Ten hours Act
Instructions to Mr. Meadows
You are a writer and poet and social critic. You are a friend from Charles Dickens.
You are appalled by the working conditions in factories and you use your art to raise public attention on the work conditions of the poorer.
Inspired by the works proposed here, write a very short essay or poem conveying the desperation of the poor workers who can not support their families
Where poverty and disease are rife and where infant mortality is shockingly high. Welcome to the slums of Victorian London in 19th century Britain.
Evidence of children working in the mines, from the 1842
Parliamentary Commission’s Report on conditions in the mines
No. 208. — Mary Margerson, aged 16. Charlesworth’s Wood Pit
I work in a pit above the one where Fanny Drake works. We work from 6
in the morning till 5 at night. I don’t stop for any dinner. I get muck up
generally all the time, and I rest odd times. I hurry alone. I am quite sure
I have nobody to help me. I work for Joseph Lister, who pays me. The
pit is very wet. The water comes up nearly to my calves generally, till they
let it off. It is often so for a week together. I find it very heavy work. I
am very tired when I come home. I hurry both muck and coals, and I
can’t keep count of the number of corves per day. I am well enough used
by the men. I can’t read. I go to Sunday-school.
There is a cold wind in the pit.
I don’t like being in the pit. My father and mother are alive, but they
are always sickly. I have four sisters, and three work in the pit; and I
have a brother, and he is going 5 years old, and he does not work yet.
The Cry of the Children
(extracts)
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years ?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, —
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows ;
The young birds are chirping in the nest ;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows ;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west—
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly !
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
Do you question the young children in the sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so ?
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago —
The old tree is leafless in the forest —
The old year is ending in the frost —
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest —
The old hope is hardest to be lost :
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland ?
Alas, the wretched children ! they are seeking
Death in life, as best to have !
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,
With a cerement from the grave.
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city —
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do —
Pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through !
But they answer, " Are your cowslips of the meadows
Like our weeds anear the mine ?
Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine!
They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,
For they think you see their angels in their places,
With eyes meant for Deity ;—
"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, —
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ?
Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants,
And your purple shews your path ;
But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence
Than the strong man in his wrath !"