The Industrial Revolution

Illustrations include: Main Woolen Areas, Textile inventions, Water Frame, Pudding Furnace, Mine ventilation, Davy Lamp, Watt's Steam Engine, Norfolk Rotation System, Villages before and after Enclosure, Brindley Canals, Road Construction, Mail Coach, Coalfields, Back to Back Housing, Factory children, Chimney Boy, Trade Union Banner, Railway Signal, Engines of the "Great Eastern", Population balance etc.

From Chapter 3 Richard Arkwright

As soon as his Water Fame was ready and the patents had been obtained in 1769, Arkwright took it to Nottingham, which was the centre of the important stocking-knitting industry. There he obtained the backing of two rich stocking manufacturers named Samuel Need from Nottingham itself and Jedediah Strutt from nearby Derby, and with their help set up his first mill at Cromford on a stream which flows into the River Derwent, not far from Derby in 1771. This mill which employed three hundred people and spun cotton thread on several thousand spindles was a great success, and Arkwright was able to open other factories in the Midlands and in South Lancashire where he had one mill which employed six hundred workers.

From Chapter 9 James Brindley

The Trent and Mersey Canal which Brindley started to build in 1766 was much more than just a canal to carry Josiah Wedgwood's china clay and pottery to and from the ports of Hull and Liverpool. To Brindley, it was the most important link in a great cross of waterways which he dreamed would one day link the industrial Midlands with the four main ports of Hull, Liverpool, Bristol, and London.

From Chapter 16 Child Labour

Here are some questions and answers given by a young girl who was giving evidence to a committee investigating child labour in 1832: