A Visit to the Museum: Museum Curator

My group’s exhibit is entitled “Unlawful Conditions, Dangerous Workspaces, and Mistreated Children”. Our title accurately describes what will be featured in our exhibit. We came up with our title by examining each document and deciding the most important idea from each. After someone visits our exhibit they will learn about the children’s side of the Industrial Revolution. Visitors will become aware of the mistreatment of children and what the children went through for the Industrial Revolution to be successful.

We displayed the mistreatment of children with photographs of children, documents, and Acts that were put in place in an attempt to protect the children. The photo entitled “Children wore leather…” shows children with leather belts slung around them with a chain attached to a carriage pulling heavy loads.  The next piece we used for our exhibit was a chart called “Age Distribution in Cotton Factories”. The chart showed the starting age and the current starting age percent of people working in the factories in 1818, then again in 1819. The document shows that 49.9% of the children in the factories started working under the age of ten. The Factory Act lowered it to 3.9% in 1819. The Factory Act was an Act put in place in the United Kingdom to protect underage children from working under the unlawful conditions and hours. We included the Factory Act in our exhibit, which stated that no children could work past 8:30 PM or before 5:30 AM, that 18 years olds couldn’t work more than 69 hours a week and no one under 9 years old could work. We also put a picture called “Children in Coal Mines. Hurriers and Curriers.” This drawing showed miserable children pushing a cart through a dark tunnel. The image really added to the theme of mistreated children because even at a glance a visitor is able to see the sadness on the children’s faces. Another document we used entitled “Observations of Young Bobbin Girls” described that Bobbin Girls were young girls who set flakes of wool onto the Spinning Jenny and set the bobbins in motion by turning a large wheel. The document also revealed that most parents didn’t want to send their children to the mills, but needed to for the money. The final image we used in our exhibit was called “Young Helpers in Georgia Textile Mills”. The photograph showed very young children standing barefoot on a large machine. Children were not allowed to wear shoes because the shoes could create friction which could set fibers on fire. Since they were not allowed to wear shoes more industrial accidents were likely to occer. Our exhibit showed the “Unlawful Conditions” through the “Age Distribution in Cotton Factories” and The Factory Act documents. We displayed “Dangerous Workspaces” in the image of “Young Helpers in Georgia Textile Mills”.  “Mistreated Children” could be seen in all document but was most prevalent in “Children wore leather…”, “Children in Coal Mines”, “Hurriers and Curriers” and “Observations of Young Bobbin Girls”.

Visiting the other four exhibits created by my classmates broadened my knowledge of the Industrial Revolution. In the exhibit “Weaving Slavery into The Industrial Revolution” I learned that slavery contributed to the increase of wealth during the Industrial Revolution. Also, slave population increased between 1770 and 1860 in 15 southern states. In the exhibit called “Fueling Transportation in The Industrial Revolution” I read that the iron rail made travel easier. I also read that the availability of transportation made England 1/6 of its size. In the exhibit “Changes to Life Conditions Due to the Industrial Revolution” I became aware that factories during the Industrial Revolution created smoke and air pollution. Due to that pollution the river smelled bad and was brown and cloudy. The final exhibit I visited was called “A New Age is Looming over the Horizon”. In this exhibit I learned that population in London grew over one hundred years during the Industrial Revolution because people who used to work on farms were moving to London to work. Also families were separated by age to different working classes.

Visiting each group’s exhibit not only taught me different aspects of the Industrial Revolution but also the importance of color and a catchy title. The exhibits that used lots of color, were organized, and had a catchy title that related to their topic were the ones that were most enjoyable for me to visit and the most informational.