Child Workers and Industrial Health in Britain, 1780–1850, by Peter Kirby

Abstract

Child Workers and Industrial Health in Britain, 1780-1850, by Peter Kirby. People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History, Vol. 2. Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2013. xii, 212 pp. 17.99 [pounds sterling] UK (paper). In this study Kirby seeks to dispel the myth that child workers in industrial occupations necessarily suffered worse health due to the nature of their work than did other child workers. He argues that this idea stemmed largely from the misleading and exaggerated claims of refonners in the 1830s factory debates and that it has not previously been the subject of rigorous research. As Kirby demonstrates, factory work was generally less intensive than other forms of child labour, such as agriculture, mining, and even domestic manufacture. This careful work revises a long-held stereotype. The book builds well on Kirby's other research on child labour. The author begins his study with an exploration of the wider environment of manufacturing, which was one characterized by massive population growth and rapid urbanization, with its associated problems of overcrowding, poor sanitation, poverty, and increased illness in and death of infants and children. Rising child dependency (with almost forty percent of the population aged under fifteen) was mirrored by increases in the supply of child labour and poorer children were put into work at early ages, particularly those who had lost a parent, a finding shared by other recent historians of child labour. The author then assesses the specific hazards of the factory system for child workers in terms of the risk of deformities, the effect of raw materials, industrial injuries, and ill-treatment. He then examines the relative impact of the wider manufacturing environment and the workplace setting upon the heights and strength of child workers, with Kirby giving greater weight to environment over occupational health. However, as Kirby expertly highlights, there are significant methodological problems in isolating occupational health from the wider epidemiological and environmental causes of sickness in this period, a relative dark age of information on morbidity and mortality, which is unfortunate given that this was a major period of occupational and epidemiological transitions. Kirby draws upon modern studies of occupational medicine and the health of child workers in developing economies in order to help him illuminate the difficult contemporary evidence. Stories of poor child health became integral to the Ten Hours Movement and white slavery. Most of the medical practitioners giving evidence to parliamentary select committees had little or no experience of the factory work they were commenting upon. The author concludes that the medical profession actually played no role in improving child industrial ill-health and may even have diverted attention away from it. …