A podcast of Jane Humphries' Tawney lecture given at the EHS annual conference on the 28th March 2010 is now available on the EHS website at http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/podcasts/lectures.asp

Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution

Autobiographies by working men in which they described their first job, age at starting work, and family life document the extent of child labour in the British industrial revolution. While the classical accounts of industrialization gave child labour a central role, recent reinterpretations which downplay the cotton industry, factories and poverty have pushed it from the economic limelight. The autobiographies' fresh evidence and unique perspective suggest that 1790-1850 saw an upsurge in children's work. While mechanization and factories are implicated in this increase, new divisions of labour in workshop production also contributed. On the supply-side, fatherlessness and large sibsets, common in these turbulent times, cast children as breadwinners in struggling families.

Leigh Shaw-Taylor
Chair IT committee EHS

Dr Leigh Shaw-Taylor University Lecturer in History, Faculty of History,
Deputy Director of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and
Social Structure, University of Cambridge.

Postal address: Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social
Structure; Downing Place; Dept of Geography; University of Cambridge;
Cambridge CB2 2EN- Telephone 01223 333190

http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic_staff/further_details/shaw-taylor.html

The website for The Occupational Structure of Britain 1379-1911 is at
http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/occupations/