Cuckney Mill
In 1785 William Toplis, a wealthy business man from Mansfield, built a worsted spinning mill in Cuckney, a small Nottinghamshire village seven miles north of Mansfield. He leased the land from the Earl Bathurst. Worsted was a woollen fabric made from well-twisted yarn spun of long-staple wool combed to lay the fibres parallel. The mill pond at Cuckney was created from the River Poulter. A race or fast channel leading off the pond provided the power to drive the mill's machinery. This extract from Sanderson's Map of Twenty Miles around Mansfield clearly shows Cuckney and the mill (reference: Belper Library RB 96.2).
See the map extract in more detail here [PDF 1026KB] 
As the local area could not provide enough labour, Toplis employed a large number of boarding child apprentices taken from around the country especially from London. An agreement was reached with the Foundling Hospital in London to take some of their children along with others from parish workhouses in Essex and Middlesex meaning they were many miles from any remaining family at a time when communication was poor. Parish officers were happy to alleviate the local poor rate by transferring pauper children to work in other parishes where they might gain settlement and no longer be a financial burden to their original parish.
An employer of young children only had to supply a place for the children to sleep, clothes and food, in common with a stay in a parish workhouse, and did not have to pay them wages. Regular inspections were supposedly made on the wellbeing of the children but standards were markedly different at this time. From a report supplied on behalf of the Foundling Hospital in 1792 the children were "very well provided for in every respect" and they had "proper overlookers to keep them to [their business] which they seem to do very easily without severity, they work 12 hours only in the 24 hours & the rest is taken up with their meals, recreations &c" with a doctor to assist in times of illness. At the time Toplis & Co had 209 children lodging on one floor of the mill and later in two small cottages near the mill.
From the register of child apprentices for the company dated 1786-1805, which lists 786 children from around the country aged 6 years upwards, about 65 died but many more absconded or ran away to join the army implying that the youngsters held a very different view of their harsh existence to that of the supervising adults. This extract shows a typical page of children admitted for the date July to August 1792 (reference: DD/895/1).
See the register in more detail here [PDF 1368KB]
See a transcript of the register here [PDF 21KB]
The children were not necessarily assets to the employer all the time. In 1792 one of the buildings of the mill burned down "through the carelessness of a boy taking hot cinders in a wooden hod from one of the fire-grates", according to Thomas Bailey's "Annals of Nottinghamshire".
Two current and two former apprentices, one of whom had run away, were accused of stealing turnips from a farmer in Cuckney in November 1804, perhaps to supplement their meagre diet (reference: DD/4P/67/12).
See the accusation of stealing in more detail here [PDF 2134KB]
See a transcript of the accusation here [PDF 20KB] 
The burial register of the parish church of Cuckney for 1795 (reference: PR/19,402) shows the burials of Sarah Cook aged 10, Charles Booth, Mary Harvy aged 14 and John Patrick aged 10 from the cottages. Other burial entries for the apprentices describe them as "Popar" or "pauper".
