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Work and Labour

A place, an object, an everyday problem. Find a small story that opens up a bigger picture.

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18 results · Showing 1–10

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More Goods, Unequal Gains: Who Benefited from the Industrial Revolution?

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Manchester’s smoky skyline promised a changed world. But more goods, better wages, freedom and a voice in public life did not arrive together. What counts as industrial progress depends on whose life we follow.

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A Shorter Working Day? What Factory Laws Changed for Children

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A law could shorten a shift on paper. Changing a child’s day required inspectors, age certificates, school attendance and decisions inside the factory. Follow what changed—and what the rulebook could not settle.

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Peterloo 1819: How a Crowd Demanding a Voice Met the Cavalry

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A crowd gathered in Manchester to demand a political voice. Cavalry turned the meeting into violence. Follow the decisions, compare two eyewitness perspectives and see why the struggle over Peterloo’s meaning outlasted the day.

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Cotton’s Divided World: From Enslaved Labour to Lancashire Mills

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A bale could cross the Atlantic while the person who picked its cotton could not leave the plantation. Follow the trade, read the records and discover why one connected industry contained profoundly different kinds of power.

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Child Labour in Victorian Mills: The Hours Behind the Machines

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An inspector’s report, a former worker’s testimony and an apprentice house tell different stories. Together they reveal what children’s work demanded—and why a law or a single witness cannot explain every mill.

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Manchester’s Cotton Mills: How Cotton Reshaped a City

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Tall mills stood beside canals, with workers’ homes close behind. In Ancoats, Manchester’s industrial transformation can still be read through brick, water and the connections that reached across the Atlantic.

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