Mill workers at W G & J Strutt of Belper

The Strutt family first ran mills in Belper, Derbyshire, in 1776, after Jedediah Strutt had been working with Richard Arkwright, who had already established a mill at nearby Cromford. Between them, they helped fuel the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. People flocked to these mills from all around the country to seek employment. At their highest point, the Belper mills employed 2,000 people.

By the time this photograph was taken in the late nineteenth century, the factory industry had started to introduce more working regulations to protect the workers, although women and children made up a large part of the workforce. This is just one of many group photographs of the workers at Strutts mills in Belper and nearby Milford. Most of them show Isaac Needham, the mill overseer, who is pictured on the bottom right, the only man pictured wearing a suit.