ABSTRACT
The Commissioners were originally instructed to inquire into the employment of children in mines and manufactures; in 1841 they were instructed to include in their inquiry the employment of young persons. The picture of men and women working together in the mines, almost naked, under repulsive and degrading conditions, outraged the sense of decency of the House of Commons even more than the story of human misery had outraged its sense of pity. Lord Londonderry’s mines must have resembled the caves of Altamira, whose decorated walls have preserved the imaginations of primitive man for the delight and mystification of later ages. In another speech he declared that boys were as fit to work in the mines at the age of eight as at the age of ten. Hours were unrestricted by the Bill, although children’s hours in the mines were longer than children’s hours in the mill.
