Britain's industrial growth during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was achieved with the help of many child workers who laboured in factories, workshops, at home and on the land. Gradually this was recognised to be a social ill, and moves were made to restrict child labour, culminating in a series of Factory Acts in the mid-nineteenth century. Child workers undoubtedly suffered in many ways, enduring long hours of physical labour in unpleasant conditions, the risk of maltreatment by overseers, restricted access to formal education, and few opportunities for leisure. Contemporary campaigners took it for granted that the health of child workers suffered, and this conception has remained unchallenged.

This book is the first to ask whether the working conditions that children endured actually were bad for their health, over and above the effects of general poverty that may have driven children into such work. This is a challenging task, as most of the available evidence on the health of child workers comes from Reports of Commissioners, which were frequently not based on first-hand evidence and were often partisan. Peter Kirby amasses evidence from a variety of qualitative and quantitative sources to pit against the limitations of these reports. He carefully considers the biases inherent in the different sources and how selection of disadvantaged children into work generally, and into certain occupations in particular, may complicate interpretation of the sources. The result is a solid argument that the simplistic stereotype of the health-impaired and abused industrial child must be revised.

The book is organised into four chapters, flanked by an introduction and conclusion. The introduction focuses on problems with medical evidence in the Reports of Commissioners, and the first chapter sets the scene in terms of a variety of influences on child health not only limited to working conditions. Chapter 2 deals with examples of the particular perils associated with industrial child labour: deformities, effects of hazardous materials, and injuries. Kirby finds that deformities were unlikely to be caused by factory work, the majority being congenital or the result of early childhood experiences. He argues that the frequent presence of child workers with deformities in factories and workshops was because such children were less able to perform more demanding alternative work such as agricultural or labouring tasks. Some raw materials may have posed a health risk for children, particularly in the textile industry, including chemical irritants and, occasionally, biologically contaminated raw cotton, although this declined over the period. Injuries posed the most significant threat to working children, and often resulted in either death or permanent disability. As injuries were a major risk for children across a variety of industries (mining and textiles being the chapter's emphasis), Kirby comments that it is strange that this was not widely recognised at the time, blaming doctors for concentrating on the more uncommon ills of factory work.

The height advantage possessed by those from the upper or middle class in this period, whose children did not have to work, is well established. In chapter 3 Kirby addresses the question of whether the working-class disadvantage was due to the working conditions experienced by children or whether it can be attributed to the urban environment more generally. Kirby notes the problems that selection of children into particular occupations based on stature and strength poses for interpretation of data on heights, and concludes that nutrition and heights were no worse among child workers than other urban dwellers – indeed they were often better. He argues that it was the urban environment rather than industrial employment that led to the shorter stature of working-class children. The exception to this was children employed in coal mining who may well have been stunted by the lack of sunlight and airless conditions underground.

Chapter 4 considers the ill treatment of industrial child workers. Kirby argues that many reports of ill treatment were exaggerated for their emotive effect (nicely illustrated by a series of re-drawings of a factory scene). He does not deny that practices that are now considered inhumane were widespread, but argues that these were not peculiar to industrial conditions and were typical of the treatment that children may have received in any contemporary home, school or work setting. While factory-working children were expected to conform to strict procedures, punishment for deviation was generally designed to ensure safety, as lapses could greatly enhance the risk of injury for the child or others. In general, chastisement was not severe, unless one was a parish apprentice or illegitimate. Extreme violence, Kirby argues, was related not to industrial occupation but to prejudices against some children's social backgrounds.

Kirby concludes that, apart from the risk of injury, industrial work did not generally have a detrimental effect on child health. Nevertheless it is important not to mistake him for an apologist for child labour. The volume does not attempt to minimise the long, difficult hours, the high risks of injury, poor working conditions, and the ever-present possibility of punishment that child industrial workers faced on a daily basis. However, the book also points out that life in general was challenging in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and that, with shorter and less variable hours than agricultural work, factory labour may well have been a good option for children whose families needed the extra income.

There is little to criticise in this book. At times, I was confused about which sources were being used, but that may be a consequence of bringing together a wide range of materials, which is also a strength of the work. More attention could have been paid to the later life effects of spending formative years in unhealthy working conditions. Although evidence on this is sparse, it may turn out that child labour had a far greater effect on health in later adulthood than on health during childhood, and this is a rich area for future research. Nevertheless, this book offers a convincing and pleasurable read overall. The data are treated sensitively, and the narrative is accessible, coherent and plausible.