First Published in 1968. This a reprint of the account of William Dodd, who in 1841 had published a 46-page pamphlet entitled A Narrative of the Experience and Bufferings of William Dodd, a factory cripple, written by himself, and includes letters to Lord Ashley, soon to be Shaftesbury (1851). Dodd was a warehouseman and packer, with Isaac and William Wilson, Quaker woollen manufacturers in the ancient Lake District textile centre of Kendal.
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To be observed by the work-people employed in the Cotton Factory belonging to Messrs. H——s, of B—n.
RULE 1.—Each person employed in this factory engages to serve Messrs. H——s, and to give notice to his or her overlooker, or the manager, previous to leaving his or her employment, such notice to be given on Friday preceding the usual fortnight pay day; but the masters have full power to discharge any person employed therein without notice, providing they are neglecting or spoiling their work, or conducting themselves improperly.
RULE 2.—All wages shall be due and be paid in the counting-house every Saturday fortnight, and any person leaving his or her employment without the required notice, shall forfeit all wages due at the time at which he or she left such employment.
RULE 3.—Any person not coming to work at the hour stated in the time list, shall for every offence forfeit and pay three-pence, and be further abated for the time they are absent.
RULE 4.—Every spinner shall attend the mill half an hour before the time of the engine starting on each Monday morning, for the purpose of preparing his wheels and putting them into proper working order before the engine starts, and in default of such attendance, shall forfeit and pay the sum of FIVE SHILLINGS.
RULE 5.—Any spinner’s wheel or wheels standing either for want of piecers, or any other cause whatever, during the time of the steam-engine going, or not keeping them going at their proper and usual speed, shall for every hour pay sixpence,
RULE 6.—Each spinner to keep his or her wheels and wheel-house clean swept and flucked, and in default thereof, shall forfeit and pay the sum of one shilling.
RULE 7.—Any spinner discovered spinning with a crooked spindle in his wheel or wheels, shall forfeit and pay the sum of FIVE SHILLINGS.
RULE 8.—Any spinner, or young person employed, who shall damage, or in any way impair or render imperfect any of his sets of cops, whether the same be done wilfully or by the carelessness of such spinner, or any of his piecers, or other person, previous to being delivered to the proper warehouseman, shall forfeit and pay such sum of money as the masters fix, as compensation for the damage, spoil, injury, or imperfection, so committed; and that such for-feiture shall be exacted from and paid by such spinner, or other persons, as in cases where the damage, spoil, injury, or imperfection, is discovered by the proprietors or overlookers before the yarn shall be sold or removed from the premises; or in cases where such discovery and detection shall be made by any purchaser or purchasers thereof, whenever the same shall be complained of to Messrs. H——s.
RULE 9.—When any waste, rovings, utensils, or machinery of any kind, be misused, spoiled, lost, or carelessly misplaced, the person so misusing, spoiling, damaging, losing, or carelessly misplacing the same, shall forfeit one shilling, besides paying the value thereof if lost, spoiled, or damaged.
RULE 10.—Any person altering, in any way whatever, the wheels or other machinery on which he or she is employed, or permitting the same to be done without leave from a proprietor or overlooker, shall forfeit and pay TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE.
RULE 11.—Each person shall clean the necessary belonging to the room in which he or she is employed, when thereunto required by an overlooker; and any one neglecting or refusing so to do, or wilfully dirting the same, or any part of the factory yard or adjoining premises, shall forfeit and pay TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE.
RULE 12.—Any person taking cotton or waste into the necessaries, shall forfeit TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE; and any one knowing of the same, and not giving information thereof, shall forfeit and pay the sum of FIVE SHILLINGS.
RULE 13.—Any person smoking tobacco, or having a pipe for that purpose, in any part of the factory or yard, or the adjoining premises, shall forfeit and pay FIVE SHILLINGS.
RULE 14.—Any person, excepting those especially appointed for that purpose, lighting the gas, shall forfeit and pay one shilling.
RULE 15.—Any person introducing a stranger into this factory, without leave from one of the proprietors, shall forfeit TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE; and any overlooker neglecting immediately to order such stranger out, shall forfeit FIVE SHILLINGS.
RULE 16.—Any person or persons neglecting thoroughly to clean the machinery under his or their care, when required by an overlooker to do so, and to the satisfaction of such overlooker, shall forfeit and pay TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE.
RULE 17.—Any person leaving the frame at which he or she ought to be employed, or in any way neglecting his or her employment, shall forfeit and pay one shilling.
RULE 18.—Any person taking tools out of the mechanic’s or overlookers’ rooms, except the mechanic or overlookers themselves, shall forfeit and pay FIVE SHILLINGS.
RULE 19.—When any window or windows shall be broken, the party breaking the same shall pay the damage; but if the said party cannot be identified, the charges of repairing the same shall be equally borne by all persons employed in the room in which such window or windows have been broken.
RULE 20.—Any workman coming into the factory, or any other part of these premises, drunk, shall forfeit and pay FIVE SHILLINGS.
