Young Workers of the Industrial Age

The industrial revolution was forged with the lives of our ancestors’ children. All over Britain, children and young people toiled for hours every day. Their workplaces were pitch-dark mines, fiery furnaces, brightly-lit mills with deadly machines, and mud-filled brickyards. Some workers were pauper apprentices, sent thousands of miles from their homes and indentured until the age of twenty-one. Almost every item in our ancestors’ homes and wardrobes was made by children and youngsters: buttons,