Website Informantion 1:
If you were transported back in time to the middle of 19th century or thereabouts, many aspects of life in Shetland would have surprised you.
At the end of the 18th century, the Napoleonic Wars shook Europe. This was the period of the Press Gangs, and Shetland paid a heavy price in men - possibly one third of the entire male population served at sea, mostly in the Navy. The wars closed many existing European markets for fish, which meant increased hardship. This was also a period of hard winters and poor harvests.
The end of the Napoleonic Wars also heralded a growth in the number of Shetland men taking part in Arctic whaling.
An Arctic whaler in Lerwick harbour
From the 1830’s, overpopulation was becoming a problem. In 1846/47, there was a potato crop failure due to blight, and this, coupled with a series of setbacks in the fishing, led to the decade later known as the ‘hungry Forties’. The meal roads are a result of this period.
By the 1870’s, emigration was becoming a more and more attractive option. It is estimated that between 1861 and 1881, one quarter of the population left Shetland, mainly for North America, Australia and New Zealand.
The Truck Acts of the 1870’s and the Crofter’s Act of 1886 spelt the end of the truck system and put paid to fishing tenures. However, Shetland’s population was still too large to be supported by crofting alone.
A herring boom from the mid-1870’s onwards, however, helped offset this, and at least the new economic system was free of the old landlord/tenant bondage. Many smaller local merchants and fishcurers benefitted greatly, as did the community as a whole.
The herring fishery reached its peak at the turn of the century, but failed just before World War I and never really recovered.
Website Information 2
Many parents were unwilling to allow their children to work in these new . To overcome this labour shortage factory owners had to find other ways of obtaining workers. One solution to the problem was to buy children from orphanages and workhouses. The children became known as pauper apprentices. This involved the children signing contracts that virtually made them the property of the factory owner.
Pauper apprentices were cheaper to house than adult workers. It cost who owned the large Quarry Bank Mill at Styal, a £100 to build a cottage for a family, whereas his , that cost £300, provided living accommodation for over 90 children.
The same approach was taken by the owners of silk mills. who owned a in Braintree, Essex, took children from workhouses in . Although offered children of all ages he usually took them from "within the age of 10 and 13". Courtauld insisted that each child arrived "with a complete change of common clothing". A contract was signed with the workhouse that stated that Courtauld would be paid £5 for each child taken. Another £5 was paid after the child's first year.
The children also signed a contract with Courtauld that bound them to the mill until the age of 21. This helped to reduce Courtauld's labour costs. Whereas adult males at Courtauld's mills earned 7s. 2d., children under 11 received only 1s. 5d. a week.
Owners of large textile mills purchased large numbers of children from workhouses in all the large towns and cities. By the late 1790s about a third of the workers in the cotton industry were pauper apprentices. Child workers were especially predominant in large factories in rural areas. For example, in 1797, of the 310 wortkers employed by Birch Robinson & Co in the village of Backbarrow, 210 were parish apprentices. However, in the major textile towns, such as and , parish apprenticeships was fairly uncommon.
