Working Conditions during the Industrial Revolution

1. The Sadler Committee provided evidence that led to the Factory Acts of 1833. They revealed evidence of young children who were forced to work long hours in dangerous conditions. One child told the Sadler Committee stated that he was paid less than the other workers were given in the textile factories. Another case involved a boy who had worked in the factories from age 8 and he was then 22 years old. He worked fourteen to sixteen hours a day, starting at five in the morning. He had to walk to and from work, which was two miles away, and if he was late, he would be beaten. He was expected to work as quick as a machine and if he did not, he was also beaten. Finally, when he came home, he had to cook. In another case, a young girl, Elizabeth was an eight year old child. She worked from twelve to fifteen hours with only a forty minute break. If she didn’t work fast enough, she was also beaten. Peter Smart was another child whose overseer made his workers work nineteen hour days while the parents were paid for the children’s work.

2. Chadwick’s Report on Sanitary Conditions, I believe, was the most influential piece of evidence in the making of the Factory Acts. when people moved from their farms to the city, there were diseases and famine. They were infected with cholera and rickets due to their dirty living conditions and contaminated food and water. However, the upper class were not as greatly affected by disease because they were able to afford plumbing and did not live in such small and crowded apartments. The upper class’s lives were much more hygienic than the lower classes also. In the second part of the Report, the immune systems of the young population was unable to fight disease because their body had not created antibodies for the disease yet so the young people were sick allot. Because there was nothing to treat disease, the diseases spread like wildfire. Everyone was poor and and their was always trash on the streets, this also started disease. The water that people used was contaminated because the only the rich could afford clean water. The contaminated water brought cholera and other disease.