Child Labour
Quarry Bank Mill is notable for its use of unpaid child apprentices, a system that continued until 1847, with the last child to be indentured starting work in 1841. Greg employed Peter Holland, father of the Royal Physician Sir Henry Holland, 1st Baronet and uncle of Elizabeth Gaskell, as mill doctor. Holland was responsible for the health of the children and other workers, and was the first doctor to be employed in such a capacity. The children lived in a separate building near the factory called the Apprentice House. Most children came from workhouses. They would work long days with schoolwork and gardening after coming back from the mill. The work could sometimes be dangerous, with fingers being occasionally lost. However, most children were willing to work in the mill because life at a workhouse would be worse. Today the Apprentice House is open to the public with timed tours being conducted by costumed interpreters.
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Famous quotes containing the words child and/or labour:
“If you are not willing to lose all the labour you have been at to break the will of your child, to bring his will into subjection to yours that it may be afterward subject to the will of God, there is one advice which, though little known, should be particularly attended. . . . It is this; never, on any account, give a child anything that it cries for. . . . If you give a child what he cries for, you pay him for crying: and then he will certainly cry again.”
—John Welsley (18th century)
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms 90:10.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662)