There were many tales of cruelty to the apprentices after they were placed away from the hospital. In 1765 a Mr Brown of Leeds took 74 girls, all seven years old, and set them to work in his cloth business. Of the original 74, 22 died and an inspection revealed that the survivors were in a "dreadful condition of health", having to stand up all day, so much so that they had become weak in the hips, thighs and knees, meaning that they could only "with difficulty crawl over the floor". The sanitary arrangements were in a "shocking condition" and the sleeping arrangements "very unfit to refresh those weary limbs that have been kept the whole day to hard labour." The surviving children were returned to Ackworth. Another example was a tile smith from Sheffield indicted for murdering his apprentice, a boy named Nixon, yet found not guilty. In 1771 William Butterworth was accused of murdering one apprentice, Jemima Dixon, after treating them all in what was described as an "inhuman" way. A History of Ackworth School during its first 100 years describes this: "He had starved them within little short of their lives, had beaten their heads with shuttles, kicked them in the most brutal of all methods, and subjected the little murdered one to the most revolting punishments that an utterly malignant nature could devise."A History of Ackworth School during its first 100 years, chapter 1.
