As you enter the factory, the whirring of a million hissing wheels hits your ears. Then you see the hundreds of helpless children. They have lost all trace of health, joy, and youth. Lean and crooked limbs, pale and sunken cheeks, dim and hollow eyes make them look old before their time. Neither these little slaves nor the whirling spindles they serve ever stop - the foremen, straps in hand, are watching all the time.

Adapted from a novel, Michael Armstrong, written by Mrs Trollope in 1840.