Richard Oastler (20 December 1789 – 22 August 1861) was a "Tory radical", an active opponent of Parliamentary Reform and a lifelong admirer of the Duke of Wellington; but also an abolitionist and prominent in the "anti-Poor Law" resistance to the implementation of the "New Poor Law" of 1834. Most notably, as his sobriquet of the "Factory King" indicates, he was at the heart of the campaign for a ten-hour working day in its early years: although less so by the time of its successful culmination in the Factories Act 1847, he retained the sobriquet.
"Moved by pity and indignation at the long hours worked by young children in factories, he devoted his life to their emancipation, and was a tireless champion of the Ten Hours Factory Bill" noted a commemorative plaque erected in Leeds parish church in 1925. "He cannot altogether claim prominence as a political thinker...but history acclaims him not as a politician, but as an agitator" commented the Yorkshire Post on that occasion.
Early years Born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, Oastler was the youngest of ten children born to Sarah (a daughter of Joseph Scurr) and Robert Oastler, a linen merchant. Robert continued to live in Leeds when he later became steward for Thomas Thornhill, the absentee landlord of Fixby, a large estate near Huddersfield, and of Calverley (between Leeds and Bradford, to the north of both). When Richard was six, his twelve-year-old brother Robert died as a result of a fire in a flax mill.item of news under general heading Richard attended a Moravian boarding school from 1798 to 1806 ("It was there that I learned to be bold, for I was taught there to fear nothing but sin"), and then (his father vetoing Richard's desire to become a barrister) started training to become an architect.
After four years his failing sight forced him to give this up; in 1810 he became a commission agent, dealing in oils and dry-saltery: he also acted as a steward for the Dixons of Gledhow Hall near Leeds, and was used by his father from time to time to carry out work for the Fixby estate (as when in 1812 he organised precautions against the Luddites). He became involved in charity work in Leeds; sick visiting with Michael Thomas Sadler and organising charitable relief of the destitute. In 1816, he married Mary Tatham, daughter of Mary (née Strickland, from Leeds) and Thomas Tatham, a Nottingham grocer. Richard and Mary had two children, both of whom had died by 1819. Early in 1820 he went bankrupt; later that year on the death of his father, he was invited to succeed him as steward of the Fixby estate, looking after a rent roll of £18,000 per year, on an annual salary of £300. He accepted, moving to Fixby Hall in 1821. When in 1827 the vicar of Halifax (in which parish Fixby lay) attempted to increase his income by "resuming" collection of various tithes which he claimed to be "customary", Oastler was prominent in opposition. He later claimed that it was this struggle that had broken his health, leaving him liable to periodic breakdowns in health.
Political philosophy To Oastler "Tory-Radical" was not a description of a political philosophy (and certainly not of his) but of a tactical alliance of the supporters of two different philosophies against the Whigs. He was a "Church and King" Tory but, as the Duke of Wellington noted, a strange one. He denied any element of Radicalism in his political philosophy, and regarded himself as an "ultra-Tory" rather than a Peelite "Conservative"; he thought Peel too readily accepted (and adopted) the Whig application of the modern doctrines of "political economy" to the country's problems. He held that God knew better than Malthus: nothing could supersede Biblical injunctions that the poor should not be oppressed and the distressed should be succoured. Market forces were not a "hidden hand" working for some greater good, nor was interference with them imprudent folly. On the contrary I believe that man is a fallen, selfish, ignorant being, and that every unregulated and unrestrained action of his is fraught with evil – that, if left without the restraining and regulating laws of God (which, by our Constitution, must be part and parcel of the laws of the land), instead of preferring such schemes, in the search of his own advantage, as would be advantageous to the society, his selfishness would lead him to injure all for his own benefit. I learn this from the Holy Bible. I have often witnessed it. Reform on a Whig laissez-faire agenda had worsened the condition of the poor and led to chronic discontent, to which the response was greater centralisation and greater coercion; this was a vicious circle which could only end badly. He had seen the "poor deluded famished Luddites" and thought them to be pitied rather than feared – only because they were famished had they allowed themselves to be deluded. English working people loved peace, order and their old local habits; they disliked change and confusion The great mistake in the minds of those raised above the working class is, that they think the people want plunder and anarchy. I know they want no such thing – they want peace and rest – and their rights. They want to be able to go out in a morning, get a good day's work done, and come home with a fair remuneration..."Facts and Plain Words on Every-Day Subjects" a pamphlet by Oastler published at Leeds, 1833 If the working men of England were dealt with according to the Bible rather than "political economy" their economic woes would disappear. With those woes gone support for Reform, Radicalism, trades unionism etc. would evaporate. There would then be no need for a centralised coercive state apparatus: instead the throne (and the rest of the constitution) would rest on the securest foundation – the love of the people. To Oastler, therefore, rich Whigs were a greater danger to the status quo than were working-class Radicals. Until the 1840s, very few Tories would have agreed with him: events such as the Bristol riots of 1831 seeming to provide evidence that coercion was essential. Working class radicals were initially dubious about allying themselves with an opponent of their constitutional aspirations, but eventually came to value Oastler more highly than many of their ostensible allies; a co-belligerent "above purchase and above suspicion" on bread-and-butter issues: the portrait of Oastler reproduced in this article was given away by the Chartist Northern Star in its series of prints of "Portraits of Patriots".
