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Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine by Edwin Waugh
page 23 of 202 (11%)
wall, because one of the legs was gone. In this miserable hole--
which I saw afterwards--her husband died of sheer starvation, as was
declared by the jury on the inquest. The dark, damp hovel where they
had crept to was scarcely four yards square; and the poor woman
pointed to one corner of the floor, saying, "He dee'd i' that nook."
He died there, with nothing to lie upon but the ground, and nothing
to cover him, in that fireless hovel. His wife and children crept
about him, there, to watch him die; and to keep him as warm as they
could. When the relief committee first found this family out, the
entire clothing of the family of seven persons weighed eight pounds,
and sold for fivepence, as rags. I saw the family afterwards, at
their poor place; and will say more about them hereafter. He told me
of many other cases of a similar kind. But, after agreeing to a time
when we should visit them personally, we set out together to see the
"Stone Yard," where there are many factory hands at work under the
Board of Guardians.

The "Stone Yard" is close by the Preston and Lancaster Canal. Here
there are from one hundred and seventy to one hundred and eighty,
principally young men, employed in breaking, weighing, and wheeling
stone, for road mending. The stones are of a hard kind of blue
boulder, gathered from the land between Kendal and Lancaster. The
"Labour Master" told me that there were thousands of tons of these
boulders upon the land between Kendal and Lancaster. A great deal of
them are brought from a place called "Tewhitt Field," about seven
mile on "t' other side o' Lancaster." At the "Stone Yard" it is all
piece-work, and the men can come and go when they like. As one of
the Guardians told me, "They can oather sit an' break 'em, or kneel
an' break 'em, or lie deawn to it, iv they'n a mind." The men can
choose whether they will fill three tons of the broken stone, and
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