Richard Oastler

Richard Oastler (20 December 1789 - 22 August 1861) "the Factory King" was a "Tory radical", an active opponent of Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform and a lifelong admirer of the Duke of Wellington; but also an abolitionist and prominent in the "anti-Poor Law" resistance to the implementation of the "New Poor Law" of 1834. Most notably, as his soubriquet indicates he was at the heart of the campaign for a ten-hour working day in its early years (although less so by the time of its successful culmination in the Factory Act of 1847 he retained the soubriquet ) "Moved by pity and indignation at the long hours worked by young children in factories, he devoted his life to their emancipation, and was a tireless champion of the Ten Hours Factory Bill" noted a commemorative plaque erected in Leeds parish church in 1925. "He cannot altogether claim prominence as a political thinker...but history acclaims him not as a politician, but as an agitator" commented the Yorkshire Post on that occasion.

Born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, Oastler was the youngest of ten children born to a linen merchant Robert Oastler and Sarah (a daughter of Joseph Scurr). Robert continued to live in Leeds when he later became steward for Thomas Thornhill, the absentee landlord of Fixby, a large estate near Huddersfield, and of Calverley (between Leeds and Bradford, to the north of both). When Richard was six, his twelve-year-old brother Robert died as a result of a fire in a flax mill. Richard Oastler attended a Moravian boarding school from 1798 to 1806 ("It was there that I learned to be bold, for I was taught there to fear nothing but sin"), and then (his father vetoing Richard's desire to become a barrister) started training to become an architect.After four years his failing sight forced him to give this up; in 1810 he became a commission agent, dealing in oils and dry-saltery: he also acted as a steward for the Dixons of Gledhow Hall near Leeds, and was used by his father from time to time to carry out work for the Fixby estate (as when in 1812 he organised precautions against the Luddites). He became involved in charity work in Leeds; sick visiting with Michael Thomas Sadler and organising charitable relief of the destitute. He married (1816) Mary Tatham, daughter of Thomas Tatham a Nottingham grocer and his wife Mary (born Mary Strickland, and from Leeds). Richard and Mary had two children, both dead by 1819. Early in 1820 he went bankrupt; later that year on the death of his father he was invited to succeed him as steward of the Fixby estate, looking after a rent roll of £18,000 per year on an annual salary of £300. He accepted, moving to Fixby Hall in 1821. When in 1827 the vicar of Halifax (in which parish Fixby lay) attempted to increase his income by 'resuming' collection of various tithes which he claimed to be 'customary', Oastler was prominent in opposition.; he later claimed that it was this struggle that had broken his health, leaving him liable to periodic breakdowns in health.

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