Giving Account: Robert Blincoe and the Consequences of Modernity

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Notes

The most significant legislation emerging from this campaign is likely the 1833 Labour of Children in Factories Act, which limited the work of children thirteen and under to eight hours per day and limited the work of children fourteen to eighteen to twelve hours a day and provided for routine inspection of factories.

Within this paper, I have also taken this position regarding source material. Accordingly, any quotations from the Memoir or discussion of its contents will refer to the 1832 Doherty publication of Brown's text (Brown, 1832). Please note also that citations give Brown, rather than Blincoe, as the author. Other versions, particularly serialization in The Lion and Carlile's 1828 pamphlet have been cited where necessary for comparison, as (Lion) and (Brown, 1828) respectively.

See, for example, The Factory Lad: or, The life of Simon Smike, exemplifying the horrors of white slavery [1839].

Compare, for example, the date of Robert Blincoe's marriage. The initial Lion publication gives the date as 19 June 1819 (Lion 1.8:256), replicated in the Carlile pamphlet (Brown, 1828 55), whereas the Doherty pamphlet, prepared with Blincoe's input, gives the marriage date as 28 June 1819 (Brown, 1832 63). This date can of course be verified by a concerned reader or researcher using external records, which is exactly the point of modern time.

This has also been a preoccupation of many historical considerations of the Memoir, most egregiously in Waller.

Indeed, the worker's ‘character’ makes an appearance in Blincoe's account as well, when he asks an employer, Mr. Clayton, for a character after he “gets the bag” from his position. Clayton refuses, and Blincoe is left to give his own account to potential new employers (Brown, 1832 59). The ‘character’ or letter of reference is a clear example of both an account as I have used it, and of the disembedding processes at work: the worker is not known when he seeks employment, and potential employers cannot personally establish his credentials.

Verification becomes something of a critical preoccupation with historians seeking to balance horrific accounts of pauper apprentices' treatment with the more widespread and benign deprivations of the poor in this period (see, for example, Humphries 247).

Blincoe's suitability as a witness, in terms of capacity and sincerity, is shored up by Brown: “Blincoe is in no means deficient in understanding: he can be witty, satirical, and pathetic by turns, and he never showed himself to such advantage as when expatiating upon [his] desolate state” (Brown, 1832 12).