A letter to Dr. Charles Barham from F. Thrale, on behalf of Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby, the Home Secretary appointing him sub-commissioner to the Commission on the Employment of Children.

This collection is divided into 3 sections:

1. Local Bye-laws, 1904 - 1913: copies of local bye-laws governing child labour made under the provisions of the Employment of Children Act (1903), which were sent to the Committee by local authorities, including several licences and some correspondence and ephemera.
2. Questionnaires, 1913: responses to the questionnaire entitled 'Employment of Children Inquiry', distributed to every local authority in Britain in 1913.
3. Miscellanea, c1885 - 1914: the bulk of the material collected by the committee for the report on child labour, including correspondence with local government officials, copies of local bye-laws, sample street trading licences and certificates, statistics on street trading, child labour and juvenile crime, and cuttings from local newspapers relating to the regulation of working children.

Letter from Richard Oastler of Fixby Hall, Huddersfield, [West Riding of Yorkshire] to John Foster, Esq of 1 Vincent Square, Westminster, 23 Jun 1833. Chiefly relating to the Ten Hours Bill. Lord Althorp had advocated 2 sets of 8 hours as the maximum for children under 14 to work. 'The news came just in time for your Hudd meeting - one hour before we began - & thus before 15,000 to 20,000 people I had the opportunity of blowing the whole scheme to rags' [referring to a speech Oastler made at a meeting on 18 Jun 1833. Urging the London section not to yield a single point: 'If they yield they disgrace themselves and give us another year's excitement and in my opinion hurry on a bloody revolution'.

Autograph, with signature. With Oastler's black seal, bearing the motto: 'The Altar, the Throne and the Cottage'.

Letter from Robert Rawson of 84 Great Ducie Street, Manchester to Augustus De Morgan, [1845]. Covering note accompanying copies of a pamphlet On the summation of series ..., read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester on 12 Nov 1844. Describing his experiences working as a child coal miner. Proposes 'a new ... chymical theory'.

Autograph, with signature.

These scrapbooks consist of press cuttings from the national and local press relating to 'women's organisations' ‘'he dangerous trades', 'child labour', 'home industries' and 'sweating'.