Taken from "Conditions of the Working Class," by Frederick Engels, 1844.
'Another branch of lace making, bobbin lace work is carried on in the agricultural shires of Northants, Oxford and Bedford chiefly by children and young persons, who complain universally of bad food and rarely taste meat. The employment itself is most unwholesome. The children work in small ill ventilated damp rooms, sitting always bent over the lace cushion. To support the body in this wearying position, the girls wear stays with a bone busk, which at the tender age of most of them, when the bones are still very soft, wholly displaces the ribs and make narrow chests universal. They usually die of consumption after suffering the severest forms of digestive disorders brought on by sedentary work in a bad atmosphere. They are almost wholly without education, least of all do they receive moral training. They love finery, and in consequence of these two influences their moral condition is most deplorable, and prostitution almost epidemic among them.'
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