Uno de los aspectos más infames de la Revolución industrial, la explotación infantil

1. Britain becomes wealthy but...
Industrial Revolution in Britain:
Children Working Conditions

2. • Despite the growing wealth due to trade and
commerce, many of the working people, who
actually produced the wealth, lived, worked
and died in very poor conditions.

3. Working conditions
• Many factory owners put profit above the
health and safety of their workers. Children
and young women were employed in terrible
conditions in textile mills and mines.

4. Working children
• At the start of the 19th century very few
children went to school. Most poor children
worked. If they went to school, their families
lost the money they earned.
• Children were often forced to work almost as
soon as they could walk. Many were used as
cheap labour: a child was paid less than adults
(just a few pennies for a week's work).

5. Why didn't children refuse to work?
• Most children had no choice - they needed to
work to help their families earn enough
money to live.

6. When did children start work?
• Many children started work at the age of 5, the
same age as children start school today. They
went to work as soon as they were big enough.
• Even a tiny child could feed chickens. Older
brothers and sisters took small children to work,
perhaps to a factory at the end of the street.
Other children worked at home, doing jobs such
as washing, sewing or sticking labels on bottles.

7. What kind of jobs did children do?
• Children worked on farms, in homes as
servants, and in factories.
• Children often did jobs that required small
size and nimble fingers.

8. Chimney Sweeps
• Chimney sweeping was a job children
could do better than adults. The chimneys
were usually very narrow (in some cases as
small as 30cm) and twisted.
• The work was dangerous and painful. Some
boys got stuck and died of suffocation.
• In 1832 the use of boys for sweeping
chimneys was forbidden by law.

10. Factories
• Children worked long hours and sometimes
had to carry out some dangerous jobs
working in factories.
• In textile mills children were made to clean
machines while the machines were kept
running, and there were many accidents.
Many children lost fingers and some were
killed, crushed by the machines.

11. • In match factories children were employed to
dip matches into a dangerous chemical called
phosphorous. The phosphorous could cause
their teeth to rot and some died from the
effect of breathing it into their lungs.
• The Factory Act of 1878 banned employment
of children under ten years of age, but poor
families needed the extra money so many
children still skipped school.

12. Street Children
• Thousands of poor children worked and lived
on the streets.
• They worked very long hours for very little
money. To buy bread, they sold matches,
firewood, buttons, flowers or polished shoes.

13. Coal Mines
• Coal was the main source of power in
Victorian times.
• It was used for cooking and heating, and for
driving machinery, trains and steam ships.
• The coal mines were dangerous places where
roofs sometimes caved in and explosions
happened.

14. • Trappers
Trappers were children who operated the air
doors providing ventilation for the miners.
• The children would sit in the draft of the
doors, cold, damp and very frightened, with
little or no light for 12 hours a day.

15. • Drawers
Drawers pulled heavy carts of cut coal to the
pits surface with heavy chains around their
waists.

16. When did children stop working in
the mines?
• The Mines Act was passed by the Government
in 1842 forbidding the employment of
women and girls and all boys under the age
of ten down mines.
• Later it became illegal for a boy under 12 to
work down a mine.

17. Why were children employed to work
in factories?
• Children were much cheaper than adults as a
factory owner did not have to pay them as
much.
• There were plenty of children in orphanages,
so they could be replaced easily if accidents
did occur.
• Children were small enough to crawl under
machinery to tie up broken threads.