CONFIRMATIONS OF ITS VERACITY.
Ashton-under-Line, Feb. 24, 1828.
Dear Sir—I have read the narrated sufferings of Robert Blincoe with mingled sorrow and delectation: with sorrow, because I know, from bitter experience, that they have really existed; with delectation, because they have appeared before the public through the medium of the press, and may, peradventure, be the means of mitigating the misery of the unfortunate apprentices, who are serving an unexpired term of apprenticeship in various parts of Lancashire and Derbyshire. In 1806 or 7, I was bound an apprentice, with twelve others, from the workhouse of St. James, Clerkenwell London, to a Mr. J. Oxley, at Arnold-mill, near Nottingham. From thence, after two years and three months’ servitude, I was sold to a Mr. Middleton, of Sheffield. The factory being burnt down at this place, I with many others, were sold to Mr. Ellice Needham, of Highgate-wall, the owner and proprietor of Litton Mill! Here I became acquainted with Robert Blincoe, better known at Litton-mill by the name of Parson. The sufferings of the apprentices were exquisite during Blincoe’s servitude, both in point of hunger and acts of severity; but, subsequent to Blincoe’s departure from that place, the privations we had to endure, in point of hunger, exceeded all our former sufferings (if that were possible), having to subsist principally upon woodland sustenance, or, in other words, on such food as we could extract from the woods. What I now write is to corroborate the statement of Blincoe, having heard him relate during my apprenticeship, all, or nearly all, the particulars that are now narrated in his memoir. I may also add, that I worked under Blincoe, at the same machine, in the capacity that he had done under Woodward, without receiving any harsh treatment from him—nay, so far was Blincoe from ill-treating the apprentices employed under him, that he would frequently give part of his allowance of food to those under his care, out of mere commiseration, and conceal all insignificant omissions without a word of reproach—I cannot close this letter without relating an anecdote that occurred about two years ago. Happening to call at a friend’s house one day, he asked if I knew Robert Blincoe. I replied in the affirmative. Because, added he, I saw a prospectus of his biography some time past; and related the same to W. Woodward, who was on a visit here, and who immediately said, “he’ll give it ma,” and became very dejected during the remainder of his visit.
Your humble servant,
John Joseph Betts.
Samuel Davy, a young man, now employed in the Westminster Gas Works, has called on the Publisher of Blincoe’s Memoir, and has said, that his own experience is a confirmation of the general statement in the Memoir. Samuel Davy, when a child of 7 years of age, with 13 others, about the year 1805, was sent from the poorhouse of the parish of St. George’s, in the Borough of Southwark, to Mr. Watson’s mill, at Penny Dam, near Preston, in Lancashire; and successively turned over to Mr. Burch’s mill, at Backborough, near Castmill, and to Messrs. David and Thomas Ainsworth’s mill, near Preston. The cruelty towards the children increased at each of those places, and though not quite so bad as that described by Blincoe, approached very near to it. One Richard Goodall, he describes, as entirely beaten to death! Irons were used, as with felons, in gaols, and these were often fastened on young women, in the most indecent manner from the ancles to the waist! It was common to punish the children, by keeping them nearly in a state of nudity, in the depth of winter, for several days together. Davy says, that he often thought of stealing, from the desire of getting released from such a wretched condition, by imprisonment or transportation; and, at last, at nineteen years of age, though followed by men on horseback and on foot, he successfully ran away and got to London. For ten years, this child and his brother were kept without knowing any thing of their parents, and without the parents knowing where the children were. All applications to the Parish Officers for information were vain. The supposed loss of her children, so preyed upon the mind of Davy’s mother, that, with other troubles, it brought on insanity, and she died in a state of madness! No savageness in human nature, that has existed on earth, has been paralleled by that which has been associated with the English Cotton-spinning mills.