Oastler, Richard (1789–1861)

English social reformer. He was a farm estate manager in Yorkshire when, in 1830, he founded with John Fielden the Short Time Committee, which later became the Ten Hours Movement. In a famous letter to the Leeds Mercury in 1830, he attacked conditions in ‘the worsted mills of Bradford’: ‘thousands of our fellow creatures are at this very moment existing in a state of slavery more horrid than are the victims of that hellish system of Colonial Slavery’. He opposed child labour and was largely responsible for securing the Factory Act (1833) and the Ten Hours Act (1847). In 1838 he was sacked by his employers for opposing the Poor Law Amendment Act, and spent some time in prison for debt.