1. Who had it worse during the Industrial Revolution?
Life in the workhouse, mines and factories.

2. Lesson Objectives Develop ‘Talk’ and arguing skills.
Develop research skills by considering different sources of evidence to identify who had the worse experience, children and adults in the mines, workhouses or factories.

3. Order! Order! Order in the court!
Your task: Over the next 2 lessons you will research and prepare a case that identifies who had the worse experience during the Industrial Revolution. Was it…. Miners Factory workers Workhouse inhabitants (NB You must look at the experiences of both children and adults)
Order! Order! Order in the court!

4. What was a workhouse?
The paupers were not fed very well at all. There were reports of a fight breaking out in a workhouse in Andover. Inmates were supposed to be grinding bones for fertilizer but fought to suck the marrow out of them.
A workhouse was a place where those who were too poor to look after themselves went. It offered food and accommodation in return for hard manual labour.
It was also nicknamed the ‘spike’ after the spikes the inmates used to pick out the Oakum from old rope.

5. Conditions were poor in the factories and children and adults were often injured in the machines as well as being punished by the ‘overseer’ if they were not working hard enough.
Life in the factories…
Factories in Britain were mostly for producing textiles and cotton.
Many parents would encourage their children (some as young as 4 years old) to go and work a 14 hour day to help with the family income. Other children came from the workhouses and orphanages and these became known as pauper apprentices.

6. Life in the mines…
Children were very useful down the mines as they were very small and could be used to the crates of coal to the surface. They would spend hours at a time below the ground and would very rarely see any daylight.
Many people mined coal down in the ‘pits’. This too was a very dangerous job as often the shafts would collapse or there would be coal dust fires.

7. Miners
Workhouse inmates
Who had it worse and why? Vote with your feet…
Factory workers