Why did child labour exist during the Industrial Revolution in Britain?

In the early nineteenth century, the law in England was primarily concerned with the regulation of the work of factory apprentices and the management of personnel from the perspective of managers. As the problem of exploitative child labour grew, the Cotton Mills Regulation Act and the Coal Mines Act successively introduced requirements and restrictions on the age and hours of work of children employed in particular industries. In order to ensure that the laws were enforced, the updated Acts were followed by progressive improvements in the regulatory system. The addition of new laws and regulations reflects the fact that the laws of this period became concerned with the physical development of children. By the mid-nineteenth century, English law became concerned with the education of children, and the Factory Acts and the Coal Mines Regulation Act began to require the education of working children. Subsequent updates of the law refined the requirements for children's educational hours and focused on the universalisation of compulsory education. Certain types of work, such as coal mining, also saw a more detailed distinction between the hours of work and age requirements for men and women. Twentieth-century legislation gradually raised the minimum age for children to work and introduced stricter requirements for the types of work children could do.

Initially, the laws were enacted from the point of view of the capitalists in order to improve the efficiency and management of the factories. It was only later, at the urging of humanitarians, that the law really began to focus on the living conditions of children, followed by the introduction of provisions relating to working hours and levels of education. The timeline shows a change in the objectives of the law from regulating the working conditions of children to restricting the employment of younger children, with the protection of the health and educational development of children becoming the primary objective of the law thereafter.