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Factory work in Victorian Lancashire |
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What were factories like?
The Calland family worked in the industry
© Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston |
What was different about these factories? The key points were that they took people away from home to a central workplace, where they were counted in and out (and soon clocked on and off), and worked with larger numbers of people, outside their own family circle (although some family members did continue to work together), to a rhythm set by a machine powered by a single source.
Instead of working until a task had been finished, and then taking it to the employer's warehouse and picking up new work, factory workers' lives were governed by the clock and by the need to produce as much as possible during their long working hours. They were paid according to the output of the machine. Printed rules were pinned up to maintain work discipline, and people were fined for late arrival or for breaking the rules. Children were sometimes subjected to beatings for falling asleep over their work, especially in the early years, when some were contracted out by workhouses as 'pauper apprentices' and badly abused.
Steam power replaced horsepower in cotton factories
© Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston |
When the first factories were introduced, in the 1770s, the machines were usually powered by water-wheels; but from the 1790s the steam engine rapidly became dominant, and by 1840 more than three-quarters of the power in Lancashire's spinning mills came from this source. This gave employers more control: water-wheels might have to stop for drought or flooding, although the hours might be made up in even longer working days afterwards, but the steam engine carried on tirelessly, and could be speeded up or continued for extra time by a profit-hungry employer.
Words: John K Walton - University of Central Lancashire
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