Our Work on Bleaching Industry- More Information
Zoe Bromley
In lots of ways, the domestic system (which preceded industrial development) was good. Families lived and worked together. They could start work when they wanted, and stop when they wanted. They could work hard – or have a rest when they wanted.
But the new factories changed workers lives:
- The new machines could make cloth much faster than the hand workers, who lost their jobs.
- The new factories employed more people, not less, because they were selling so much cloth.
- Factory workers were paid poor wages.
- Cloth made in factories was much cheaper.
- There were rules in the factories – workers were fined if they were late, or did not work hard enough.
- Factory workers start when the steam engine started, and worked until it stopped. Some factories started work at 3am. Workers often worked 14 hour days.
- Factories employed children and women. Many men lost their jobs.
- Women and children were easy to bully – ‘strappers’ hit them to make them work harder.
- The machines were not safe. Many people were hurt or killed.
Zoe Bromley
Why was the factory work dangerous?
Factory owners emploiyed children because they were cheap, did not complain, had nimble fingers, and could crawl about under machines. Children risked getting caught in the machinery, losing hair or arms. Yet most mills owners thought factory work was easy and at first there were no laws to protect working children.
New laws to protect children
People called reformers, such as Lord Shaftesbury (1801 – 1885), argued in parliament for laws to stop child work. Inspectors, called commissioners, went into factories and mines to talk to children to find out the facts. Three of the new laws passed by parliament include:
- 1841: Mines Act. No children under the age of 10 to work underground in a coal mine.
- 1847: Ten Hours Act. No child to work more than 10 hours in a day.
- 1874: Factory Act. No child under the age of 10 to be employed in a factory.
Hannah McGuniess
Before a cotton fabric can take dye or a coloured pattern, or be sold white, it has to be bleached to remove its natural off-white colour and any impurities it might contain after leaving the loom. This whitening is doen by an oxidation process. Before the onset of the industrial revolution, and up to about the beginning of the nineteenth century, bleaching was carried out by exposing the cloth to the action of the sunlight for long periods, a process known as grassing or crafting.
Bolton became an important cotton-bleaching centre, with a large number of bleaching firms using water from local streams, such as Bradshaw Brook.
Bleaching by sunlight was a very slow and labour intensive process. It could only be carried out in the summer months, and so bleachers looked for faster alternatives. By about 1790 chemical bleaching was introduced to Bolton.
Bleachworks are generally made up from a number of separate buildings grouped together, built from brick or stone with wooden roof-trusses. Mostly single-storey, they are usually purely functional, with little or no architectural decoration. Each building is devoted to a particular purpose, indictated by its name. There is a grey room for cloth waiting bleaching. A boiling or bowking house, washing machines and dye house if dyeing was to be undertaken. The primitive machines in early bleach works were water powered, later on small steam engines were installed in those departments.
The bleaching room was still called a croft, even when it was used to carry out chemical bleaching indoors. The works might also have have its own gas-making plant for lighting and gas singeing if this part of the service was offered.
Many bleachworks had closed by the 1960s. Some were demolished and the sites redeveloped, others were occupied by a range of small businesses.
Substantial buildings still survive at Dunscar, little Bolton, Undershore (Seven Acres) and Breightmet bleachworks. Tootil bleachworks was demolished.