A Victorian Girl's Diary
1842 - 1843
In Spring 1842 Eliza is shocked when she is sent to work in the Manchester cotton mills - the noisy suffocating mills. The work is backbreaking and dangerous and when she sees friends' lives wrecked by poverty, sickness and unrest, Eliza realizes she must fight to escape the fate of a mill girl.
Set in Manchester, England, Mill Girl gives an account of life for children as young as 9 working in spinning mills inhaling fluff from the thread and working beneath machines where they were dangerously close to heavy machinery constantly moving. Unrest among the workers in appalling conditions prompted many to join a Chartist Movement. Cheap cotton material was in demand and with the invention of James Hargreaves' Spinning Jenny workers could spin as much as 8 people could in their homes. Other inventions brought about the Industrial Revolution.
