Mill Apprentices Learning Journey

You are seven years old and snuggled up to your mother. She is holding you tight against her, stroking your hair, and you love the warmth and the faint smell of lavender from the tiny sprig she has pinned to her grey dress. You never want to let her go but you know that in half an hour the man in the dark coat will come for you and take you on a long journey far away from your mother and you have no idea when you will see her again.


See also Mill Apprentices at Quarry Bank Mill

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Mill Apprentices Learning Journey Step 6: Time off Mr Bartlett said to Bessie and Marie that apprentices were lucky to have so much spare time. Between six at night and six in the morning they were free to do as they pleased, he said. Marie and Bessie knew different. After tea, which was usually vegetable stew with a thick chunk of home-made bread, there were two hours to be spent in the school room learning to read and write and how to do their sums. Marie wasn't very interested, but Bessie, remembering her mother putting a cross on the form that had signed away her life until she was twenty one, determined that she would learn to read and write. That way she might be able to get a better job and go home to look after her mother. As well as their schooling each evening, the girls had to spend time mending clothes and sewing shirts for the boys; while the boys were expected to tend the garden where fruit and vegetables were grown to feed the apprentices. Bessie and Marie attended church each Sunday morning, walking two by two with all the other apprentices. Sometimes Mr Higginbotham would join them. On Sunday afternoons Mrs Postlethwaite invited a number of the girls into her parlour where she gave them tea and taught them how to embroider with fine stitching. Once every two or three months Bessie was allowed to meet her mother for a half day on Sunday afternoon. It wasn't much but Bessie told herself she was lucky. Marie's mother was ill and couldn't travel, and Marie was not allowed time off to visit her. Marie had thought of running away but she knew that she would be taken to the courts and punished if she did. Like Eliza who had been locked in the attic for a whole week. One day, Bessie thought longingly, Marie and I will be free again and then we can be with our families. I just hope it's not too late. GG

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