Michael Thomas Sadler

Michael Thomas Sadler (born Jan. 3, 1780, Snelston, Derbyshire, Eng.—died July 29, 1835, Belfast, Ulster, Ire.) was a radical politician, philanthropic businessman, and leader of the factory reform movement in England, who was a forerunner of the reformers from the working class whose activities (from the late 1830s) became known as Chartism.

An importer of Irish linens in Leeds, Yorkshire, Sadler served as a Tory member of the House of Commons in 1829–30 and again in 1831–32, and then, in December 1832, sought a new parliamentary seat created for Leeds. Although he received considerable working class support, he was defeated by the historian Thomas Babington (later Baron) Macaulay, who had criticized Sadler’s Law of Population (1830), a massive treatise attacking the pessimistic theories of the economist-demographer Thomas Robert Malthus.

Sadler attracted the votes of the Leeds labourers because he advocated government intervention to regulate factory conditions in general and children’s working hours in particular. He led the movement in the House of Commons for a 10-hour daily limit on factory work by persons under 18. In 1831 he introduced a factory reform bill, inspired in part by the reformer Richard Oastler, and subsequently acted as chairman of the committee to which it was referred. This large group (37 members eventually) met more than 40 times and examined many witnesses. Among these were children who had been crippled in factory accidents; numerous adult workers, some of whom were discharged for having testified; and several noted physicians, all of whom favoured a shorter working day and other reforms. The Factory Act of 1833, passed after Sadler had left Parliament, restricted the working day in textile mills to 12 hours for persons aged 13 through 17, and 8 hours for those aged 9 through 12.

Sadler’s health was fatally impaired by his strenuous work with the committee. His friend Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley (afterward 7th earl of Shaftesbury), succeeded him as parliamentary leader of the labour reform movement.