The trades of Sheffield as influencing life and health, more particularly file cutters and grinders : read before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, October 5th, 1865 / by Dr. J.C. Hall.

  • John Charles Hall
Date:
[1865?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The trades of Sheffield as influencing life and health, more particularly file cutters and grinders : read before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, October 5th, 1865 / by Dr. J.C. Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    homes where bufc-too often their parents have left it without a hope. Without education, without moral or rgligious training-, these children are compelled at ten or eleven years of age'to work in the hulls— and there we see them—rocked by the cradle into a maturity of vice, and their education completed by the conversation of older boys and men, whose every breath is an offensive expression, or an oath; and who appear to be suckled in sin, cradled in profligacy, and catechised in blasphemy. Are not these children worthy our consideration— children who but too often never hear a father's loving voice, and but too often never know a mother's tender solicitude. Where shall their hope find rest—no Mother's care, Protects their infant-innocence by prayer; No Father's guardian hand their youth maintains, Calls forth to virtue, and from vice restrains. Surely these facts have been unknown to our philanthropists, other- wise we should long ago have heard of the mission to the grinding wheels, and of sermons and collections for the preachers at the hulls. Is it nothing to you,—all ye that pass by V These evils are at any rate known now, and until steps are taken.to remove them I trust in future no Sheffield guinea will be diverted from its pro- • per course. Even the grinders themselves are becoming aware of these enormous evils. The Saw Grinders' Union does not now recognize boys under the age of 14; and at the next general meeting of the spring knife grinders, the secretary of that union informs me, the question will be considered of preventing boys from coming into the hulls at an early age. To my fellow townsmen, the file cutters' of Sheffield, who neglect those sanitary regulations so requisite for health—who eat their dinners without washing their hands—who dip their dirty lead-begrimed fingers into the salt—and who wear the same clothes in the workshop and out of it—to the dry grinders who work without the protection of a fan-—and also to all arti- sans who lead intemperate lives, I say, turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die. I can only hope that the preventing boys from entering the grinding wheels at the early age, now so common, and the better education the coming generation must receive, will make men under- stand more fully their duty to themselves, their neighbours, and their God; and lead them to realize that whatever may be our station in life, we have each and all of us a duty to perform. I ask them care- fully to consider the advice I have ventured thus plainly to give them, satisfied that if they adopt it, they will one and all of them be convinced, in the language of the immortal dramatist— I am not an imposter, that proclaim Myself against the level of mine aim; But know I think, and think I know most sure, My art is not past power, nor you past cure. [All's well that ends wcZZ.] Surrey House, Sheffield, November 11th, 1865. PBINTED BY J. PEAECE, JUN., HIGH-STREET, SHEFFIELD.
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