Child Labour and Disease

In the 19th century children suffered terrible illnesses and injury due to working conditions. These diseases and injuries included:

Phossy Jaw

Children and adults working in match factories suffered from Phossy Jaw. This condition was caused by accidentally ingesting dangerous chemicals to make matches. Sometimes the chemicals caused the gums and jaw to become so infected that jaw bones had to be removed.

Chimney Sweep's Cancer                         

If faced with a particularly narrow chimney, chimney sweeps would often be forced to take all their clothes off in order to be able to squeeze through. Their bare skin would rub against the soot on the inside of the chimney and the creosote found in the soot would get under their skin - sometimes leading to testicular cancer.

Chimney sweeps also often suffered from broken and malformed limbs as well as severe breathing problems; children who worked in mines tended to show similar symptoms and were at additional risk of injury or death if the mine collapsed.

Accidental Amputation

Children were small enough to reach into factory machinery to clean it, or clear obstructions. Because the machinery continued to run while they did this, a child could easily get caught in the moving parts and often lost fingers, a hand or even an arm.

Burns

The textile industry employed many children as cheap labour working on the long and complicated process of dyeing cloth. These children often had twelve-hour working days using dangerous and unpleasant substances such as a mixture of sulphuric acid and rancid olive oil, which were used at very high temperatures and could cause terrible burns on the skin.