Christian Social Vision in the Novels of the 1850s: Bleak House, Hard Times and Little Dorrit

Abstract

As the 1850s arrived, there came no abatement of the need for social campaigning. By 1850, the political and religious campaigners who had been pursuing their goals since the 1830s had achieved some, but only partial, success. In 1842, Ashley had at least succeeded in getting a bill through Parliament prohibiting all employment of females and of boys under ten years of age in mines, making it illegal for anyone under fifteen to be in charge of shaft lifts, setting up a system of inspection, and outlawing the truck system of payment in kind both within and outside the mining industry.¹ The attempts made by him and others to introduce legislation affecting factories were less successful. The Ten Hours Movement briefly thought it had achieved its goals with the passing of the 1847 Factory Act.² However, some employers quickly started getting round the Act using a relay system, which meant that employees might have to be at their mill for up to fifteen hours a day³; when this practice was challenged in the courts in 1850, the jury found in favour of the masters,⁴ and, in the words of J.T. Ward, ‘The Ten Hours Act was thus virtually demolished’.⁵ There were also moves to repeal the Act, leading to the foundation of a Society for the Protection of the Ten Hours Act,⁶ and also to a rift in the Factory Movement. After the masters promised to abandon relays in exchange for an eleven hour working day,⁷ Ashley, fearing an Eleven Hours Bill, supported the idea of a ten and a half hour working day,⁸ prompting Oastler to say that he had ‘betrayed the poor’ and Stephens to describe him as having acted with ‘the most unparalleled baseness’.⁹