Industrial Revolution: Child Labour

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Before the industrial revolution, life in England was based on farming.

Everything was produced by hand and ¾ of the English families lived in the countryside working the lands.

With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution and all the improvement and new steam engines,there wasn't work for every unemployed farmer, who had to move to towns.

INTRODUCTION

In towns they just could work in factories whose owners used this to pay very low salaries to the farmer's family.

The poor rural families, used to have many children, kids that had to work because their parents's salary wasn't enough to support the entire family.

The children's situation

Some of the children started to work when they where only 6 years old, but normaly they started to work when they were 9.

* Why did they work?

The families sent them to work because

they didn't have money.

The owners employed them because they were cheaper

they were small enough to fit between the machinery.

* How many hours did they

work? Some of them

worked 18 hours , but normaly they worked less, between 10 and 18 hours.

Flax factories

Cotton factories

Silk factories

* Types of factories

* Physical and psycological punishment.

They suffered punishment and beating from the boss of the factory.

Example: They were dragged about 3 or 4 yards taken by the hair. Or they were strapped.

They suffered physical and psycological consequences

Example: they got their bones out of their places, other children's knees were rather turned in, and others had spinal affections and in most of the cases they had a trauma.

* Time allowed/ to rest/ to eat/ to drink.

It depends on the factory, in some cases they had 30 min to rest and few minutes to eat

*How far were the factories from home?

*Some times they had to walk like a mille.

OUR CONCLUSION They didn't have childhood

They didn't see their families

They didn't have enough education

They suffered a lot

50% of children died before the age of 2

So all of us think that we are very lucky to live in Spain in the XXI century

END!!

BY: Mª Elena Alba Marta García Paloma Maraver Marcos Ibañez