Sadler report
The Sadler Report, also known as the Report of the Select Committee on Factory Children's Labour (Parliamentary Papers 1831-32, volume XV) or "the report of Mr Sadler’s Committee,"[a] was a report written in 1832 by Michael Sadler, the chairman of a UK Parliamentary committee considering a bill that limited the hours of work of children in textile mills and factories. In committee hearings carried out between the passage of the 1832 Reform Act and Parliament’s subsequent dissolution, Sadler had elicited testimony from factory workers (current and former), concerned medical men, and other bystanders. The report highlighted the poor working conditions and excessive working hours for children working in the factories. Time (and Sadler) prevented balancing or contrary evidence from being called before Parliament was dissolved.
The committee report was published early in 1833. A mid-20th century historian described it as "a mass of evidence, constituting a most formidable indictment of factory conditions... It is impossible not to be staggered by the revelations of human misery and degradation - impossible not to be moved by the dreadful stories of children and young persons (and adults, too, for that matter) who were bullied and cursed and tormented, pushed around and knocked about by those placed in authority over them."[5]: 116 There was widespread public outcry at the conditions depicted by the testimony heard. Parliament declined to legislate on the basis of the report. Even Sadler’s parliamentary friends, such as Lord Morpeth, conceded that the proceedings of the Committee were irregular and its choice of witnesses unbalanced. Instead, Parliament voted for a fresh inquiry through a Factory Commission, which visited the principal manufacturing districts and took evidence on oath (unlike the Select Committee).
The report of the Commission did not set out to directly refute testimony presented by Sadler, but it reached conclusions at variance with Sadler's report on many points. However, it concluded that children were working excessively long hours and government intervention to regulate child labour in textile trades was therefore called for. This required both restrictions on hours of work and a new organization for enforcing them. The consequent Factory Act of 1833 and its establishment of the UK Factory Inspectorate is often taken to mark the start of modern factory legislation in the UK. The report of Sadler’s Committee therefore indirectly led to an important advance in factory legislation.
History[edit]
On 16 March 1832 Sadler proposed the Second Reading of a Bill to limit the workday for textile workers under the age of 18 to ten hours. The bill also involved a ban on labour for children 9 years old and younger, an eight-hour day on Saturday, and a ban on night working for children under the age of 21.[6][7]
Although Sadler had asserted at earlier stages that the need for such legislation was so urgent and so obvious that there was no need for a Select Committee to gather evidence relating to the Bill, at Second Reading he accepted that the Bill should be considered by such a committee. One was duly formed, with Sadler as the chairman; the committee also included John Cam Hobhouse, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Lord Morpeth, Sir Robert Peel, Sir Robert Inglis, and Charles Poulett Thomson.[8][9] It held its first sitting on 12 April 1832, and took evidence from eighty-nine witnesses in the course of forty-three meetings.[8] About half the witnesses were workers (some of whom, Sadler told the House of Commons, had lost their jobs because they had given evidence).[10]
Sadler attempted (31 July 1832) to progress his Bill without waiting for the committee's report; when this was objected to, he withdrew the Bill.[11] The committee reported the minutes of evidence on 8 August 1832, when they were ordered to be printed.[12] Parliament was dissolved little over a week later, and in the election that followed, Sadler stood at Leeds but failed to be elected. Early in 1833 the contents of the committee's report began to appear in local and national papers.[13]