How bad were Working Conditions ... really?

Many historians nowadays question whether conditions were as bad as used to be thought.

1. The Royal Commissions took evidence from dozens of workers. It is clear from their evidence that many were lying. One of them, Joseph Hebergam, who claimed to have suffered many accidents, later admitted he was exaggerating. Another (the father Samuel Coulson) claimed that in the brisk times his two young daughters worked a 19½ hour day for a six-week period – clearly impossible.
2. Michael Sadler – chairman of the 1832 Factories Report – was a committed reformer. Even the communist, supporter-of-the-workers Frederick Engels admitted that Sadler had lied and misled witnesses.
3. The employer Robert Greg – known as a good employer – was furious at the lies in the Sadler Report. The coal owner Lord Londonderry (a very poor employer) was nevertheless outraged at the way the Mines Commission collected their evidence: ‘talking to artful boys and ignorant young girls, and asking questions which seemed to suggest the answer’.
4. The Commissions had interviewed factory owners. They had all stated their beliefs that the working conditions were satisfactory, that the children were not harmed in any way by the work. But historians just decided that they were biased and telling lies – they never considered that the workers interviewed may have been the same.
5. Some factory owners, such as Robert Owen, John Fielden, Titus Salt and John Wood were spectacularly good employers who made sure conditions were excellent in the factories, and took pains to care for the employers’ lives outside the factory.