Mr. Matthew Crabtree, blanket maker
What age are you? — Twenty-two.
What is your occupation? — A blanket maker.
Have you ever been employed in a factory? — Yes.
At what age did you first go to work in one? — Eight.
How long did you continue in that occupation? — Four years.
Will you state the hours of labour at the period when you first went to the factory, in ordinary times? — From 6 in the morning to 8 at night.
Fourteen hours? — Yes.
With what intervals for refreshment and rest? — An hour at noon.
When blankets were in high demand what were your hours? — From 5 in the morning to 9 in the evening.
Sixteen hours? — Yes.
When did you get a break for dinner? — An hour.
How far did you live from the mill? — About two miles.
Was there any time allowed for you to get your breakfast in the mill? — No.
Did you take it before you left your home? — Generally.
During those long hours of labour were you on time to work; how did you awake? — I seldom did awake on my own; I was most generally awoke or lifted out of bed, sometimes asleep, by my parents.
Were you always on time? — No.
What was the consequence if you had been too late? — I was most commonly beaten.
Severely? — Very severely, I thought.
In those mills is punishment going on all of the time? — All of the time.
So that you can hardly be in a mill without hearing constant crying? — Never an hour, I believe.
Do you think that if the boss were naturally a humane person it would still be found necessary for him to beat the children, in order to keep up their attention and vigilance by the end of those very long days of labour? — Yes; the machine turns off a regular quantity of yarn, and of course, they must keep as regularly to their work the whole of the day; they must keep with the machine, and therefore however humane a boss may be, he must keep up with the machine or be found fault with, he pushes the children to keep up also by various means but that which he commonly resorts to is to whip them when they become drowsy.
At the time when you were beaten for not keeping up with your work, were you trying to get the work done to the best of your ability? — Yes; the dread of being beaten if we could not keep up with our work was a good enough reason to keep us to it if we could.
When you got home at night after this work, were you tired? — Very much so.
Had you any time to be with your parents, and to receive instruction from them? — No.
What did you do? — All that we did when we got home was to get the little bit of supper that was provided for us and go to bed immediately. If the supper had not been ready directly, we should have gone to sleep while it was preparing.
Did you not, as a child, feel it hard to be woken up so soon in the morning? — I did.
Did the rest of the children feel as you did? — Yes, all of them; but they were not all of them so far from their work as I was.
And if you had been too late you were afraid of being cruelly beaten? — I generally was beaten when I happened to be too late; and when I got up in the morning the fear of that was so great, that I used to run, and cry all the way as I went to the mill.