Only In England

Recently, our class has been discussing the factories of the Industrial Revolution., to compliment this we participated in a Google chat with the Textiles Gallery of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester UK. To orientate ourselves for the chat, we watched a video that one of the Explain-er working there, Jaime, was kind enough to make. The video showed the long complex process of making cotton into clothe. After we finished the video, we found and defined any words that we didn't understand from the video. After we finished the definitions, we created a couple of questions to ask the "Explain-er" during our chat.

A child working in the mill's terrible conditions, taken by Lewis Hines 1833

During the chat, I learned a lot about the cotton industry during the revolution. The thing I found the most interesting was the poor treatment of the workers worker during the revolution. I found the treatment of orphans during the revolution especially shocking. During the revolution the job of cleaning the machines had such a high fatality rate, that the mill owners went to orphanages, and "adopted" orphans, just so they could operate the cleaning of the machines. At some point Jamie mentions that the machines in the mills were so loud that workers some times grew deaf from later in their lives.

Overall, I found the experience very informative. It was very interesting learning about the working conditions of the workers of the mill. the only gripes I had with the chat, was that Jaime showed us how the cotton was processed, felt redundant because we had already watched a video made about the the cotton producing process. It also wasn't helped that the frame rate which almost melted down as if there was a watch stuck in its gears, but overall I found the chat very informing