Take the children - Alan Brown

Publisher. : ​Self Published
ISBN  : 0953520633

Take the children by Alan Brown
How Victorian lace girls lived and worked in Honiton & East Midlands districts - this is their story, as told to the 1862 Royal Commission

In 1862, the government set up a Royal Commission to investigate the employment of 'children and young persons in trades and manufactures not already regulated by law'.  Commissioners were sent around the country to take evidence from these children working in these industries along with independent people in the locality.

Alan Brown brought together the extracts regarding lace in this self published book. 

It is often an unpleasant read detailing the poverty and suffering of these children but through it all, John Edward White, the assistant commissioner in charge of pillow lacemaking shows compassion for his interviewees in the 26 towns and villages that he visited.

Alan wrote 4 books in total:

• Take the Children
• A rough lot 
• The Honiton Lace industry in 1887
• Lace and the Emerald Isle​

What works well?

• Alan Brown supplements the hard facts of the commission report with information about the time to help place the report into an historical context.

Anything that we need to take into consideration?

• This book is out of print, and rarely comes up for sale.
• It is available to download from the University of Arizona Digital Archive on Weaving.  When printing this pdf remember that it was originally designed to be printed on legal size paper.  So choose to print actual size if you don't have access to that paper size in order to maintain pattern integrity.