ABSTRACT
The series of articles entitled ‘The Child Slaves of Britain’ was commissioned by the editor of the London Magazine for publication beginning in January 1904 and was published, priced at sixpence, in a somewhat different version in volume form by Hurst & Blackett in 1905. In ‘The Child Slaves of Britain’, assisted in his investigations by officials of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, local school boards and the Salvation Army, Sherard examined the lives of the working children of impoverished parents in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Grimsby, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee, with brief mentions of other towns. Sherard’s series may be considered in a variety of contexts. It forms part of the large body of sociological journalism extending from the mid-nineteenth century onwards and describing the lives of the urban poor to affluent readers who, in many cases, had never witnessed these conditions.
