Customer Reviews

Weaver's Daughter (Windsor Selections)

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The carpet weavers of Kidderminster lead extremely hard lives with their entire families employed by the factory owners in one capacity or another. Children as young as eight years of age are supposed to be strong enough by that age to toss the shuttles from one side of the loom to the other, for their parents, and have v irtually no childhood, except that which is associated with poverty, disease, near starvation and perpetual tiredness.The Himley family struggles to keep alive with the father drowning his sorrows in drink, with money which should be spent on food. The eldest daughter Bessie is raped by one of the weavers at the factory and runs away with her elder brother, to escape the fate which she knows awaits her if she remains at home. Like many another girl in her village, she knows that with the rapes becoming part of life, it is only a matter of time before she becomes pregnant and loses all chance of a better life. When the innocent and ignorant pair arrive in London, they almost immediately fall victims to con artists, lose their small cache of money and have to begin a new life with Bessie becoming a reluctant prostitute. Happy endings do ultimately occur, but I can't imagine why anyone would really enjoy reading this depressing kind of book, even with a happy ending.