Leodis - Letters

Some Letters of the Alphabet

The previous article, 'All the Shapes of the Letters of the Alphabet', featured interviews with people who worked in the textile industry. On this page there are featured just four of those workers.

The photographs, hopefully, show that those workers were real people with real thoughts and hopes and dreams, just like people today. It is easy to imagine Elizabeth Bentley dancing away to the latest pop group or David Bywater kicking a football about - and most likely breaking a window!

Elizabeth Bentley was born in Leeds 1809.

She began working in a flax mill at the age of six. On 4th June,

1832, Elizabeth was interviewed by Michael Sadler and his House of Commons Committee.

Q	What work did you do?
A	A weigher in the card-room.
Q	How long did you work there?
A	From half-past five, till eight at night.
Q	What is the carding-room like?
A	Dusty. You cannot see each other for dust.
Q	Did working in the card-room affect your health?
A	Yes; it was so dusty, the dust got up my lungs, and the work was so hard. I got so bad in health, that when I pulled the baskets down, I pulled my bones out of their places.
Q	You are considerably deformed in your person in consequence of this labour?
A	Yes, I am.
Q	At what time did it come on?
A	I was about thirteen years old when it began coming, and it has got worse since. When my mother died I had to look after myself.
Q	Where are you now?
A	In the poor house.
Q	You are utterly incapable of working in the factories?
A	Yes
Q	You were willing to have worked as long as you were able, from your earliest age?
A	Yes.
Q	And you supported your widowed mother as long as you could?
A	Yes.

David Bywater was born in Leeds in 1815.

Bywater was interviewed by Michael Sadler and his House of Commons Committee on 13th April, 1832.

At what age were you when you entered upon night work in the steaming department?

I was nearly fourteen.

Will you state to this committee the labour which you endured when you were put upon long hours.

We started at one o'clock on Monday morning, and then we went on again till eight o'clock, at breakfast time; then we had half an hour; and then we went on till twelve o'clock, and had half an hour for drinking; and then we stopped at half past eleven for refreshment for an hour and a half at midnight; and then we went on again till breakfast time, when we had half an hour; and then we went on again till twelve o'clock, at dinner time, and then we had an hour: and then we stopped at five o'clock again on Tuesday afternoon for half an hour for drinking; then we went on till past eleven, and then we gave over till five o'clock on Wednesday morning.

Did you go home then?

No, we slept in the mill.

How did you sleep in the mill?

We took all our clothes off, except our shirts, and got into the warmest part of the mill, and amongst the driest cloth we could.

Did you take your meals standing?

Yes, we put our baskets on the boxes.

Were you perfect in your limbs when you undertook that long and excessive labour?

Yes

What effect did it have on your limbs?

It made me very crooked in my knees.

If you refused to work long hours, and wished to have worked a moderate length of time only, should you have been retained in your situation?

I should have had to go home. I should have been turned off directly.

Have you received any information as to what will be the consequences of your having given evidence

My overlooker told my brother that if I came to London I should never have any employment any more, nor my brother neither. My brother said he could not help it; but I expect that the first time he does a job which does not please that he will turn him away; because, if you work in a family, and one does wrong, the whole family must go.

Eliza Marshall was born in Doncaster in 1815.

At the age of nine her family moved to Leeds where she found work at a local textile factory.

Eliza was interviewed by Michael Sadler and his House of Commons Committee on 26th May, 1832.

Q	What was your hours of work?
A	When I first went to the mill we worked for six in the morning till seven in the evening. After a time we began at five in the morning, and worked till ten at night.
Q	Were you very much fatigued by that length of labour?
A	Yes
Q	Did they beat you?
A	When I was younger they used to do it often.
Q	Did the labour affect your limbs?
A	Yes, when we worked over-hours I was worse by a great deal; I had stuff to rub my knees; and I used to rub my joints a quarter of an hour, and sometimes an hour or two.
Q	Were you straight before that?
A	Yes, I was; my master knows that well enough; and when I have asked for my wages, he said that I could not run about as I had been used to do.
Q	Are you crooked now?
A	Yes, I have an iron on my leg; my knee is contracted.
Q	Have the surgeons in the Infirmary told you by what your deformity was occasioned?
A	Yes, one of them said it was by standing; the marrow is dried out of the bone, so that there is no natural strength in it.
Q	You were quite straight till you had to labour so long in those mills?
A	Yes, I was as straight as any one.

Mary Bucktrout was a fine girl of fourteen years of age.

She was working in the card-room of Mr. Holdsworth's flax mill in Leeds, and met with an accident while taking out some waste flax from the machinery, by order of the overlooker; "who," she says, "threatened to fine her 6d. a time, if she did not keep her machine clean".

She has lost by this, and a preceding accident, the right arm, a little below the elbow, and the thumb of her left hand. Her master had given her one shilling, which is all she had; and the father of the girl, who is a poor working man with five children, has been obliged to support her since.

She had been working two years in the same mill. She is remarkably interesting girl, and is at present in St. John's School, under the care of Dr. Hook, the Vicar of Leeds, receiving such instruction as may enable her to undertake the management of an infant school.

I was extremely pleased to hear her read, to see her write. The manner in which she holds her pen is rather curious; for this purpose she has a contrivance made of leather, somewhat similar to the two forefingers of a left-hand glove; these are fixed together, in close connection with a small leathern tube, for holding the pen, which, by means of this tube, is made to lie on the upper side of her two forefingers, and is moved up and down, in the act of writing, by the first and second joints of the said finger.

In this school, there is also a governess, who has lost one arm by an accident in a factory.

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