Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printing errors have been corrected, but oldspelling (e.g. villian, ancles, truely) has not been changed.
A
MEMOIR
OF
ROBERT BLINCOE,
An Orphan Boy;
SENT FROM THE WORKHOUSE OF ST. PANCRAS, LONDON,
AT SEVEN YEARS OF AGE,
TO ENDURE THE
Horrors of a Cotton-Mill,
THROUGH HIS INFANCY AND YOUTH,
WITH A MINUTE DETAIL OF HIS SUFFERINGS,
BEING
THE FIRST MEMOIR OF THE KIND PUBLISHED.
BY JOHN BROWN.
MANCHESTER:
PRINTED FOR AND PUBLISHED BY J. DOHERTY, 37, WITHY-GROVE,
1832.
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE.
The various Acts Of Parliament, which have beenpassed, to regulate the treatment of children in theCotton Spinning Manufactories, betoken the previousexistence of some treatment, so glaringly wrong, as toforce itself upon the attention of the legislature. ThisCotton-slave-trade, like the Negro-slave-trade, did notlack its defenders, and it might have afforded a sort ofsorry consolation to the Negro slaves of America, hadthey been informed, that their condition, in having agriculturallyto raise the cotton, was not half so bad, as thatof the white infant-slaves, who had to assist in the spinningof it, when brought to this country. The religionand the black humanity of Mr. Wilberforce seem to havebeen entirely of a foreign nature. Pardon is begged, ifan error is about to be wrongfully imputed—but the Publisherhas no knowledge, that Mr. Wilberforce’s humaneadvocacy for slaves, was ever of that homely kind, as toembrace the region of the home-cotton-slave-trade. Andyet, who shall read the Memoir of Robert Blincoe, andsay, that the charity towards slaves should not have begunor ended at home?
The Author of this Memoir is now dead; he fell,about two or three years ago, by his own hand. Heunited, with a strong feeling for the injuries and sufferingsof others, a high sense of injury when it bore on himself,whether real or imaginary; and a despondency when hisprospects were not good.—Hence his suicide.—Had henot possessed a fine fellow-feeling with the child of misfortune,he had never taken such pains to compile the[iv]Memoir of Robert Blincoe, and to collect all the wrongson paper, on which he could gain information, about thevarious sufferers under the cotton-mill systems. Notesto the Memoir of Robert Blincoe were intended by theauthor, in illustration of his strong personal assertions.The references were marked in the Memoir; but theNotes were not prepared, or if prepared, have not cometo the Publisher’s hand. But, on inquiring after RobertBlincoe, in Manchester, and mentioning the Memoir ofhim written by Mr. Brown, as being in the Publisher’spossession, other papers, by the same Author, which hadbeen left on a loan of money in Manchester, were obtained,and these papers seem to have formed the authorities,from which the Notes to the Memoirs would havebeen made. So that, though the Publisher does notpresume to make notes for the Author, nor for himself,to this Memoir, he is prepared to confirm much of thestatement here made, the personalities of Robert Blincoeexcepted, should it be generally challenged.
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