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Sarah Carpenter by Helen Dallat

Newport Animation School student brings to life the sad tale of Sarah carpenter. Sarah鈥檚 story was recorded by a journalist called Joseph Rayner Stephens and published in the Ashton Chronicle in 1849. Her older brother had been taken to a factory and it took Sarah and her mother two years to track him down, only for the little girl to end up in the same workplace. In the ten years she lived and worked there she witnessed horrific cruelty (even seeing one girl being beaten to death by a master). She only got out when her brother finished his Paupers Apprentice Contract. Not wanting to leave Sarah there alone, he returned and stole her away. However the beatings, work and starvation rations had made her a feeble wreck and she recalled that she was 鈥渟o frightened and dateless with punishment I was a person with no wits鈥

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