The Open University
Yorkshire Region

Cultural Studies Research Forum
Reports and Abstracts 1995 -2000

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Those Dark Satanic Hills: Outwork in the Industrial Revolution

Ruth Grayson

The traditional view that the factory replaced cottage industries and outwork in the nineteenth century Britain, has been challenged in recent decades by a number of scholars, such as Phyllis Deane, who noted in 1969 that as late as 1871 there will still twice as many outworkers as factory workers in the textile trades; and Raphael Samuel, who observed the continued coexistence of workshops and factories - and of manual techniques within factories - until even later in the century. The rise of the factory, spectacular though it was, was much slower than is often portrayed even by contemporary observers such as Marx and Engels, and may have blinded historians to the traditional production systems that existed simultaneously.

This study is concerned with the structure of British industry in Yorkshires major industrial cities during the nineteenth century. It is based on previous research which indicated, first, that Sheffield's dual industrial structure of large steel mills juxtaposed with small workshops was neither unique nor anomalous at the height of Britains industrial growth; and secondly, that the extensive outwork system that existed within the city's metal trades concealed a multitude of abuses at least equal to those in factories. It is hoped to help redress the balance in the literature in industrialisation by focusing on the numbers of outworkers and the conditions in which they worked.