(Catalogue ref: ZHC 2/79; p.1327)
In the West Riding, it appears, girls are almost universally employed
as trappers and hurriers, in common with boys. The girls are all ages,
from seven to twenty-one. They commonly work quite naked down to the
waist, and are dressed- as far as they are dressed at all- in a loose
pair of trowsers. These are seldom whole on either sex. In many of
the collieries the adult colliers, whom these girls serve, work perfectly
naked. Near Huddersfield, the sub-commissioner examined a female child.
He says,
“I could not have believed that I should have found human
nature so degraded. Mr Holroyd, and Mr. Brook, a surgeon, confessed,
that although living within a few miles, they could not have believed
that such a system of unchristian cruelty could have existed.”
Speaking of one of the girls, he says
“She stood shivering before me from cold. The rug that hung
about her waist was as black as coal and saturated with water, the
drippings of the roof.” “In a pit near New Mills,”
(says the sub-commissioner) “the chain passing high between
the legs of two girls, had worn large holes in their trowsers. Any
sight more disgustingly indecent or revolting can scarcely be imagined
than these girls at work. No brothel can beat it.”
Sir, it would be impossible to enlarge upon these points; the evidence
is
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