minutes ; and when her arms began to be
tired and dropped a little, he hit them up again. Her sister
proved the case; she said it occurred on Tuesday morning.
She herself worked in another room of the mill, but the
hands kept coming up and telling her what Bcoth was doing
to her sister; and "she bided as long as she could," but at
last went down and saw her little sister "set up." In de-
fence, Booth said the girl "had committed some offence"
for which she was turned away, but bee father wanted her to
come to work again, and therefore she was accepted on con-
dition that 'she was first to be punished for what she had
done. A -kr. Thomas, the bookkeeper, had set her on the
steps, and given her the brush because she was a delicate
child and he-thought could not hold the maul, which was
generally used in this punishment. He admitted that she
stood there above an hour, but said it was her own choice—
she might have come down, if she would have submitted to
him, and gone on her knees to beg pardon ; but she would
not. She was put up at a quarter-past 6, and stood there
till after 7. (The sister said it was until about 20 minutes to
S.) He denied knocking her arms up when they flagged, but
admitted he took hold of the arm and made her hold it
The magistrates gave Booth a very severe repri-
To " set up " a delicate child for even an hour was
a piece of very-great barbarity, which neither Booth nor his
master had a right to practice on any working person in the
mill. As for ordering the child to go down on her knees 'to
beg his pardon, it was a very impudent thing indeed. Work-
ing people were never intended to go down on their knees to
beg pardon of anybody. When they did kneel it was for a
different purpose. The sooner, therefore, that practice was
discontinued in the mill, the better it would be. The ma-
gistrates did not sit there for the purpose of saying anything
that could lead either children or servants to be refractory,
but they must be required to do what they have to do in
reason. The father of the child and the constable of the
township both testified that Mr. Ambler, the millowner,
had declared that Booth- had kept the child up too long; a
quarter of an hour or twenty minutes was the time he al-
lowed. The father also begged the magistrates to hear the
" offence" the girl had committed. She had been seized
with a looseness while in the-mill. and had gone to the privy
rather than stay at her, work and dirty the floor. And for
this she was to he punished ! He had a wife and eleven
children living; and he could assure their worships he had
hard "to keep th' band in t' nick ;;"but he did nowish
to workbreak the laws of his country. The magistrates,
after some consultation, said that as Booth had acted not
from sheer barbarity, but in a very mistaken sense of what
he conceived to be his duty, they would (after the lecture he
had received) be satisfied with his paying ss. to the little
girl's father for the loss of work of his two children, and Gs.
the other expenses of the case.

bearing •
Loss op A SCHOONER WITII ALL BER CREW.—Captain
Thoburn, of the Rose Castle, belonging to Blyth, arrived in
the river with a cargo of coals, reports that "on. Sunday
morning, 'at seven o'clock, the 13th instant, Scarborough,
in, with the wind' S.W the wind suddenly changed with a
W.S.W. distance from ten to twelve miles, reaching
.heavy squall from N.N.'.W , a schooner, about five keels,
immediately
ap-
parently all black, with ; standing bowsprit, small topsail
and topgallant-sail, was taken all aback, upset, and went down
he could not render the crew of the ill-fated schooner the
with all on board." Captain Thoburn adds that
least assistance, as his vessel " was under no command when
the fatal catastrophe happened."