Lord Shaftesbury on Friday week exposed a great social evil.
A habit has grown up for some years in Lincolnshire, Northamp- tonslure, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and parts of Norfolk of employing gangs of women and children of both sexes in agri- cultural work. These gangs usually number from twenty to fifty boys and girls, all under the superintendence of a driver, who hires them from their parents, and then lets them out for farm labour by the score. They are often brutally ill-treated, frequently in- jured by over-work, always contaminated by the admixture of the sexes without supervision or restraint. The girls in particular become altogether unsexed,—unfit to be wives and mothers,—and the lawless life ruins their companions almost as completely as themselves. The temptation to continue the system is that it is cheap, the gangs doing their tasks for a price, and then moving off to another job, but it is in all essentials slavery. Lord Shaftes- bury moved that the Commission appointed in 1862 to inquire into the condition of factory children should inquire into this case also. The motion was granted, and the result of the inquiry will, we believe, from information laid before us some time since, astound the country.
Previous page
