of his father, he succeeded to the earldom. Lady Shaftesbury died in 1872, to the deep grief of her much-attached husband. Their children consisted of six sons and four daughters.
The first social abuse that roused the interest of Ashley was the treatment of lunatics. In 1828, Mr. Gordon, a benevolent member of parliament, obtained a committee to inquire into the subject; Ashley's interest was awakened, and he was himself named a member of the committee. Not content with official inquiries, he did much by personal visitation to ascertain the real condition of lunatics in confinement, and saw such distressing evidence of ill-treatment that next year he brought in a bill to amend the law in one particular. All the rest of his life he continued, as one of the commissioners in lunacy, to interest himself in the subject, and before his death he had secured a complete reform of the Lunacy Acts, and effected an untold improvement in the condition of the unfortunate class who had formerly been treated with so much severity and cruelty. This may be ranked as the first of his services to philanthropy.
His next effort was to reform the law relating to the employment of workers in mills and factories. About the time when he entered parliament the condition of the workers in factories, and especially the children, had begun to attract the earnest attention of some. In parliament Mr. M. T. Sadler and Mr. Oastler took up the matter warmly; Mr. Sadler, in particular, as Shaftesbury afterwards said with much generosity, ‘maintained the cause in parliament with unrivalled eloquence and energy.’ Mr. Sadler having lost his seat at the election in 1833 the charge of the movement was entrusted to Ashley. His proposal that the period of labour should be limited to ten hours a day met at first with the fiercest opposition. A bill which he introduced was so emasculated by the government that he threw it over on them; it was ultimately carried, but was not satisfactory. A deep impression was produced by Ashley in describing visits paid by him to hospitals in Lancashire, where he found many workers who had been crippled and mutilated under the conditions of their work; they presented every variety of distorted form, ‘just like a crooked alphabet.’ Returning afterwards to the subject, he showed the enormous evils and miseries which the existing system was producing; but the government would not move. So late as 1844 his proposal for a limit of ten hours was rejected. It was not till 1847, when Ashley was out of parliament, that the bill was carried. The operation of the act has proved most satisfactory, and many who at first were most vehement opponents afterwards came to acknowledge the magnitude of the improvement. At many times in the subsequent part of Ashley's life he got the factory acts amended and extended. New industries were brought within their scope. He always maintained that he would never rest till the protection of the law should be extended to the whole mass of workers.
During this struggle collieries and mines engaged his attention. Here, too, the evils brought to light, especially with respect to women and children, were appalling. Many women were found to be working in dismal underground situations, in such a way as tended to degrade them to the level of brutes. Children, sometimes not over four or five years of age, were found toiling in the dark, in some cases so long as eighteen hours a day, dragged from bed at four in the morning, and so utterly wearied out that instruction, either on week days or Sundays, was utterly out of the question. Often they were attached by chain and girdle to trucks which they had to drag on all-fours through the workings to the shaft. The opposition were struck dumb by these revelations. An act was passed in 1842 under Ashley's care abolishing the system of apprenticeship, which had led to fearful abuses, and excluding women and boys under thirteen from employment underground.
The treatment of ‘climbing boys,’ as the apprentices of chimney-sweepers were called, was another of the abuses which he set himself to remedy. If the evil here was not so glaring as in the factories and pits, it was only because the occupation was more limited. Ashley obtained an act for the protection of the apprentices, and many years afterwards, when some laxity in the administration was discovered, took steps to have it more rigidly enforced.
The country was greatly agitated at this time on the subject of the corn laws. Hitherto Ashley had acted generally with the conservative party, but believing that a change in the corn laws was necessary, he resigned his seat for Dorset in January 1846, and for a time was out of parliament. In the next parliament he was returned (30 July 1817) for the city of Bath. The leisure which he obtained by retiring from parliament was turned by him to account in visiting the slums of London and acquiring a more full acquaintance with the condition of the working classes. A statement of some of his experiences in this field was given in an article in the ‘Quarterly
