Life of Workers in Staithes

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Recommended: Working conditions for the working class during the industrial revolution

Close by the giant textile mill row on row on row of drab terrace houses huddle together as if to fend off the bitter cold of a winter night in December of 1811. Night obscures the narrow streets of the industrial village of Holmeside as morning’s hesitant light pokes through the canopy of dismal clouds. Inside the mill, workers have been toiling for hours. They rose from their beds early and put on their work clothing. The lucky ones ate a crust of bread and drank the remains of yesterday’s milk before stepping out into the chilly darkness to make their way to the mill. They carried the smallest children. Older children plodded along sleepily as if newly raised from the dead and not yet accustomed to walking. The eldest child is the lantern bearer. The lantern is a remnant of tallow candle in a pickle jar with a string handle. They would be hard pressed to find their way through the pre-dawn morning without the light. Few of the trudging souls speak. Sleep possesses their limbs and minds in an eerie pantomime they are condemned to repeat every morning from Monday to Saturday. The almost lifeless creatures are the working poor whose lives are blighted by the demands of industry. Their prospects grow no better with the passing of time. Some villagers do not work in the mill, but go out and about on errands. They rise long after the workers, and do their best to keep winter’s biting cold from making them take to sick beds and coffins. They hope that the weather gets no worse, and that no more rain, snow, or frost falls on the village and nearby settlements before their errands are completed, when they scuttle back home. After the workers left their homes, those that are indoors are either ‘out of collar,’ the term for the unemploy... ... middle of paper ... ...nts. Despite their having a learned capacity for bearing hardships, few did not long to escape. If any remembered the happening of fourteen years ago when a band of alienated and distressed workers took matters into their own hands to remedy being thrust out of work by novel mill machinery that rendered labourers, skilled and unskilled, surplus to requirement at one fell stroke, leaving them at the mercy of starvation. The following report was printed in a local newspaper: During the night of Nov. 20th, 1797, there was a most outrageous riot at Beeston, near Leeds, and a numerous body of workmen indulged their enmity towards machinery, by completely destroying a mill used for raising cloth, by Messrs. Johnson, of Holbeck near Leeds. None of the rioters could afterwards be identified, as the night was dark, and they would not permit lights to be brought to the spot.

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