Robert Blincoe (c. 1792–1860) was an English author and former child labourer. He became famous during the 1830s for his popular autobiography, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an account of his childhood spent in a workhouse. However, there are some doubts about whether this detailed observation of Blincoe's early life can be considered autobiography. Early life Robert Blincoe was born around 1792. By 1796 he was an orphan and living in the St. Pancras workhouse in London. His parents are unknown. At the age of six he was sent to work as a chimney boy, an assistant of a chimney sweeper, but his master soon returned him to the workhouse. In August 1799, at the age of seven, he was apprenticed to work as a mule scavenger in the Gonalston Mill, a cotton mill of C.W. and F. Lambert in Lowdham, near Nottingham. According to his later memoirs, he was one of the 80 seven-year-old children the St. Pancras workhouse indentured as parish apprentices. They traveled there in wagons for five days. Under the terms of their indenture, the boys were to be taught to make hosiery and the girls lace making in the last year of their apprenticeships, but that never happened. Blincoe and the others lived in a dormitory, and their food consisted of porridge and black bread. They worked 14 hours a day, six days a week. Blincoe's first job was as a mule scavenger, picking up loose cotton waste from the spinning frames when the machine was working, even in the face of injury. He lost half a finger. Overseers beat the children on the slightest provocation. Blincoe later stated that he contemplated suicide many times. When Blincoe ran away and tried to flee to London, a tailor who sometimes worked for the mill recognized him and dragged him back. In 1802, when Lowdham Mill was closed, Blincoe and others were sent to Litton Mill in Derbyshire. Treatment remained the same. Later life Blincoe completed his effective apprenticeship in stock weaving in 1813 and worked as an adult worker until 1817. He then left to found his own waste cotton supply business. In 1819, he married a woman named Martha.They had three children. He sold his waste cotton business to get into spinning cotton. Memoirs and financial failure In 1822, journalist John Brown met Blincoe and interviewed him for an article about child labour. Brown decided