At Quarry Bank Mill, sixty-nine hours a week were worked and the greatest number worked a day was twelve hours and forty-eight minutes, you also had to consider making up time for when there was too little or too much water at the mill. Thomas Priestly said they worked from 6am to 7pm with ten minutes for breakfast and an hour for lunch, two days a week and half an hour on other days. They were fed well at Styal because Greg believed that they wouldn’t work as well on an empty stomach. At the Urban Mills the working day began at 5.30am and ended at 7pm, including the meals. John Pilkington worked in several mills and in two of them from 7am to 8pm. He said that the children had to clean the machinery during their lunch break. The working hours at Styal were typical of those at that time.
Children at Styal were never given corporal punishment because Greg did not believe in it. Discipline at the urban mills was very different. These were violent times for children, they were often hit or kicked by the spinners who might even be their own parents. John Pilkington said ‘I did see many get badly used.’ Engels said that the workers were worse off than in America in the ways they were being treated. He claimed that Leech had told him that clocks were being altered in the mornings some of the factory workers were fined for being late (95 were late at a time.) Then the clocks would be changed to 15 minutes slow in the evening so workers worked overtime in the evening. This made Styal un-typical.
At Styal farm cottages and terraced housed were provided in the village of Styal, they were clean and healthy looking with two bedrooms upstairs and a parlour and a kitchen downstairs. Some had a cellar. They had an oven and a cistern for rain water. Each had a large garden where fresh produce could be grown. The rent was two shillings and 6 pence, which were higher than for cottages in the surrounding area. Engels wrote of the housing provided by urban mills as being ‘filthy, overcrowded, evil smelling, disease ridden slum and it had the most horrible dwellings which I have yet be held.’ The housing conditions at Styal were very good which made Styal un-typical.
At Styal in the 1820s a shop was opened in the village. It stocked staple foods for the factory workers. The shop at Styal was run on a co-operative system so that the profits could be shared. The Greg’s also enjoyed interest on the money they invested. In the 1820s the shop made an annual profit of about £150 on sales of around £1,700. In many mills, tokens were taken in place of money, this meant they could only spend the tokens in that certain shop. Sometimes the buyers would be tricked into buying poor quality food such as, sugar which was weighted with sand and dirt, Beer had salt added to increase thirst, sulphuric acid to improve flavour and tobacco for flavouring, Flour was weighted with alum, chalk or pipe clay and mild was watered down with added chalk and flour.
The Apprentice House
In 1790 an apprentice house was built in Styal which could house up to 100 children. By 1800 there were 90 children living in the house, 60 girls and 30 boys. This was half the work force at the mill at the time. Most of the children were aged between 10 years and 12 years and were contracted to work for a period of seven years. As the children arrived they would have signed an indenture which contracted them to work for a period of seven years. The maximum age for a boy was 18 years and for girls it was 21 years. Only the fittest children would be allowed in the apprentice house, this was because the children would be healthy so it made Greg’s records look good. The apprentice house was opened for 60 years and 25 thousand children had passed through its’ door during that time. The children would be educated but boys more than girls. The boys’ and girls’ had separate dormitories on either side of the house. Sixty girls would have been crammed into the bedroom with two to a bed. The house was divided into several rooms, the living accommodation of the master and mistress who ran the house, the schoolroom, a large kitchen. Boys’ dormitory, girls’ dormitory, a punishment room and an attic.
At Styal education was important. The apprentices had lessons on week days, three nights a week from 8 to 9pm. The children liked school and they also had to attend a Sunday school. William Rathbone Greg said that in 1833 every factory colony that the Greg’s owned there was schools for the children but they were mostly Sunday schools. However there was a school in the apprentice house at Styal from the beginning and before the mill owners were propelled to provide a school under the 1802 health and morals of apprentices acts. George and Elizabeth Shawcross said the children went to school three nights a week. All the children were able to read but the boys were best at writing because the girls spent time sewing and making clothes for themselves and the boys. Greg claimed the children were not too tiered to learn after working all day. However in 1806 before the Shawcrosses time, Thomas Priestly was unable to sign his name and could only make his mark after three years at Styal. Education was very different in the urban mills. Night schools were available in Manchester but the children were often too tiered to go and learn. There were very many Sunday Schools.
In twenty-two years at Styal between 1811 and 1833 there were seventeen deaths, eight boys and nine girls. The main cause was ‘death in decline’. A doctor was paid twenty pounds a year to look after the children and medicine. He was a very good doctor and would give the children Brimstone and Black treacle which was a cure for constipation and leeches were used for ‘bad bloods’ and swelling. The Shawcrosses claimed that the local boarding school suffered more illnesses then the mill. There were never any cases of deformity and the only death that was an accident was that of a boy playing on the wheel race as the wheel was being built. They claimed in 1833 that ‘children when they come first don’t look so hearty as when they had been here for some time.’ In Manchester though, hundreds of ‘sick spinners’ filled in for spinners who were sick. John Pilkington claimed there were no cleaning facilities except for spinners. It was hot and badly ventilated and the dust in the air caused asthma and suffered from rough, hoarse voices. Workers were often deformed and their growth was stunted. Accidents were common with people being crushed in the machinery. At Manchester infirmary in 1845 there were 962 cases of severe cuts and deformity caused by machinery and for every seven deaths in Manchester, two involved machinery in the mills.
Mule Spinning
At Quarry Bank Mill when a worker became older and infirm he was not discharged but was given a job with lighter work. He might have earned 20 shillings as a spinner but would now be given a job like a door keeper or a time keeper which would pay 8 to 18 shillings a week. There was also a sick club with a small contribution which workers had to pay. In return they got half wages if they were sick for no more that three days for up to six months. If the sick fund ran out of money Greg topped it up. When times of trading were bad, no one was laid off but they would work a shorter day of four days instead if the usual six. They had a burial fund and would raise money for a family if someone died. Hodges claimed that in the urban mills in 1833 that men where dismissed when they were forty years of age. They might have still been good spinners but the mill owners thought they were no as strong as they once were. They had to turn to selling sand or potatoes from barrels and if they were not supported by younger relatives they ended up destitute in the work house. There was no provision for them if they were sick or for burying them. This made Styal un-typical because of the good ways in which Greg treated his workers.
These were the average weekly wages:
Manchester Styal
1833 Children under 13 3/9 to 4/2d 1/- to 3/-
1833-59 Reelers and winders 8/- to 9/6d 4/- to 7/-
1834-50 Carding (male adults) 13/6d to 16/- 8/- to 17/-
1834-50 Carding (female adults) 8/- 6/6d to 7/-
1838-50 Mule spinners (female) 7/6d to 10/6d 6/- to 7/-
1846-50 weavers (male and female) 10/6d to 11/- 6/6d to 8/-
Robert Blincoe told of his cruel treatment as a child in the Nottinghamshire Mills and he thought cruelty would have been worse in the country because in the towns they had Justices of the Peace where complaints could be made. Andrew Ure came to the opposite conclusion. He thought that things were worse in towns, master and workers depended on each other in the country for a work force and another job.
The factory colony of Quarry Bank Mill led a much better life than the people of the urban mills. So with the exception of hours worked, the conditions at Styal were not typical. However, when compared with similar mills in other factory colonies conditions were similar, or typical, or sometimes not quite as good.
