Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial RevolutionThis is a unique account of working-class childhood during the British industrial revolution, first published in 2010. Using more than 600 autobiographies written by working men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Jane Humphries illuminates working-class childhood in contexts untouched by conventional sources and facilitates estimates of age at starting work, social mobility, the extent of apprenticeship and the duration of schooling. The classic era of industrialisation, 1790–1850, apparently saw an upsurge in child labour. While the memoirs implicate mechanisation and the division of labour in this increase, they also show that fatherlessness and large subsets, common in these turbulent, high-mortality and high-fertility times, often cast children as partners and supports for mothers struggling to hold families together. The book offers unprecedented insights into child labour, family life, careers and schooling. Its images of suffering, stoicism and occasional childish pleasures put the humanity back into economic history and the trauma back into the industrial revolution. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 12 | |
3 Families | 49 |
4 Household economy | 84 |
5 Family relationships | 125 |
6 Wider kin | 151 |
7 Starting work | 172 |
8 Jobs | 210 |
9 Apprenticeship | 256 |
Other editions - View all
Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution Jane Humphries No preview available - 2010 |
Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution Jane Humphries No preview available - 2010 |
Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution Jane Humphries No preview available - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
adult age at starting agriculture Annotated Critical Bibliography apprenticed apprentices apprenticeship Autobiography Bezer born boys breadwinner Britain British brother Brunel University Cambridge University Press CAMSIS score census cent chapter chil child labour childhood cohort Collyer costs Critical Bibliography Brighton dame schools David Mayall eds David Vincent early industrial earnings Economic History edited employment estimates evidence factory farm father George Henry historians households Humphries income industrial revolution James John Burnett Joseph labour force labour market literacy living London male master Memoirs mother nineteenth century nomic number of children opportunity costs parents parish pauper perhaps Poor Law poor relief poverty précised in John rates relative Robert Robert Collyer Robert Watchorn sample sector sibling group Smithian growth social sons sources standards Statute of Artificers structure suggests Table Thomas tion trade uncle variables Vincent and David wages William women workhouse working-class