The expendables: Bioarchaeological evidence for pauper apprentices in 19th century England and the health consequences of child labour

Abstract

Child labour is the most common form of child abuse in the world today, with almost half of child workers employed in hazardous industries. The large-scale employment of children during the rapid industrialisation of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in England is well documented. During this period, the removal of pauper children from workhouses in cities to work as apprentices in rural mills in the North of England was commonplace. Whilst the experiences of some of these children have been recorded historically, this study provides the first direct evidence of their lives through bioarchaeological analysis. The excavation of a rural churchyard cemetery in the village of Fewston, North Yorkshire, yielded the skeletal remains of 154 individuals, including an unusually large proportion of children aged between 8 to 20 years. A multi-method approach was undertaken, including osteological and palaeopathological examination, stable isotope and amelogenin peptide analysis. The bioarchaeological results were integrated with historical data regarding a local textile mill in operation during the 18th-19th centuries. The results for the children were compared to those obtained from contemporaneous individuals of known identity (from coffin plates) of comparable date. Most of the children exhibited distinctive 'non-local' isotope signatures and a diet low in animal protein when compared to the named local individuals. These children also showed severe growth delays and pathological lesions indicative of early life adversity, as well as respiratory disease, which is a known occupational hazard of mill work. This study has provided unique insights into the harrowing lives of these children; born into poverty and forced to work long hours in dangerous conditions. This analysis provides a stark testimony of the impacts of industrial labour on the health, growth and mortality risk of children, with implications for the present as well as our understanding of the past.

Fig 1. The location of the parish of Fewston; West House mill, located in Blubber houses.

Fig 2. Example of a coffin plate excavated from the cemetery.

Fig 3. Burial records for Fewston church showing the dramatic increase in deaths amongst those aged 13–19 years (black bars) during the height of the mill’s productivity in the early 19^th century.

Fig 4. Age and sex distribution of the Fewston skeletal sample.

The sexes of the non-adults include the 11 peptide skeletons, 1 coffin plate skeleton, and four older teenagers who were sexed morphologically.

Fig 5. Strontium and oxygen isotope profiles of the named adults and those aged 8–20 years.

Daniel Fox is labelled in an open orange square because prior to analysis his identity was not completely certain.

Fig 6. Scatterplot of humans from Fewston with animals from Hungate, York with the outlying pig specimen with a δ¹³C value of -10.2‰ omitted to allow for greater clarity in the plot.

Fig 7. Raincloud (boxplot + violin + jitter) plots [99] of human data categorized by age or named status for group sizes >5.

Fig 8. Plot of mean and standard deviations for δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N in populations previously studied from the post-medieval period against age categories from Fewston where sample size >5 individuals (denoted with prefix F).

Sites in London are denoted by ‘_L’. Reference populations derive from: York [100], Coventry and Chelsea [89], Birmingham [101], Lukin Street and Kilkenny Workhouse [78], Chichester low/mid status and high status denoted by burial type [102] (S2 Appendix), Spitalfields [103], Queen’s Chapel Savoy and St Barnabas [85]. Comparative data can be found in S2 Appendix.

Fig 9. Dental enamel hypoplasia on the upper deciduous and permanent teeth of SK 232.

Fig 10. Woven bone on the visceral surface of the vertebral end of a left rib of SK 334.

Fig 11. Age distribution of boys and girls known to have been sent to Fewston parish as pauper apprentices.