Here in Ramsbottom where I live, there is an “ Apprentice House” ,for orphans ,often from the Manchester slums that Engels wrote about .
These children were like commodities, and as with the little chimney sweepers in The Water Babies, were exploited often in the name of charity.
I believe Styal Mill was less than philanthropic (despite generally having a better reputation than many others, ) when it comes to the system that employed orphan children who had no one to champion them.
They were employed,but wages?—- in the cotton mills here .
I can imagine their food and shelter were all they got .
Respectable Victorian industrialists used them I suppose as cheap labour,crawling under moving machinery for example to gather the fluff -which was highly combustible - from the various processes.
They had no rights and were untaught, until some education reforms came about.
Sadly the original burial ground if St.Paul’s Church is grassed over so as far as I know( I will ask on Sunday )none are buried there- the nearest burial ground to at least one mill ,owned by the Ashton Family and close to the Apprentice House.
A sad history, we don’t know we are born!
Viktoria.
