Mr Greg was paternalistic, controlled the workers by not letting them read the Chartist or Socialist paper, which were papers for the right of people to vote. If they did read, they were sacked. From what he says he thinks that if Mr Greg wasn’t there, the workers would tell him what it was really like.
He was not the only mill owner who controlled their workers. Titus Salt sacked people who drank alcohol. To prevent them drinking in places, no pubs were made in Saltaire.
In the 19th century there was a very high death rate in mills and factories. Source C was an interview between the government officials and the superintendents (George and Elizabeth Shawcross) who looked after the Greg’s apprentices, checking how children were treated. The children worked 12 hours which was normal for in the early 19th century, they got to eat dinner away from the dark, smelly and dusty mill which was good for them because in other mills you had to eat dinner in the mills.
There was according to source C little illness because Mr Greg paid a doctor £20 a year to check the children and for medicines.
Over a period of 22 years, there had only been 17 deaths and only one out of them was an accident not in the mill but at the water wheel.
Mr Greg was present at the Shawcross interview, which may have put pressure on the superintendents. We don’t know if they would have given the same answers if Mr Greg wasn’t there because we have no evidence.
This source is a good piece of evidence to support S.Davies.
Source D is written by Pauline Greg who is a modern historian and not related to the Greg family. Her description is about the general conditions in mills and factories in the early 19th century. The source description does not fit in with Quarry Bank Mill. At the mill I saw an apprentice house not a shed. In source D it says that they had no supervision, but at Quarry Bank Mill there were superintendents who looked after them. The boys and girls had separate rooms. The apprentices got education, got to go to church, clothes, medicines and food including fruit and vegetables, which they grew. The punishments at Quarry Bank Mill were not like the punishments in Source D. The punishments at Quarry Bank Mill was either the cutting of the hair or solitary confinement. Source E and F are about an apprentice’s punishment at Quarry Bank Mill called Esther Price.
Source E was written by the mill owner, Robert Hyde Greg in 1843. In this account he says that two apprentices, one was Esther Price, were put in solitary confinement for attacking an apprentice in 1835 and then in 1836 put in solitary confinement for running away.
The punishment for running away was to cut the hair but Mr Greg’s sister went against the idea (she was a humanitarian) so it looks like he came from a family who were against child cruelty.
Since Mr Greg was there surly he must have known what happened but as the mill owner he wouldn’t write that he treated the girls badly, it would make him look bad.
It was by coincidence Mrs Timperleys body was placed in the room next to Esther and was a rare thing.
The fact that Mr Greg bothered to write this record means that the punishment was rare.
Esther Price and Lucy Garner came back to the mill because may be they thought conditions outside the mill were much worse than inside
Source F was an account written by John Doherty, a campaigner to reduce number of hours children have to work in 1838. He describes that Esther Price was kept in solitary confinement for five days for running away to see her father in Liverpool. He doesn’t like the Greg’s because he was sent to jail for organising a strike against Samuel Greg’s partner. He wants to persuade people that the number of hour’s children work should be reduced. In order to do this he wants to shock people and reveal how bad things are in the mills. He then only reports on the incidents that shows mills to be bad places.
Both sources E and F are biased
I have shown sources, knowledge of other mills and my own observation at the mill to back up my agreement with S.Davies, that the Greg’s were very good employers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century