RULE 21.—Any person destroying, defacing, or damaging this paper, shall forfeit and pay FIVE SHILLINGS.
RULE 22.—Any spinner or overlooker allowing the hands in their care, under eighteen years of age, to remain in the mill during meal hours, shall forfeit and pay TWENTY SHILLINGS.
RULE 23.—To avoid any misunderstanding or disputes, it is hereby determined that when a breach has been made, in any of the foregoing rules, and the party breaking the same cannot be identified, double the penalty hereby inflicted shall be taken from the persons employed in the part where the fault has been committed, whether it extends only to one room, one overlooker’s department, or to the whole factory!
RULE 24.—That all fines, penalties, forfeitures, or sums of money hereby imposed upon, and directed to be paid by any persons employed, shall be deducted by the proprietors from the wages which, from time to time, become due and payable to such persons, that the proprietors shall have the power to remit or mitigate any of the fines, penalties, or forfeitures hereby imposed, according to their discretion, whenever they shall see cause for so doing; and that the payment of all or any of such fines, penalties, or forfeited sums of money, shall not debar the proprietors from proceeding against the offender or offenders, according to law, for the same offence, on account of which such penalties, fines, and forfeitures was inflicted.
I have obtained about one hundred tickets of fines, or, as they are generally called, “bate tickets,” from which I have selected the following as a fair sample. These tickets were made out by the manufacturer, and given to the overlooker, by whom the fines are deducted out of the earnings of the workmen. The manufacturer who made out these tickets has six or seven mills, all under the same regulations. He pays up to the list of prices as well as any other master in his neighbourhood, but the reader will perceive that he gets a good share of them back in the shape of fines.
The first form of bate tickets to which I wish to draw the reader’s attention is, for winding up a bad thread, or piecing, of which the following are verbatim specimens:—
“Tell T——A——I have bated him a 1s. for a roving piecing. Here is a beautiful sample! He had better to keep them out.”
“Tell W——C——I have bated him 2s. for roving piecings. Here they are. How beautiful for an old spinner!”
It is but justice to the spinners to say, that in this mill in 1835, there were at work 33,696 spindles, and to work these it took 52 spinners, and 208 piecers; but since that time, the machinery has been undergoing some “improvements,” so that at present there are 33,040 spindles at work, and it only takes 26 spinners, and 102 piecers, to attend them. Thus, in 1835, the average number of spindles to each spinner was 648, and to each piecer 162; but at present the average number of spindles to each spinner is 1270, and to each piecer 324. And yet with all the additional work and care requisite, if one single bad thread is put up, they are fined, as the above tickets show.
The following fines are for taking the cops off the spindles before they were as heavy as the master wished.
“Tell A——G——I have bated him a 1s. for small cops.
They are only a pound less than the last!”
Fines for bad-shaped cops:—
“Tell J——L——I have bated him 2s. 6d. for small bad bottomed cops; they are only pieces.”
“Tell A——G——I have bated him 2s. 6d. for snicks at the bottom of the cops. He had better not attempt to cheat old snickey again. If I catch him, he will not do it a third time.”
This mill is what is called a fine mill, and the spinners have no power to alter their mules. The master can put in what quality of cotton he thinks proper; but, no matter for this, if the work does not please, the spinner must suffer for all, as will be seen by the following tickets:—
“Tell O——B——I have bated him 5s. for rough, rotten, snickey, bad yarn; it’s none spun.”
“J——L——’s setts are rough, snickey, bad stuff, and bad piecing. I shall only pay for weft”
The fine in this case, by paying for weft instead of warp, amounted to 6s. 6d.
“J——M——’s setts run
The fine in this case, by paying the spinners for No. 167 or 8, instead of 172 or 173, amounted to 3s. 5
d.
“Here is a sample of O——B——‘s stuff—runs
Very sneck, rough, rubbish. I shall only pay for 200 weft.”
The fine in this case amounted to 12s. 3d.
“Tell J——O——I have bated him 5s. and shall pay for weft only, for snickey, rough, bad yarn, particularly at the bottom of the cops; here are samples.”
Fine, 5s. Wefting, 5s. 10
d. = 10s. 10
d. in this case.
The spinners are paid once a fortnight, and the reader may imagine what their feelings must be, when they are bated 6s. to 12s. at one time, for what they cannot always prevent.
Besides these, there are other fines which do not require tickets, the men being sent for into the counting-house.
A NARRATIVE OF THE EXPERIENCE AND SUFFERINGS OF WILLIAM DODD
A
NARRATIVE
OF THE
EXPERIENCE AND SUFFERINGS
WILLIAM DODD,
A FACTORY CRIPPLE.
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF THE HARDSHIPS AND SUFFERINGS HE ENDURED IN EARLY LIFE, UNDER WHAT DIFFICULTIES HE ACQUIRED HIS EDUCATION, THE EFFECTS OF FACTORY LABOUR ON HIS MIND AND PERSON, THE UNSUCCESSFUL EFFORTS MADE BY HIM TO OBTAIN A LIVELIHOOD IN SOME OTHER LINE OF LIFE, THE COMPARISON HE DRAWS BETWEEN AGRICULTURAL AND MANUFACTURING LABOURERS, AND OTHER MATTERS RELATING TO THE WORKING CLASSES.
