Research Note “DAYS AT THE FACTORIES’’: A TOUR OF VICTORIAN INDUSTRY WITH THE PENNY MAGAZINE GEOFFREY TWEEDALE Historians writing about 19th-century technology are often frus trated by the destruction of so many business records. Fortunately, firsthand accounts and descriptions of 19th-century industry survive in many contemporary technical and trade periodicals. The usefulness of the “American Industry” series in Scientific American has been high lighted by Carroll W. Pursell, Jr.1 This bibliographical note describes and assesses a similarly neglected source in the popular press on the other side of the Atlantic—the “Days at the Factories” series, published in The Penny Magazine of the Societyfor the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in London under the editorship of Charles Knight. Charles Knight (1791 — 1873) was the son of a Windsor bookseller, Charles Knight. The latter was known as a man of cultivation and public spirit and, according to one authority, was a half-brother of George III. Apparently, the king frequented Knight’s bookshop where he laughed over Gillray’s caricatures ofhim and leafed through Paine’s Rights ofMan.2 Charles Knight went into his father’s publishing business and in 1820 established the Plain Englishman, a venture that was intended to further Knight’s career as a popular instructor. His mission henceforth was the diffusion of knowledge among the poor by means of cheap books. Knight’s first venture was short-lived, but it provided a model Dr. Tweedale runs the National Archive for the History of Computing in the De partment of Science and Technology Policy at Manchester University. He is grateful to Dr. David J. Jeremy of Manchester Polytechnic for helpful comments on an early draft. *C. W. Pursell, Jr., “Testing a Carriage: The ‘American Industry’ Series of Scientific American," Technology and Culture 17 (January 1976): 82-92. See also David A. Hounshell , “Public Relations or Public Understanding? The American Industries Series in Scientific American," Technology and Culture 21 (October 1980): 589—93. 2On the younger Knight, see Leslie Stephen and Sydney Lee, eds., Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 1885-1933), 21:245-48.© 1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040- 165X/88/2904-0003$01.00 888 A Tour of Victorian Industry with The Penny Magazine 889 for his later publications and brought him to the attention of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The society had been formed in 1826 by Lord Henry Brougham and a group of interested friends, and it too intended to promote cheap but well-produced publications for the literate working class. In fact, the society’s name was taken from an editorial written by Knight in the Plain Englishman. In 1828 Knight undertook to superintend the publications of the society, forming an alliance with William Clowes, one of the more progressive printers of the day, who had been the first to apply the steam press for book printing. Under Knight’s direction the publications of the society were to be wide-ranging, encompassing popular almanacs and pictorial editions of Shakespeare’s plays,3 but from the first (as befits material that was intended for the “workingman”), industrial reportage was an impor tant element. Knight’s acquaintance with British industry had begun in earnest when he toured the manufacturing towns in about 1828. In his autobiography he recalled: In the factories of Manchester I had entered on a new stage of self-education. I had previously seen nothing of machinery, be yond the Printing machine, whose gradual improvement and ca pabilities I had been watching with more than common interest. My curiosity was roused to follow and understand, as far as I could, the great principles of the wondrous inventions by which all the processes connected with the spinning and weaving of cotton were rapidly and cheaply accomplished. They dwelt in my mind, and gave precision to my language when I wrote “The Results of Machinery” in December, 1830.4 5 The Results of Machinery was published by the society to still the agricultural unrest and machine breaking that followed the harvest of 1830. According to Knight this “little book” sold 50,000 copies, and it was followed in 1831 by a second...