Child Labour

As factories grew the need for people to work in them was great.  Children had to do jobs that would be considered unacceptable today. As you are now in year 8 you would have been working for some 6 years already!

This page looks at some of the jobs children had to do.

On the left a child is carrying cotton in a basket on his head, while on the right the child is having to clean under the working machine.

The pictures on the right show

children having to pull wagons of coal in a mine.

The chimney sweep on the left had a very hard life. On some occasions when the children went up the chimney and fell asleep they would be 'smoked' out. This resulted in several being suffocated. The two boys on the right are sweeping the streets and ask for payment from any passer by.

The terrible fogs in London and other major industrial towns caused problems for travel at night. As there were few lights, children would charge a few pence to guide wealthy people to where they wanted to go.