Leeds: Edwardian accident book found in Armley Mills

The looms at Armley Mills in Leeds were one of the main causes of accidents at the site

An Edwardian accident book detailing harrowing injuries and deaths at a Leeds textile mill has been discovered.

The employee records, found at Armley Mills, were spotted in a box by Leeds Industrial Museum curators.

The grim reading includes falls down flights of stairs, severed fingers and a worker killed by a falling two-tonne cloth milling machine.

John McGoldrick, a Leeds Museums and Galleries curator, called the find a "treasure trove".

The book provides details of the tough working conditions that textile workers went through shortly after the turn of the 20th Century.

Among the tragedies is the death of 44-year-old William Bell, who was killed in 1905 when the machine he was moving toppled onto him.

He was killed instantly, the book says, leaving behind a wife and three children.

The log of accidents contains grim details of lives cut short by machinery

In 1909, a 40-year-old engineer called W. Hinchcliffe was killed while removing firebars from a boiler.

Doris Gatenby, an 18-year-old weaver, received a cut near her temple when a shuttle flew out of a loom and hit her on the head in 1922.

Mr McGoldrick said: "Finding these documents is a real treasure trove of information from which we can start to build a much more complete picture of life at the mill.

"Seeing such stark details of the injuries and deaths suffered by workers here more than a century ago paints a very vivid picture of how difficult and gruelling their working conditions must have been."

Armley Mills was bought in the late 1700s by Colonel Thomas Lloyd, a Leeds cloth merchant, and it soon became one of the largest in the world for making wool and fabric.

Production ended in 1969 and the site reopened as Leeds Industrial Museum in 1982.