Study sources E and F and the site at Quarry bank mill. :: essays research papers

I am studying how useful sources E and F are in arriving at an accurate explanation of how apprentices were treated at Quarry Bank Mill in the early 1840s. Source E was written by Robert Hyde Greg in 1843, 7 years after the incident happened. Robert H. Greg was the son of Samuel Greg, he was the original owner of Quarry Bank Mill. By 1836, which was when the Esther Price ran away, Robert H. Greg had inherited the mill. Source F was written in 1838, by a man called John Doherty. He was a campaigner for reducing children?s hours of employment in cotton mills. Doherty had also been in prison for organising pickets. The magistrate was a close friend of Samuel Greg, because of this John Doherty campaigned many times to close down and taint the reputation of Quarry Bank Mill. Both sources E and F are accounts of Esther Price?s escape from Quarry Bank Mill to Liverpool at end of August 1836 with her friend Lucy Garner. Esther Price had asked to go to Liverpool during Wakes week, a holiday week when the factory was shut, but she was refused. She had two reasons for running away, she had heard that her father was ill and wanted to visit him. The other reason was to collect her birth certificate to prove that she was actually older than her indenture said so that she could get a paid job earlier as apprentices were not paid. An indenture was the contract that an apprentice signed to say that the child would work for Mr. Greg for a set amount of years, normally seven, and that if they broke any of the rules of that contract the boss had permission to punish them. In source E it says that Esther price and her friend Lucy Garner ran away from the apprentice house on Saturday night. Lucy came back 5 days later on Thursday and Esther came back 5 days after that on Tuesday. When the girls came back, they were each put into solitary confinement. Lucy Garner did not have her windows boarded up. However Esther Prices did, Robert H. Greg said it was also ?partly to prevent her escape.? It says in source E Robert H. Greg wanted to punish them by cutting off the girls? hair, but his sister sally Greg and Mrs Shawcross, the former superintendent argued against this.