Michael Thomas Sadler
Encyclopedia
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
(MP), opponent of Catholic emancipation
Catholic Emancipation
Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in Great Britain and Ireland in the late 18th century and early 19th century which involved reducing and removing many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics which had been introduced by the Act of Uniformity, the Test Acts and the penal laws...
and leader of the factory reform movement. In the British House of Commons he led the movement for a work-day restricted to 10 hours or less for individuals under 18 years of age.
Early years
Michael Sadler, the son of James Sadler, was born in SnelstonSnelston
Snelston is a village and civil parish three miles south-west of Ashbourne in Derbyshire. It includes Anacrehill. A tributary of the River Dove flows through its centre....
, Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
, on 3 January 1780. According to tradition his family came from Warwickshire and was descended from Sir Ralph Sadler. His family practiced the religion of the Church of England but he later rejected their views and became sympathetic of the Methodist Church or Methodism
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
. One of his earliest publications was An Apology for Methodists written in 1797. In 1800 he moved to Leeds and began to work with his father and in 1810 he started a company with his brother selling Irish linen. During this period of his life he became less interested in business and more interested in the experience of the poor
which stayed with him for the rest of his days.
In Parliament
In 1829 Sadler was offered the seat of NewarkNewark (UK Parliament constituency)
Newark is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Since 1885, it has elected one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election....
in the House of Commons, and appointed a part of Parliament by the Duke of Newcastle. He accepted and was elected with a majority of the votes, 214 to be exact. He quickly established himself as a motivational speaker and at the 1831 election
United Kingdom general election, 1831
The 1831 general election in the United Kingdom saw a landslide win by supporters of electoral reform, which was the major election issue. As a result it was the last unreformed election, as the Parliament which resulted ensured the passage of the Reform Act 1832. Polling was held from 28 April to...
moved to the seat of Aldborough
Aldborough (UK Parliament constituency)
Aldborough was a parliamentary borough located in the West Riding of Yorkshire, abolished in the Great Reform Act of 1832. Aldborough returned two Members of Parliament from 1558 until 1832....
in Yorkshire. Though he had moved up in the societal ladder, his interest in the poor remained. While in office Sadler wrote a series of pamphlets to inform the public such as On Poor Laws for Ireland reflecting the Irish Poor Laws
Irish Poor Laws
The Irish Poor Laws were a series of Acts of Parliament intended to address social instability due to widespread and persistent poverty in Ireland. While some legislation had been introduced by the pre-Union Parliament of Ireland prior to the Act of Union, the most radical and comprehensive...
being enforced in Ireland and, The Factories Girl's Last Day in 1830.
On 16 March 1832, Sadler attempted to introduce legislation in order to limit a child's work day (under the age of 18) to ten hours a day. He described in his own words the suffering that many children were facing in the factories but members of the Parliament still refused to pass the bill. This bill involved the following:
- a ban on labour for children 9 years old and younger
- a ten hour work day for people age nine to 18
- time in the day included for meals
- two hours of free time on Saturday
- and a ban on working all night for children under the age of 21.
Even though this bill was rejected, it led to members agreeing to look into the issue one more time. This time around Sadler formed a committee in which he was the chairman, and provided testimonies of 89 workers, including Elizabeth Bentley who started work at a flax
Flax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...
mill at age 6. This committee included men such as John Cam Hobhouse and Thomas Fowell Buxton
Thomas Fowell Buxton
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet was an English Member of Parliament, brewer, abolitionist and social reformer....
who were also reformers for labor. These testimonies later became known as The Sadler Report.
Aldborough
Aldborough (UK Parliament constituency)
Aldborough was a parliamentary borough located in the West Riding of Yorkshire, abolished in the Great Reform Act of 1832. Aldborough returned two Members of Parliament from 1558 until 1832....
was disenfranchised under the Great Reform Act
Reform Act 1832
The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales...
, and at the 1832 election
United Kingdom general election, 1832
-Seats summary:-Parties and leaders at the general election:The Earl Grey had been Prime Minister since 22 November 1830. His was the first predominantly Whig administration since the Ministry of all the Talents in 1806-1807....
Sadler stood in the newly-enfranchised seat of Leeds
Leeds (UK Parliament constituency)
Leeds was a parliamentary borough covering the town of Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1832 to 1885....
. There he went up against John Marshall
John Marshall
John Marshall was the Chief Justice of the United States whose court opinions helped lay the basis for American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court of the United States a coequal branch of government along with the legislative and executive branches...
a man who had more pull in Leeds. Sadler lost the election and his seat in Parliament. Though he was no longer a part of Parliament, his report was finally published in 1833. When Sadler's report was released to the public British citizens were appalled with the graphic details of factory life. Sadler also eventually found out that workers who testified were being dismissed and ceased with the interview process. The report led to increased pressure on the British Parliament to protect children worker's rights. Lord Ashley, son of the 6th Earl of Saxbury
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury KG , styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was an English politician and philanthropist, one of the best-known of the Victorian era and one of the main proponents of Christian Zionism.-Youth:He was born in London and known informally as Lord Ashley...
, took his place as the leader of the factory reform movement.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1832.
He died in New Lodge, Belfast in 1835 and was buried in Ballylesson churchyard.
Family
His mother's father, Michael Ferrebee, who served as rector of Rolleston, Staffordshire, was the son of a HuguenotHuguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
father.
Views
He opposed Malthus's population doctrineAn Essay on the Principle of Population
The book An Essay on the Principle of Population was first published anonymously in 1798 through J. Johnson . The author was soon identified as The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus. While it was not the first book on population, it has been acknowledged as the most influential work of its era...
, arguing that fertility actually declines with rising income. He was famously attacked in the Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
by Thomas Macaulay. He is generally seen as one of the opponents of the Classical school in economics
Classical economics
Classical economics is widely regarded as the first modern school of economic thought. Its major developers include Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and John Stuart Mill....
.
He also authored the work Law of Population
Law of Population
Law of Population was a massive treatise written by Michael Thomas Sadler as a response to Thomas Robert Malthus's works on population growth, notably An Essay on the Principle of Population...
.
Major works
- Ireland, Its Evils and their Remedies, 1828
- The Law of Population, 1832
- Sadler reportSadler reportThe Sadler Report was a report written in 1832 by Michael Sadler. The document purported to expose the substandard working conditions of children working in textile factories as well as women....
, 1832