Blincoe's History

Robert was born out of wedlock into extreme poverty in St. Pancras London, which at the time was a rural district. At the age of four, he was abandoned to the workhouse, never to see his family again. At seven he was sold as a child labourer to a cotton mill owner and transported by horse and cart two hundred miles north to work and live at the notorious Litton Mill Derbyshire, one of the cotton mills of the dawning industrial age. 

Despite suffering years of unrelenting abuse and the most extreme deprivation, he remained unbroken and determined to improve his lot. In 1814, at the age of 22 he left Litton Mill to make his own way in the world. Travelling by foot, he eventually found his way to Manchester where the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. 

Against all the odds, and with sheer tenacity, innate intelligence and backbreaking work, Robert eventually achieved some prosperity albeit with some ups and downs along the way, including the destruction by fire of his business premises and a short spell in Lancaster gaol as a debtor. He became a property and business owner and an employer of others. He educated himself. He found a wife, Martha, and was able to fund the education he never had for his three children. This included the education at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities for his son Robert, who became an eminent clergyman. 

Incensed by the brutal treatment he and many thousands of child labourers received at the hands of the mill owners, Robert joined the campaign to protect them. A memoir of Robert’s early harrowing life was published in 1828 and in 1833 he himself gave evidence to the Parliamentary Royal Commission which eventually led to much needed reform. At that time, Charles Dickens was employed as a parliamentary reporter for a series of newspapers and spent long hours immersed in the major social and political issues of the day. Robert Blincoe’s story was well known to him and a significant influence of his novel Oliver Twist, published three years later in 1836. 

Robert Blincoe was The Real Oliver Twist. 

Robert and Martha Blincoe in their late years c. 1858