Could You Survive as a Victorian Factory Worker?

Part Two has just been uploaded guys! We explore the living conditions of poor industrial workers and rich industrialists 🏭 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p6ltR49zQU

This makes me appreciate all the labour protection laws we have today

When people romantize the Victorian Era and wish they could have lived during that period always assume they would be part of the aristocracy class when in reality this would be their life.

My great grandmother was a mill worker in Yorkshire and she said. "Death was improper in the mill as the cotton would need to be cleaned or discarded"

HistoryHit, making a solid advert for Trade Unions here...

This is exactly why it's so important for workers to unionise and stick up for themselves. Business owners would have no problem continuing to treat workers like this today, if they could get away with it.

As someone who works in one of the few textile based factories left in the US, it’s absolutely astonishing to see the machinery and layout of the factory floors. Now, we work with wool as opposed to cotton, but the carding machines look identical to what we work with. It’s a nice touch to talk about the humidity level being essential to the fabric performing as needed. I can tell you, even with all the regulations and workers rights that are in place now, it’s a tough job. Enormous respect to the folks who worked there and did the job. They walked so we could run.

The conditions in the coal mines of England were even worse for children. Some as young as 3 years old, according to the Yorkshire section of the 1842 Commission

People look back at eras like this through rose tinted glasses a bit too much. Life was tough for 90 percent of people, in many cases worse than tough.

We can all agree that although the victorian london aesthetic is nice, actually living in that period fucking sucks.

I never met my great-grandmother, (my mom's grandma). I was told that in the Victorian era she worked in a hat factory, cutting strings off the hat's that were already finished, to be sent to the shops, or she would cut the ribbon to put onto the hats. She was only 5. She was so tiny that she had to stand on top of an apple box. Though we are still going through a lot of tough things today, we have to remember that we have come a long way from the times of my great grandmother, and what these people went through. sometimes we forget on how lucky we are in many ways today.

No-one ever believes this but my first job after leaving school in 1966 was as a framework knitter. Hand operated iron machinery mounted on a 17th century oak support stand with foot levers to drag the yarn one way or the other across the needles. Broken needles had to be cast ‘in-situ’ by pouring molten lead into a mould before replacing them. Mohair reels would be soaked overnight before use, causing a spray as the thread ran off. A guide at the Wollaton Hall Industrial Museum was explaining that the ‘knowledge of how to operate these was lost unfortunately.’ When I tried to politely enlighten her she sneered and turned her back on me.🤷🏻‍♂️

I visited the mill on school trips multiple times as a child, I've never forgotten the experience days I had there even as a 26 year old man who has kids himself now. As a child, I remember the depressing and unpleasant feelings those machine halls had. Now, being a father myself, I can't imagine the desperation parents of the time must have had to force their children into work. Makes me feel very lucky to live in the 21st century, and I have great respect for all of our ancestors who worked in the Mills.

In the year 2123, the title of this video will be can you survive working a day working in a 21st century Starbucks/Amazon warehouse/WalMart?

North and South (the BBC adaption) is a wonderful drama that doesn't shy away from depicting the difficulties Mill workers suffered during this time and their fight to change it. It's a fantastic series.

I would argue that rudimentary hunter/gatherer life was leaps and bounds better than so called "civilization" in its early days... I simply cannot comprehend what was the purpose of life for these workers...

Imagine if luke was snapping that belt for real and your six years old, today in infant school learning how to read and write play games socalise, imagine the terror and pain inflected possibly in front of your own parents, nowhere to run or hide or cry

I love how the thumbnail says "you'll work til you drop" I do that every day at my current job.

the irony is that the descendants of those subsistence factory workers are supposed to pay reparations for slavery, when slave owners were 2-3000 out of a UK population counting about 24 million in 1830. Strangely enough, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait never seem to meet demands for reparations for slavery from NGOs.

I had ancestors on both sides of my family that worked in cotton mills, I don't know how they coped! thanks for sharing.