Source B is part of a statement made my Thomas Priestly in 1806. Tom ran away from Greg’s mill on 22nd of June but was found in London where he made a statement to a local magistrate. This source is useful in telling us information about the mill. He talks about the sleeping arrangement and how they got clean shirts every Sunday. He then goes on to mention that none of the machinery was protected, because it as the machinery that tore his finger off which lead him to run away to see his mum. The fact that he ran away to see his mum may have meant he wasn’t cared for properly and wanted his mum to look after him. At the end of the statement tom tells us that he is “Very wiling to go back to work in Greg’s Mill.” For him to say this, it may infer that he is worried about saying something bad about the mill as he is going back there. The source is useful in telling us about the conditions in styal mill, but it tells us no information on the conditions of the other mills, which is what we want to find out. A limitation of the source is that we know that Thomas couldn’t read nor write, and to use, it seems as if the statement was written down by somebody of a better education. We can tell somebody else has written it because it mentions words such as ‘dissatisfied’ and also a few of the sentences seem a bit to well grammared for a 13 year old boy who cannot read or write. From this, we wonder whether it was all said by tom, or most made up by a person who was supposedly supposed to be writing down what tom said. A use of the source is that it tells us apprentices as young as 7 were working at the mill, and I would suggest that a lot of the apprentices were sent away from the family, and we know that tom was sent to Manchester, where-as his mother stayed in London to work.
Source C is an extract from an account written by Robert Hyde Greg, Samuels son. It was written in 1836, 3 years after the factory act came into place. Robert was being interviewed about two apprentices, Esther Price and Lucy Garner, who had both ran away and were punished. Robert tells us that Lucy and Esther ran away and came back on the following Thursday and the next Tuesday. He mentions that if any body else ran away, then he would go back to the old punishment of cutting all of their hair off. Robert says ‘old’ punishment, which implies that the punishment carried on in other 19th century mill and that there at styal they had stopped doing it. A limitation of the source us that Robert is Sam’s son, so therefore, the account of what happened is most probably biased as we are not sure what the two girls account of what happened is. In the first paragraph, he goes on to talk about that is august 1835, Mrs. shawcross left the mill because Mr. Shawcross had died, from this information, we are able to cross-reference the information from source A, and in source a, written in 1836, both George and Elizabeth were alive and well enough to take part in an interview. We are not able to find out which of the sources is telling a lie or which one is true so that makes both source A and C unreliable. The final limitation of the source is that in the last paragraph, it says that “Mrs. shawcross and my sister sally were both against cutting off the girls hair” That was in1836, a year after mrs shawcross had supposedly left, and so we are not entirely sure as to why she is still working there a year after she left.
Source D is an extract from “The conditions of the working class.” Friedrich Engels wrote it, in 1844. Friedrich was a socialist and therefore had sympathy for the workers who were treated quite badly by their boss. Friedrich visited many mill around Manchester, including Quarry bank mill. He may possibly have been visiting the mills to see if the 1833 factory act had changed anything in the mills and how the workers were treated. Useful information about this source is that it clearly tells us he visited many mills, and therefore would have been comparing the mills with each other and this would give us an idea as to how the mills were the same, different and how the workers were treated. An example of this would be “the workers all appeared to be well paid and to be in comfortable circumstances.” The word ‘appeared’ implies that he’s not quite sure about how much they earned but he is also comparing it to the other mills he visited. It also suggests that they look good/happy to work there. Another use of the source is the he says “no doubt Greg has provided a school and a church with reading rooms, but he uses the school to teach strict obedience in the Childs mind.” The word ‘no doubt’ suggests that other mills have supplied a school and a church but the work ‘but’ infers hat from all the schools he has seen, Greg’s mill was the only one that taught them strict obedience and that the other schools did not. This may be a good thing, or a bad thing but we are not so sure as to which. “Greg only allowed the reading rooms to be stocked with books that supported the middle class point of view. He gives the workers things only if they will do what he wants without asking questions.” This was because in the 19th century, there was no social mobility at the time in England, and the books he supplied, only taught them about poor people, and had no sympathy for them. A limitation of the source is that he says, “I was no in a position to ask the workers what they really thought, since Greg was present.” From this, he was unable to find out what the conditions were like there, because if Greg was there with them, they would have most probably only said good things about him as they did not want to get into trouble. Friedrich becomes quite sarcastic in some ways, as he is making out that Greg put on a show, as he never showed unhealthy people, which back then it was quite known that mills always had ill people working.
In conclusion, I would argue that source D would be the most reliable source to use if a historian was studying nineteenth century factory conditions. This is because in source D, it not only talks about the conditions in Greg’s mill, but is also comparing with other mills in and around Manchester and therefore we have a rough idea as to what the conditions were like in other mills. Friedrich Engels was a man who had visited many mills and because of this, his account of the mill would be the most reliable and also because he was a socialist, he would tell the truth if something was bad or good.
