of the scrotum; known as mule-spinners cancer. A mill worker could expect to work a thirteen-hour day, six days a week with two weeks off for the wakes week holidays in summer. Unsurprisingly, a series of Factory Acts were passed to attempt to ameliorate these conditions. In the early days when the cotton towns were expanding rapidly, living conditions for the workers were poor. Badly planned housing was seriously overcrowded. Open sewers and shared privies led to diseases such as cholera; Manchester was hit by an epidemic in 1831 that claimed hundreds of lives. Art and literature William Blake: "And did those feet in ancient time" (1804 poem — "dark satanic mills") Mrs Gaskell : Mary Barton (1848 novel), North and South (1855 novel) L. S. Lowry: Coming from the Mill (1930 oil painting) Charles Sheeler See also Cotton famine Cottonopolis Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (book) Stott, cotton mill architects Textile manufacturing Water frame References Footnotes Bibliography The mills and organisation of the Lancashire Cotton Corporation Limited, a promotional book, pub LCC, Blackfriars House Manchester, January 1951 . Copeland, Melvin Thomas. The cotton manufacturing industry of the United States (Harvard University Press, 1912) online External links 1921 John Hetherington & Sons Catalogue Illustrations and descriptions of all the machines used in cotton processing. www.spinningtheweb.org.uk Industrial Revolution Industrial buildings Spinning Weaving Textile mills