Joshua Drake called in; and Examined.

You say you would prefer moderate labour and lower wages; are you pretty comfortable upon your present wages?
>>I have no wages, but two days a week at present; but when I am working at some jobs we can make a little, and at others we do very poorly.
When a child gets 3s.a week, does that go much towards its subsistence?
>>No, it will not keep it, as it should do.
When they got 6s.or 7s.when they were pieceners, if they reduced the hours of labour, would they not get less?
>>They would get a halfpenny a day less, but I would rather have less wages and less work.
Do you receive any parish assistance?
>>No.
Why do you allow your children to go to work at those places where they are ill-treated or over-worked?
>>Necessity compels a man that has children to let them work.
Then you would not allow your children to go to those factories under the present system, if it was not from necessity?
>>No.
Supposing there was a law passed to limit the hours of labour to eight hours a day, or something of that sort, of course you are aware that a manufacturer could not afford to pay them the same wages?
>>No, I do not suppose that they would, but at the same time I would rather have it, and I believe that it would bring me into employ; and if I lost 5d.a day from my children's work, and I got half-a-crown myself, it would be better.
How would it get you into employ?
>>By finding more employment at the machines, and work being more regularly spread abroad, and divided amongst the people at large.
One man is now regularly turned off into the street, whilst another man is running day and night.
You mean to say that if the manufacturers were to limit the hours of labour, they would employ more people?
>>Yes.

Mr. Matthew Crabtree called in; and Examined.

What age are you?
>>Twenty-two.
What is your occupation?
>>A blanket manufacturer.
Have you ever been employed in a factory?
>>Yes.
At what age did you first go to work in one?
>>Eight.
How long did you continue in that occupation?
>>Four years.
Will you state the hours of labour at the period when you first went to the factory, in ordinary times?
>>From 6 in the morning to 8 at night.
Fourteen hours?
>>Yes.
With what intervals for refreshment and rest?
>>An hour at noon.
When trade was brisk what were your hours?
>>From 5 in the morning to 9 in the evening.
Sixteen hours?
>>Yes.
With what intervals at dinner?
>>An hour.
How far did you live from the mill?
>>About two miles.
Was there any time allowed for you to get your breakfast in the mill?
>>No.
Did you take it before you left your home?
>>Generally.
During those long hours of labour could you be punctual; how did you awake?
>>I seldom did awake spontaneously; I was most generally awoke or lifted out of bed, sometimes asleep, by my parents.
Were you always in time?
>>No.
What was the consequence if you had been too late?
>>I was most commonly beaten.
Severely?
>>Very severely, I thought.
In those mills is chastisement towards the latter part of the day going on perpetually?
>>Perpetually.
So that you can hardly be in a mill without hearing constant crying?
>>Never an hour, I believe.
When you got home at night after this labour, did you feel much fatigued?
>>Very much so.
Had you any time to be with your parents, and to receive instruction from them?
>>No.
What did you do?
>>All that we did when we got home was to get the little bit of supper that was provided for us and go to bed immediately. If the supper had not been ready directly, we should have gone to sleep while it was preparing.

Mr. John Hall called in; and Examined.

Will you describe to the Committee the position in which the children stand to piece in a worsted mill, as it may serve to explain the number and severity of those cases of distortion which occur?
>>At the top to the spindle there is a fly goes across, and the child takes hold of the fly by the ball of his left hand, and he throws the left shoulder up and the right knee inward;

Elizabeth Bentley, called in; and Examined.

What age are you?
>>Twenty-three.
Where do you live?
>>At Leeds.
What time did you begin to work at a factory?
>>When I was six years old.
At whose factory did you work?
>>Mr. Busk's.
What kind of mill is it?
>>Flax-mill.
What was your business in that mill?
>>I was a little doffer.
What were your hours of labour in that mill?
>>From 5 in the morning till 9 at night, when they were thronged.
For how long a time together have you worked that excessive length of time?
>>For about half a year.
What were your usual hours when you were not so thronged?
>>From 6 in the morning till 7 at night.
What time was allowed for your meals?
>>Forty minutes at noon.
Had you any time to get your breakfast or drinking?
>>No, we got it as we could.
And when your work was bad, you had hardly any time to eat it at all?
>>No; we were obliged to leave it or take it home, and when we did not take it, the overlooker took it, and gave it to his pigs.
Do you consider doffing a laborious employment?
>>Yes.
Explain what it is you had to do?
>>When the frames are full, they have to stop the frames, and take the flyers off, and take the full bobbins off, and carry them to the roller; and then put empty ones on, and set the frame going again.
Does that keep you constantly on your feet?
>>Yes, there are so many frames, and they run so quick.
Your labour is very excessive?
>>Yes; you have not time for any thing.
Suppose you flagged a little, or were too late, what would they do?
>>Strap us.
Are they in the habit of strapping those who are last in doffing?
>>Yes.
Constantly?
>>Yes.
Girls as well as boys?
>>Yes.
Have you ever been strapped?
>>Yes.
Severely?
>>Yes.
Supposing you had not been in time enough in the morning at these mills, what would have been the consequence?
>>We should have been quartered.
What do you mean by that?
>>If we were a quarter of an hour too late, they would take off half an hour; we only got a penny an hour, and they would take a halfpenny more.
The fine was much more considerable than the loss of time?
>>Yes.
Were you also beaten for being too late?
>>No, I was never beaten myself, I have seen the boys beaten for being too late.
Were you generally there in time?
>>Yes; my mother had been up at 4 o'clock in the morning, and at 2 o'clock in the morning; the colliers used to go to their work about 3 or 4 o'clock, and when she heard them stirring she has got up out of her warm bed, and gone out and asked them the time; and I have sometimes been at Hunslet Car at 2 o'clock in the morning, when it was streaming down with rain, and we have had to stay until the mill was opened.

When Sadler was defeated in the 1833 election his successor, as leader in the campaign for shorter hours, was Lord Ashley, later Earl of Shaftesbury.

During the election Sadler observed that the slave children in the West Indies worked only six hours per day while John Marshall for his part claimed that 69 hours per week was acceptable and that the 65 hours worked by children in his factory did them no harm.
Unfortunately, the workers who flocked in their thousands to hear Sadler speak did not have the right to vote.

The Benefit of the Factory Legislation

[Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Apr 4, 1879]

The Earl of Shaftesbury........

'The other is the old, the often-repeated, and as often-refuted, argument that the work is light. Light! Why, no doubt, much of it is light, if measured by the endurance of some three or four minutes.
But what say you, my Lords, to a continuity of toil, in a standing posture, in a poisonous atmosphere, during 13 hours, with 15 minutes of rest? Why, the stoutest man in England, were he made, in such a condition of things, to do nothing during the whole of that time but be erect on his feet and stick pins in a pincushion, would sink under the burden. What say you, then, of children - children of the tenderest years?
Why, they become stunted, crippled, deformed, useless. I speak what I know - I state what I have seen. When I visited Bradford, in Yorkshire, in 1838, being desirous to see the condition of the children - for I knew that they were employed at very early ages in the worsted business.... I asked for a collection of cripples and deformities. In a short time more than 80 were gathered in a large courtyard. They were mere samples of the entire mass. I assert without exaggeration that no power of language could describe the varieties, and I may say, the cruelties, in all these degradations of the human form. They stood or squatted before me in all the shapes of the letters of the alphabet. This was the effect of prolonged toil on the tender frames of children at early ages.