Factory Reform
"Yorkshire Slavery" In 1830 Oastler, a committed abolitionist, was visiting John Wood of Horton Hall near Bradford, one of the largest worsted spinners in the country. Whilst an existing (virtually un-enforceable) Factory Act specified a minimum age and maximum hours of work for children in cotton mills, it did not apply to other textile industries (such as: silk, flax, woollen and worsted ). Wood, unhappy at the hours and conditions of work for children in Yorkshire worsted mills and his inability to persuade his competitors to ameliorate them, explained his concerns to Oastler and got him to promise to "remove from our factory system the cruelties which are practised in our mills". Oastler wrote the next day a letter to the Leeds Mercury the leading West Riding newspaper contrasting speeches made at Yorkshire anti-slavery meetings with the treatment of children in Yorkshire factories – "Yorkshire Slavery":
Thousands of our fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects, both male and female, the miserable inhabitants of a Yorkshire town, (Yorkshire now represented in Parliament by the giant of anti-slavery principles) are this very moment existing in a state of slavery, more horrid than are the victims of that hellish system 'colonial slavery' These innocent creatures drawl out, unpitied, their short but miserable existence, in a place famed for its profession of religious zeal, whose inhabitants are ever foremost in professing 'temperance' and 'reformation' and are striving to outrun their neighbours in missionary exertions, and would fain send the Bible to the farthest corner of the globe aye, in the very place where the anti-slavery fever rages most furiously, her apparent charity is not more admired on earth, than her real cruelty is abhorred in Heaven. The very streets which receive the droppings of an 'Anti-Slavery Society' are every morning wet by the tears of innocent victims at the accursed shrine of avarice, who are compelled (not by the cart-whip of the negro slave-driver) but by the dread of the equally appalling thong or strap of the over-looker, to hasten, half-dressed, but not half-fed, to those magazines of British infantile slavery the worsted mills in the town and neighbourhood of Bradford!!! After a fortnight's delay, the Mercury published the letter. This triggered correspondence; it became clear that other readers of the Mercury were also perturbed at conditions for children not only in the worsted industry, but also in other unregulated textile trades carried out in the West Riding. Oastler took up the cause of factory regulation. However, the millowners organised to resist any attempt to regulate their mills.
Halifax resolutions – breach with the Mercury
In 1831, John Cam Hobhouse put forward a Bill to extend the Factory Act to other textile industries; Yorkshire millowners opposing the Bill met at Halifax and passed anti-Bill resolutions which the Mercury printed with an editorial endorsing the resolutions and opposing Hobhouse's Bill. Oastler wrote a long letter to the Mercury criticising the resolutions and reiterating the need for factory regulation. The Mercury printed his letter but omitted his detailed criticism of the resolutions, telling readers it had not printed the full letter because it 'outraged the judgement' and exceeded 'the bounds of reason and justice', objection being particularly taken to his 'brimstone rhetoric'. Oastler took great exception to this; the Leeds Intelligencer, the great (Tory) rival of the (Whig) Mercury was happy to print the letter in full, including such passages as:Resolution 3 – attempts to persuade the public that if the manufacturers are not allowed to continue their present cruelties, the children will be starved and unemployed, and that, as these poor children are the main support of their strong and healthy parents, why, forsooth, the parents must starve too! That compelling the masters to treat their children better will REDUCE wages, and, what is very singular, will, at the same time RAISE THE PRICE of goods to the consumers. Thus destroying at one fell swoop the maker, the buyer, the consumer – both the home and foreign markets will be lost – the agricultural and landed proprietor ruined:- all this they say will be the consequences if poor little English children are protected from the cruelty and oppression of their worse than Egyptian task-masters. Happy England, whose very existence depends upon thy cruelty to infants! ... Self interest and avarice, and not necessity now goad thee on to ruin. England, beware! Let her inhabitants consider. They pretend to be Christians, and their God hath said – "If thou seest the oppression of the poor and violent perverting of judgement and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they."Bible (Authorised Version) "But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days." "Rob not the poor because he is poor, for the Lord will plead their cause and spoil the soul of those who spoil them" "Deliver the poor and needy, rid them out of the hand of the wicked." "If the poor curse thee in the bitterness of his soul, his prayer shall be heard of him that made him."Apocrypha" "A prayer out of a poor man's mouth reacheth to the ears of God, and his reproach cometh speedily." "He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his maker.""