William Dodd

William Dodd (born 18 June 1804) was an Englishman who came to notice when he described his work and growing disability as a child worker during the Industrial Revolution. He was employed by the reformer Earl of Shaftesbury after writing about child workers in the textile industry, but Shaftesbury later sacked him after accusations were made that Dodd was lying and was a disgruntled employee. He wrote one more book on a related subject that was written and published in America.

Biography Dodd was born in 1804 in Kendal, Westmorland and by the age of five he was at work. Dodd came to notice in 1840 when he published with the support of the social reformer Lord Ashley a book which described his own and his sisters' experiences as child workers. He described how they all worked in a textile factory and sometimes they would work for 18 hours per day. Dodd blamed this experience for making him a cripple and by the time he wrote his first book he had had one arm amputated as it had swollen; the doctors later reported that the bone was "honeycomb" and lacked bone marrow.

Dodd was able to write the book as he had learnt to write at evening classes Ashley employed Dodd and he wrote The Factory System: Illustrated to describe the conditions of working children in textile manufacture, which was published in 1842.

These books and Dodd were attacked by Quaker politician John Bright in a parliamentary committee on the Factories Bill on 15 March 1844. Bright said that he had evidence that the books describing Dodd's mistreatment were in fact created by Dodd's ingratitude as a disgruntled employee. Moreover, he had evidence that Dodd had reported that Lord Ashley was only using him because he was an example of a cripple damaged by work in the textile industry. Ashley sacked Dodd who emigrated to America where he wrote The Laboring Classes of England, which was published in Boston in 1847. It is not known where Dodd lived or died after this date. The Laboring Classes of England: especially those engaged in agriculture and manufactures; in a series of letters (1847). (in 16x16px Wikisource).

includes Caroline Sheridan Norton's A Voice from the Factories

Works about Dodd William Dodd Fights the Factories podcast on BBC Radio 4's Hidden Histories series "William Dodd" in Spartacus Educational