page_title: Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 / Background
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet
context_page_description: The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802, sometimes known as the Factory Act 1802, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom designed to improve conditions for apprentices working in cotton mills. The Act was introduced by Sir Robert Peel, who had become concerned in the issue after a 1784 outbreak of a "malignant fever" at one of his cotton mills, which he later blamed on 'gross mismanagement' by his subordinates.
  The Act required that cotton mills and factories be properly ventilated and basic requirements on cleanliness be met. Apprentices in these premises were to be given a basic education and to attend a religious service at least once a month. They were to be provided with clothing and their working hours were limited to no more than twelve hours a day; they were not to work at night.
  The Act was not effectively enforced, and did not address the working conditions of 'free children' who rapidly came to heavily outnumber the apprentices.
context_section_description: During the early Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom, cotton mills were water-powered, and therefore sprang up where water power was available.  When, as was often the case, there was no ready source of labour in the neighbourhood, the workforce had to be imported.  A cheap and importable source of labour was 'parish apprentices' (pauper children, whose parish was supposed to see them trained to a trade or occupation ); millowners would reach agreement with distant parishes to employ, house and feed their apprentices. In 1800 there were 20,000 apprentices working in cotton mills,. The apprentices were vulnerable to maltreatment by bad masters, to industrial accidents, to ill-health from their work, ill-health from overwork, and ill-health from contagious diseases such as smallpox, typhoid and typhus, which were then widespread. The enclosed conditions (to reduce the frequency of thread breakage, cotton mills were usually very warm and as draught-free as possible) and close contact within mills and factories allowed contagious diseases such as typhus and smallpox to spread rapidly.  Typhoid (like cholera, which did not reach Europe until after the Napoleonic wars) is spread not by poor working conditions but by poor sanitation, but sanitation in mills and the settlements round them often was poor.
  In about 1780 a water-powered cotton mill was built for Robert Peel on the River Irwell near Radcliffe; the mill employed child labour bought from workhouses in Birmingham and London. Children were unpaid and bound apprentice until they were 21.  They boarded on an upper floor of the building, and were locked in.  Shifts were typically 10–10.5 hours in length (i.e. 12 hours after allowing for meal breaks), and the apprentices 'hot bunked' : a child who had just finished his shift would sleep in a bed only just vacated by a child now just starting his shift. Peel himself admitted that conditions at the mill were "very bad".
  In 1784 it was brought to the attention of the magistrates of the Salford Hundred that an outbreak of "low, putrid fever, of a contagious nature" had "prevailed many months in the cotton mills and among the poor, in the township of Radcliffe".  The doctors of Manchester, led by Dr Thomas Percival  were commissioned to investigate the cause of the fever and to recommend how to prevent its spread.  They could not identify the cause, and their recommendations were largely driven by the contemporary view that fevers were spread by putrid atmospheres and hence were to be combatted by removing smells and improving ventilation: 
  Windows and doors should be left open every night and during the lunch break : when the mill was running as many windows as possible were to be left open.  ( Natural ventilation was poor because there were too few opening lights in the mill windows, and they were all at the same height (too high).
  The stoves currently used for heating did not give much airflow. Chimneys should be built in each work room and turf fires lit in them to give better ventilation and combat contagion by their "strong, penetrating, and pungent" smoke.
  Rooms should be swept daily and floors washed with lime water once a week. The walls and ceilings should also be whitewashed two or three times a year.
  The apartments  should be fumigated weekly with tobacco.
  Privies should be washed daily and ventilated to ensure that the smell did not permeate to the work rooms.
  Rancid oil used to lubricate machinery should be replaced with purer oil.
  To prevent contagion and to preserve health, all employees should be involved in keeping the factory clean. Children should bathe occasionally. The clothes of those infected with fever should be washed in cold water, then in hot and be left to fumigate before being worn again. Those who died of fever should be wrapped promptly in cloth and those in the vicinity advised to smoke tobacco to avoid infection.
  The last recommendation expressed a much wider concern about the welfare of mill children:
  We earnestly recommend a longer recess from labour at noon, and a more early dismissio
caption: Sir Robert Peel
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