Industrial Revolution

At the end of the 18th century the industrial revolution started and was propelled forward by the money of the middle class that was more than happy to invest in new discoveries and by the stability of the country. The nation was full of entrepreneurial minds and important inventors that invented for example the spinning jenny, waterframe, railways, a steam engine and even locomotives that were invented by Stephenson that in 1829 won a contest thanks to his locomotives. The industrialist John Wikinson built an Iron Bridge in 1781 that became the symbol of the industrial revolution. Thanks to the agricoltural revolution in which the open fields became enclosures a lot of farmers transferred to the cities in search of work which made them overpopulated leading to the nickname of Mushroom cities. The factory workers and the workers in the mines had to work up to 16 hours a day in horrible conditions without sick leave or the opportunity to go on a strike. The workers lived in the slums, poor neighbourhoods with dilapidated buildings full of diseases. There was no hygiene and no toilets. Even women, that could be fired for being pregnant, and children worked in factories or in the case of children in mines and as chimney sweepers because they were small enoIugh to enter in such tight confines. A movement started called Luddism from Ned Lud, they went around smashing snd destroyng machines because in their opinion those were the cause of the lack of jobs. The government, lead by the Tories, issued the death penalty to any member of the Luddist movement. The government issued a Combination Act that prohibited the gatherings of workers to prevent strikes and insurrections.

In 1819 a group of workers gathered in St. Peter’s Field in Manchester to discuss about the right to vote and the price of bread that had increased due to the year without a Summer (1816) but demonstrations were illigal so the army came and shot the unharmed citizens killing 18 people and is now known as the Peterloo Massacre

In 1824 king William the IV declared legal the Trade Unions that were organisations of workers whom had a common goal.

The government in 1833 made The Factory Act which established that the children under 9 couldn’t work and had to go to school and that children between the age of 9 and 13 could work up to 9 hours but not during the night. Unfortunately this act was not respected because the government didn’t enforced it properly in fact the factories didn’t follow this law and inspectors couldn’t know the exact age of the children who worked because they usually didn’t have a birth certificate.