ABSTRACT
In 1840 one of Her Majesty's inspectors of schools described the handloom weavers of Norwich, either unemployed or earning 7s. a week, working fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and most of them unable to send their children to school. They and their families were almost without furniture and possessions, their clothing and food scanty, and their faces emaciated. Every Monday morning about 400 men, women and children attended the children's market hoping to hire out the children's labour.[1] The handloom weavers were only one illustration of the poverty which acted as an obstacle to education. Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, who played an outstanding part in the educational developments in this period, described the great changes that had taken place in the previous half-century: formerly the workers
considered their poverty and sufferings as inevitable . . . now, rightly or wrongly, they attribute their sufferings to political causes. . . . The great Chartist petition . . . affords ample evidence of the prevalence of the restless desire for organic changes, and for violent political measures, which pervades the manufacturing districts.
