I have an interesting book on my desk. Well, not actually on my desk, hovering a foot or so above my desk, balanced on another book and a box of medallions and another book and a plastic basket which, in the way of plastic baskets, has very little in it to justify the space it takes up.

That is either the way a creative mind arranges his desk, or an example of why I don’t get more done.

It’s an interesting book I came across while I was researching slavery. It’s a subject that keeps intruding on various things I do and I decided to give it a bit of time recently, when the subject came up with some medallion research. It was going to be part of my talk about the various unpleasant stories behind medallions, but that had to be shelved when I was ill and I’m starting to use some of the material for other things.

In addition to slavery I have recently finished a book on the Preston textile industry and another on miners in the Great War.

This all led me to one point – this book – The Real Oliver Twist.

It’s the story of a boy called Oliver Blincoe. He ended up in the Workhouse in what is described as “rural St Pancras” on the book jacket. Now it is better known for being in the middle of London. At the age of seven he was apprenticed to a Nottinghamshire Mill as a “parish apprentice” (also known as a “pauper apprentice), to serve until he was 21.  The Statute of Apprentices of 1563 gave Justices of the Peace the power to send out pauper children to masters in various ways, and the power to fine people who refused to take on apprentices.

In 1799, Blincoe was one of a group of 80 children apprenticed to a mill at Lowdham near Nottingham. In 1803 the mill closed and the children were sent to a mill in Derbyshire. From what I have read so far they were often sold by the overseers, as the textile factories of the North needed a steady supply of child labour, but I’m not sure how common that was. Even if they went for nothing, it was good for the overseers of the poor to lift the burden from the ratepayers.

I will be making a start on that tomorrow.