You are a photographer and journalist.

You have traveled to industrial regions in England and took photographs of young workers that you have also interviewed.

You have been invited to the House of Commons to testify on what you have heard and seen.

Please comment your interviews and pictures and explain why the Factory Acts do not seem efficient to protect the children

Sarah Gooder, aged 8 years I’m a trapper in the Gawber pit. It does not tire me, but I have to trap without a light and I’m scared. I go at four and sometimes half past three in the morning, and come out at five and half past. I never go to sleep. Sometimes I sing when I’ve light, but not in the dark; I dare not sing then. I don’t like being in the pit.

I have been 6 years last September in a pit. I hurry [push] by myself. I find it middling hard. It has been a very wet pit before the engine was put up. I have had to hurry up to my calves of my legs in water. I go down at 6 a.m, and sometimes 7; and I come out at 5, and sometimes 6. I don’t like it so well. It’s cold, and there’s no fire in the pit. I’d rather be out of pits altogether. I’d rather wait on my grandmother. I push with my head sometimes, it makes my head sore sometimes, so that I cannot bear it touched; it is soft too. I have often had headaches, and colds, and coughs, and sore throats. I cannot read. I can say my letters.