SECOND EDITION.
To
LORD ASHLEY, M.P.
MY LORD,
The sympathy you were pleased to express for me, after seeing a brief outline of my sufferings, and witnessing the effects of the factory system on my person, and believing that a more extensive circulation of my narrative may, under Providence, be the means of assisting the strenuous exertions your Lordship is making on behalf of that oppressed class of work-people to which I belong, I have been induced to prepare for the press an enlarged and corrected account, to be issued in a separate form; and beg, as a token of gratitude, to dedicate these, my humble endeavours, to you, who are so thoroughly conversant with the momentous subject to which my remarks refer.
And am,
MY LORD,
Your Lordship’s,
Much obliged,
Humble Servant,
WILLIAM DODD.
23, Little Gray’s Inn Lane, June 18, 1841.
A NARRATIVE, &c.
DEAR READER,—I wish it to be distinctly and clearly understood, that, in laying before you the following sheets, I am not actuated by any motive of ill-feeling to any party with whom I have formerly been connected; on the contrary, I have a personal respect for some of my former masters, and am convinced that, had they been in any other line of life, they would have shone forth as ornaments to the age in which they lived; but having witnessed the efforts of some writers (who can know nothing of the factories by experience) to mislead the minds of the public upon a subject of so much importance, I feel it to be my duty to give to the world a fair and impartial account of the working of the factory system, as I have found it in twenty-five years’ experience.
I cannot, at this distance of time, take upon myself to say what were the predisposing circumstances by which my parents were induced to send their children to the factories, especially as I was very young at the time my eldest sister first went, and cannot be supposed then to have known much of their affairs. I shall, therefore, confine myself, in the following narrative, to such facts as may serve to show the effects of the system upon my mind, person, and condition.
Of four children in our family, I was the only boy; and we were all at different periods, as we could meet with employers, sent to work in the factories. My eldest sister was ten years of age before she went; consequently, she was, in a manner, out of harm’s way, her bones having become firmer and stronger than ours, and capable of withstanding the hardships to which she was exposed much better than we could: but her services soon became more valuable in another line of industry. My second sister went at the age of seven years, and, like myself, has been made a cripple for life, and doomed to end her days in the factories or workhouse. My youngest sister also went early, but was obliged to be taken away, like many more, the work being too hard for her although she afterwards stood a very hard service.
I was born on the 18th of June, 1804; and in the latter part of 1809, being then turned of five years of age, I was put to work at card-making, and about a year after I was sent, with my sisters, to the factories. I was then a fine, strong, healthy, hardy boy, straight in every limb, and remarkably stout and active. It was predicted by many of our acquaintance, that I should be the very model of my father, who was the picture of robust health and strength, and, in his time, had been the don of the village, and had carried off the prize at almost every manly sport.
A circumstance occurred between my fifth and sixth year, which places the fact of my being strong and active beyond a doubt. I was then about getting my first boy’s dress of trousers and jacket, and, being stout, I had long felt ashamed of my petticoats, and was very glad when I heard that a friend had offered to supply my parents with the necessary articles of dress for me, giving them a sufficient length of time for payment. This friend lived at the distance of three-quarters of a mile from our house; and I well remember going with my eldest sister for my clothes. There was a great quantity of ready-made dresses, one of which was being selected and tried on, the tailor thought it was rather too little; but I thought it would do very well, especially as it had got a watch-pocket in it; and not liking the idea of losing what I had got, or of having again to wear the petticoats, I ran out of the shop, and did not stop till I had got home, my sister calling after, but not being able to overtake me. I was put into the factories soon after, and have never been able to perform this feat of running three-quarters of a mile since.
From six to fourteen years of age, I went through a series of uninterrupted, unmitigated suffering, such as very rarely falls t...
Table of contents
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction to the New Edition
PREFACE
Table of Contents
LETTER I.
LETTER II.
LETTER III.
LETTER IV.
LETTER V.
LETTER VI.
LETTER VII.
LETTER VIII.
LETTER IX.
LETTER X.
LETTER XI.
LETTER XII.
LETTER XIII.
LETTER XIV.
LETTER XV.
LETTER XVI.
LETTER XVII.
LETTER XVIII.
LETTER XIX.
LETTER XX.
LETTER XXI.
LETTER XXII.
LETTER XXIII.
LETTER XXIV.
LETTER XXV.
LETTER XXVI.
LETTER XXVII.
LETTER XXVIII.
LETTER XXIX.
LETTER XXX.
APPENDIX A.—Extracts from the Reports of Commissioners DRINK-WATER and STUART, on flax mills
APPENDIX B.—Factory labour market—Invoices of families
APPENDIX C.—Narratives of ditto
APPENDIX D.—Tables showing the result of factory labour
APPENDIX E.—A specimen of rules and fines in factories
