The Vicarage,
Aug. 10, 1836.

My Lord,

Having the welfare of my crowded and poverty-stricken parish at heart, and being very greatly exercised in my mind as to the condition of the children living therein, I have thought it well to write to you giving you a brief outline of certain investigations I have made—of which I am now preparing full reports—in the hope that you will interest yourself in the matter, and bring the question of child labour before the Upper House.

My Lord, to say that I am appalled is to use a euphemism. I am shocked beyond all power of expression. Few of the horrors recounted of the African Slave-trade—now so happily abolished—can surpass the callous cruelties inflicted upon children of our own race, living in our own towns—not only by their task-masters and slave-drivers (for one can use no other term), but by their parents even, who, though not altogether dead to feelings of affection, are so ignorant and so harassed that they cannot grasp the idea that any better system is possible.

Let me cite two or three cases, my Lord, in general terms. (Detailed evidence I reserve for my report.)

First there are the boy chimney-sweepers. Orphan boys of eight, nine, and ten, are given away or even sold by the town authorities—who are only too thankful to be rid of the encumbrance—to abandoned ruffians, who, quite dead to all feelings of pity, treat them worse than they treat their half-starved asses. The boys are flogged incessantly, kicked, and starved; they spend their lives climbing about the chimneys of the district in an atmosphere of soot and filth; and if the work is not done soon enough to suit the slave-drivers, as often as not a fire is lit below, and the boy falls burnt and struggling, half-suffocated with the smoke. And the only excuse that the town authorities bring forward for their connivance at this horrible cruelty, is the fact that “many chimneys in the district are built in the old style, and it is absurd to allow these new-fangled ideas of humanity to interfere with the comfort of the home.”

My parish, as you are aware, my Lord, is in the mining area; and I have found by personal investigations that the condition of the children in the pits is worse even than that of the chimney boys. For a miserable wage of one shilling a week, and an occasional extra penny for several hours’ work overtime, hundreds of little boys are kept working down in the pits for from twelve to sixteen hours a day. Often the children are so young—very many of them are not more than six or seven years old—and so feeble that they are carried to the pit’s mouth by their fathers, and this at four o’clock in the morning. They are then taken down to work all day, even during “meals”, and only return to the surface after daylight is over.

I myself have been down the shafts many times, and the sights I have seen there are pitiful in the extreme. The galleries in deep mines are provided with doors and traps, “to prevent inflammable drafts”, and children of six are trained to sit by themselves all day long, in the dark, opening and shutting these doors as the trucks pass and repass. Can it be wondered at that these infants often become feeble-minded?

But the lot of the older children is even worse. Little boys of eight and nine are harnessed by chains round the hips to small flat trucks, and these they pull on hands and knees through passages only a couple or two and a half feet high. The mines are very wet, and often these narrow pipes through which the children drag their loads are more than half full of water.

Their food is wretchedly inadequate; they are beaten incessantly to keep them awake, for, as the men have often told me, the boys “will fall asleep over their work”; and their home life, such as it is, is wretched and demoralizing beyond words.

In this letter, my Lord, I can do no more than touch upon the surface of things. But for the sake of countless children’s lives, I beg you will interest yourself in this matter, that you will read the full report which I have prepared, and use your great influence towards causing these horrors to cease.

Believe me, my Lord,

Your humble and obedient servant,

H. Stokes.