In 1792 as revolution, riot and sedition spread across Europe, a four-year-old boy was abandoned to a parish workhouse. Three years later, Robert Blincoe was sent 200 miles north to work in one of the new cotton factories - a life dictated by the inhuman rhythm of machines and the abuse of vicious factory masters.
After fourteen years of agony, Blincoe rebelled. He fought back against the mill owners, earning beatings but gaining self-respect. He joined the campaign to protect children from ruthless profit-seekers, gave evidence to a Royal Commission into conditions in factories, and worked with extraordinary tenacity to earn enough money to keep his own children from the factories. And he became the subject of one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe. The first of its kind, the Memoir inspired Dickens' Oliver Twist.
The lives of Blincoe and his children span different worlds, from a parish workhouse and debtor's gaol to Cambridge University and a prestigious London church. John Waller tells his story with passion and in enthralling detail.
