ABSTRACT
Michael Thomas Sadler, M. P. for Newark and the spokesman in Parliament of the Short-Time Movement, sought to bring before Parliament a Bill to regulate the labour of children employed in mills and factories. The small factory, employing too small a number of children to make the establishment of a school on the premises feasible, had for long been commented on by the inspectors as being the greatest difficulty. In the report of the Central Board attention was directed to the fact that in the Bill of Lord Ashley no provision had been made for assigning any part of the time of the children, either before or after their hours of work, or for their education ‘elementary or moral’. The Factory Act applied to children employed in cotton, woollen, worsted, hemp, flax, tow, and linen mills or factories, but not to lace mills.
