Mill Girl: The Diary of Eliza Helstead, Manchester 1842 - 1843 (My Story)

by SueReid (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.47

  Saturday 21st May 1842 Something terrible has happened. I can scarcely bring myself to write the words. I AM TO START AT THE MILL ON MONDAY. You said never, I cried to Mother. Her face was white. Oh Eliza, she said. I'm so sorry. If there was anything I could have done... Where am I to work? I demanded. The room was so quiet that I could hear myself breathe. In the carding room. Sickness. They need more hands. I wasn't Eliza any more, just a pair of hands. Factory hands.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.62

  In spring 1842, Eliza is shocked when she is sent to work in the Manchester cotton mills - the noisy, suffocating mills. The work is backbreaking and dangerous - and when she sees her friends' lives wrecked by poverty, sickness and unrest, Eliza realizes she must fight to escape the fate of a mill girl.