This is a 1820s biography by a journalist of a young orphan boy living in St Pancras parish workhouse from the age of four, who was indentured as an apprentice in a cotton mill in Lancashire from the age of seven in 1799. It describes the appalling working and living conditions of the apprentices, which are genuinely shocking and which, the author, perhaps with some exaggeration, says are worse even than those of African slaves in the Americas. This memoir is believed by some to have been the inspiration for Charles Dickens's character of Oliver Twist, though as I understand, there is little or no hard evidence that he had read or heard of this memoir.

There are some shocking incidences of brutality and degrading treatment here, and, what arguably makes matters even worse was that, in 1802, an Act of Parliament (inspired by the industrialist Sir Robert Peel, father of the future Prime Minister) had actually somewhat ameliorated the conditions for these apprentices, but the mill owners largely ignored it and kept their workforce in the dark about such relatively liberal changes as a maximum 12 hour working day with no work before 6am and after 9pm, and provision of some basic education in the "3 Rs". Such had been the degradation that "Before he was eight years old, Blincoe declared, that many a time he had been tempted to throw himself out of one the upper windows of the factory". Some apprentices sought to commit crimes that would get them transported to Australia in the belief, quite possibly rightly, that that would be better than their current conditions. Blincoe knew no other life during his apprenticeship between the ages of 7 and 21 though a rebellious streak caused him to escape and defy his masters on some occasions. This was particularly after the closure of the first mill where he worked and his removal to an even worse one where "Upon an average, the children were kept to work during a great part, if not all, the time Blincoe was [at Litton Mill], sixteen hours in the day. The result of this excessive toil, super-added to hunger and torture, and was the death of many apprentices, and the entailment of incurable lameness and disease on many others."

After he finished his apprenticeship, Blincoe was an adult worker in various cotton mills under conditions that still seem very harsh to modern ears, though he was at least able to move around and find better opportunities from time to time. In addition to providing embellishments to Brown's biography, Blincoe reported to various commissions about his experiences. He married a woman rather older than he was and had three children, whom he had educated, declaring that he would rather they be transported than undergo the working conditions he had done in his youth.

This is a shocking account that reminds us of the importance of good working conditions but also that, however much we may rightly complain about aspects of working life and economic conditions nowadays, things are a great deal better in 2022 than they were in 1822 or 1802 (though the modern editor of this edition Malc Cowle does not appear to accept this). ( )