This Day in History: 1779-03-10

Francis Trollope an English writer and reformer whose heart-wrenching books evoked empathy for the poor and downtrodden, was born this day in 1779. In her “Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy,” published in 1840, Trollope wrote: “Exactly at the bottom of the hill began a long, closely packed double row of miserable dwellings, crowded to excess by the population drawn together by the neighborhood factories. There was a squalid, untrimmed look about them all … an odour, which seemed compounded of a multitude of villainous smells, all reeking together into one, floated over them… My eye caught the little figures of a multitude of children, made distinctly visible, even by that dim light, by the strong relief in which their dark garments showed themselves against the snow. A few steps farther brought me in full view of the factory gates, and then I perceived conserably above two hundred of thise miserable little victims to avarice all huddled together on the ground, and seemingly half buried in the drift that was blown against them. I stood still and gazed upon them — I knew full well what, and how great, was the terror [of a beating by the mill foreman] which had brought them there too soon, and in my heart of hearts I cursed the boasted manufacturing wealth of England, which … gives power, lawless and irresistible, to overwhelm and crush the land it pretends to fructify.”