- Define and explain Mill Towns and Workers in your own words
- Use key terms such as Child labour accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
This lesson focuses on Mill Towns and Workers: twelve-hour days, child labour and the first factory laws.
Twelve-hour days, child labour and the first factory laws.
Key ideas
Reform followed suffering
Reports of children working long hours in mills shocked the public. Parliament passed Factory Acts, starting in 1833, limiting children's hours and later setting safety rules. Change came because evidence of suffering forced politicians to act.
Machines reorganised human life
Before factories, most goods were made at home or in small workshops, and workers set their own hours. The factory brought hundreds of workers under one roof, timed by the clock and the steam engine. Work became faster and cheaper to organise — but also more disciplined and dangerous.
Key term — Child labour: Work done by children, common in early factories and mines until laws restricted it.
Give one reason factory work was hard for children.
Children worked very long hours, often twelve or more a day, in dangerous conditions.
Answer: Children worked very long hours, often twelve or more a day, in dangerous conditions.
- Assuming all workers welcomed machines Many workers feared machines would destroy their jobs — Luddites smashed machines in protest in the 1810s. New technology created winners and losers.
- Saying steam power started the Industrial Revolution Water power drove the first factories; steam became dominant later. The revolution had several stages, not one starting moment.
Practice
It limited the working hours of children in textile mills and introduced inspectors.
Water wheels, using fast-flowing rivers.
They needed imported raw cotton and overseas markets to sell finished cloth.
Workers in the 1810s who smashed machines they believed were destroying their jobs.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "Child labour"?
Name two inventions of the Industrial Revolution.
- Mill Towns and Workers: twelve-hour days, child labour and the first factory laws.
- Reform followed suffering: Reports of children working long hours in mills shocked the public.
- Factory system: A way of making goods where workers use machines together in one large building, on set hours for wages.
- Watch out for: assuming all workers welcomed machines