- Explain changes that occurred in technology (for example, steam-driven spinning mills, railways and steam ships) which led to factories and cities
- Cut out and paste inventions on worksheet above into their books.

Quote & Photograph retrieved from: https://schoolshistory.org.uk/topics/british-history/industrial-revolution/before-the-industrial-revolution/

Questions for students:
1. Describe the impact of factories, mines and cities on the environment, and on population growth and distribution

2. Outline the growth of trade unions as a response to the impacts of the Industrial Revolution

Teacher & student will write a paragraph (on the board) justifying the significance of an invention in terms of the social, environmental or economic continuities and changes.

My father was a glass blower. When I was eight he died and our family had to go to the Bristol Workhouse¹. My brother was sent from Bristol workhouse in the same way as many other children were — cart-loads at a time. 

My mother did not know where he was for two years. He was taken off in the dead of night without her knowledge, and the parish officers would never tell her where he was. It was the mother of Joseph Russell who first found out where the children were, and told my mother. 

We set off together, my mother and I, we walked the whole way from Bristol to Cressbrook Mill in Derbyshire. We were many days on the road.

Mrs Newton fondled over my mother when we arrived. My mother had brought her a present of little glass ornaments. She got these ornaments from some of the workmen, thinking they would be a very nice present to carry to the mistress at Cressbrook, for her kindness to my brother.

My brother told me that Mrs Newton's fondling was all a blind [a trick or lie]; but I was so young and foolish, and so glad to see him again; that I did not heed what he said, and could not be persuaded to leave him. 

They would not let me stay unless I would take the shilling binding money².

I took the shilling and I was very proud of it. They took me into the counting house and showed me a piece of paper with a red sealed horse on, which they told me to touch, and then to make a cross, which I did. 

This meant I had to stay at Cressbrook Mill till I was 21. Our common food was oatcake. It was thick and coarse. This oatcake was put into cans. Boiled milk and water was poured into it. This was our breakfast and supper. Our dinner was potato pie with boiled bacon in it, a bit here and a bit there, so thick with fat we could scarce eat it, though we were hungry enough to eat anything.

Tea we never saw, nor butter. We had cheese and brown bread once a year. We were only allowed three meals a day though we got up at five in the morning and worked till nine at night. We had eight pence a year given us to spend: four pence at the fair, and four pence at the wakes³. We had three miles to go to spend it. Very proud we were of it, for it seemed such a sight of money, we did not know how to spend it…'

‘Sarah Carpenter's testimony about life at Cressbrook Mill’, The Ashton Chronicle, 23 June 1849, quoted in ‘Cotton Times: Understanding the Industrial Revolution.' http://www.cottontimes.co.uk/childreno2.htm

 

Source: Engels, F. (1892). The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., p. 53. In Modern History Source Book. Retrieved 3 April 2012, from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ mod/1844engels.asp

 

"It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.” 

Reference: Taylor, T 2014, The Industrial Revolution, Nelson Cengage Learning, Melbourne.

 

Hannah Goode: "I work at Mr. Wilson's mill. I think the youngest child is about 7. I daresay there are 20 under 9 years. It is about half past five by our clock at home when we go in....We come out at seven by the mill. We never stop to take our meals, except at dinner.

William Crookes is overlooker in our room. He is cross-tempered sometimes. He does not beat me; he beats the little children if they do not do their work right...I have sometimes seen the little children drop asleep or so, but not lately. If they are catched asleep they get the strap. They are always very tired at night...I can read a little; I can't write. I used to go to school before I went to the mill; …

Mrs. Smith: "I have three children working in Wilson's mill; one 11, one 13, and the other 14. They work regular hours there. We don't complain. If they go to drop the hours, I don't know what poor people will do. We have hard work to live as it is. ...My husband is of the same mind about it...last summer my husband was 6 weeks ill; we pledged almost all our things to live; the things are not all out of pawn yet. ...We complain of nothing but short wages...My children have been in the mill three years. I have no complaint to make of their being beaten...I would rather they were beaten than fined."

Reference: Reese, L 2018, Textile Workers Industrial revolution, accessed 28 November 2021, http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/textile.html

Context Statement: In the 1830’s the British government began moves to regulate factory conditions. Sources B and C come from evidence of textile workers in Wilson’s Mill, Nottingham that were presented to the Factory Inquiry Commission in 1833.