On the night of 14 February 1818, a fire broke out at Atkinson's Mill at Colne Bridge. The mill foreman had gone out, probably to the local inn, and locked in the workforce - which consisted of seventeen young girls. (Local rumour had it that the girls were also chained up.) A young boy called James Thornton was carrying a candle which accidentally set fire to a piece of fabric. The fire spread so rapidly that the girls were trapped in an upstairs room with no chance of escape. All seventeen girls died in the fire. None was older than eighteen; three of them were just nine years old. They were buried in Kirkheaton churchyard, and this memorial erected there in their memory.
The tragedy caused such an outrage that a campaign started to better protect child workers. Led by Leeds-born Richard Oastler, this eventually resulted in the reform of the Child Labour Acts and the establishment of the Factory Act of 1847. The latter restricted children to a ten-hour day in cotton mills, which at least was progress of sorts.
There are many such memorials to mill and mine disasters in Yorkshire, all of them a reminder of the human price often paid for industrial progress. On a sunny day in a peaceful churchyard, reading the names and ages on the Kirkheaton Memorial is a moving experience.