Colne Bridge Fire
In February 1818, 17 children who were all female and aged between 9 and 18 and working on the night shift at Colne Bridge Mill, near Huddersfield were killed in a fire.
The fire was accidently started by a 10 - year old boy who had been sent, with a naked candle, by a foreman, to fetch some ‘rovings’ (fibrous strands of cotton) from an unoccupied dark room. 26 people were working on the night shift that night, 17 of the 20 girls working died. There were 9 survivors - 2 men, 2 boys, 2 women and 3 girls. Sarah Moody (aged 11) saw the fire through the floorboards and her and another girl reported the fire to the foreman, 20-year old James Sugden who told them to go back to their workstations. 11-year old Sarah Moody didn’t (and survived). The other girl did as she was told and died. Sarah’s two sisters Mary (13) and Elizabeth (17) also died. Children working nights at this time was not unusual (boys worked 12-hour shifts in mines until the middle of the 19th Century).
Outcry from the deaths led to many campaigns about both health and safety and restrictions on children’s working hours and occupations.
Throughout the 19th century battles took place across Britain about the ‘hell-holes’ that were workplaces in a country where an increasing number of male agricultural workers and women/children were recruited into new factories, mills and mines. These was no idyll for working class children as portrayed in books about rich people’s children with maids and nannies. Children as young as 5 or 6 were employed down mines, and in mills and factories. They were working in the most barbaric conditions as the ‘fruits of their cheap labour’ built huge mansions for the rich who lived in luxury with dozens of servants (many of them also children). Events that affected working people and their children are often forgotten.
A commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the deaths in Colne Bridge fire is to be held at 11.00am on Saturday 10th February 2018 at Kirkheaton Parish Church, Church Lane, Kirkheaton HD1 0BH, where the children’s memorial is sited. Huddersfield TUC and Kirklees UNISON have given their full support to the commemoration of the Colne Bridge Mill fire.
(A pre-service reception will be held between 10.00am and 11.00am at the Beaumont Arms, opposite Kirkheaton Parish Church). Soft drinks can be purchased from the bar. (The alcohol licence takes effect at 11.00am)
The Mayor of Kirklees, Christine Iredale, will make a short speech and then Kathy Butterworth, great, great, granddaughter of mill survivor, Sarah Moody, will unveil a plaque dedicated to the children who died which will be displayed on a stand at the front of the church (and will then later be transferred and sited inside the Beaumont Arms). When the service is over wreaths will be laid at the memorial and the grave by representatives of Kirklees UNISON and the Fire Service.
(Kirklees UNISON has sponsored the free buffet which will be held in the Beaumont Arms at approximately 12.15pm - all Kirklees UNISON members are welcome).