Macka+H

I couldn’t stop myself from crying as mother and father’s coffins were lowered into the ground. I had been staying at an orphanage since mother and father’s death and four days later I was taken to their funeral. When we arrived at the cemetery I was told to stand with a burly man that was wearing a long black jacket. He didn’t talk to me during the service but when it ended he told me to follow him. I was scared. Mother and Father were dead and a big, strange man collected me from their funeral. After a long walk through the alleyways of downtown London, we arrived at my new home... a wool factory. My name is Henry Smith and I am twelve years old. It has been three weeks since I arrived at the factory and I’ve been punished numerous times already. But what I got myself into yesterday was probably the worst punishment ever given in this place. When we were going to sleep last night, all the boys in my dormitory were talking about how hard we work and how many hours we do for such a small amount of pay. We decided one of us should ask Mr Williams if we could have a raise and if we could work fewer hours.

To work out who would ask, we decided the first person to fall asleep would ask him tomorrow at breakfast. I had woken up at five thirty that day and I had been working for sixteen hours. Everyone else had as well, but I was just getting used to the job, so I was really tired. Every now and then my eyes would shut, but I kept pinching myself to stay awake. It got to the point when I physically couldn’t stay awake. I woke up the following morning with fifty boys surrounding my bunk, whispering to each other.

At breakfast, after we had said grace, I got out of my seat and slowly walked up to Mr Williams and the other factory workers. I was terrified! Six hundred kids were staring at me as I got closer to Mr Williams. When I arrived at the staff table, I told Mr Williams that I thought we don’t get paid enough for the amount of hours we have to work. When I finished speaking, he slapped my face, grabbed my overalls and pulled me ten centimetres off the ground. He shouted a long stream of swear words at me. “You ungrateful little pig!” he screamed. “You should be grateful that you get paid for what you do, and that you even have somewhere to eat and sleep everyday!”

After Mr Williams’ outburst, he sent me into a dark room at the back of the factory and that is where I am now. My punishment is that for the next six months I have to work twenty hours a day with no pay, and I will sleep in this room. It is freezing in here and all I was given were a few clothes and a small blanket. I have to go to the toilet in a bucket and I have nowhere I can wash myself. My mattress for the next six months is a cold, hard, stone floor. I really wish I didn’t fall asleep that night because now I am cold, hungry, dirty and scared that I won’t survive.