George Smith (philanthropist)

George Smith (16 February 1831 – 21 June 1895) was a manager of the Whitwick Colliery Company Tileries in Leicestershire, England during the nineteenth century, who campaigned against industrial child labour.

Smith highlighted the plight of children employed in the Leicestershire and Derbyshire brickyards of mid-Victorian England, some of whom were as young as eight years old and worked for up to seventy-five hours a week.

In 1857 he discovered, at Coalville, Leicestershire, valuable seams of clay, and on the strength of this discovery organized a large brick-making business there.

He advocated legislation in the interests of brick makers, and in particular called attention to the cruelty suffered in the brickfields by child workers, whose claims he pressed at the National Association for the Promotion of Social Sciencecongresses.

This work awoke the interest of the earl of Shaftesbury and of A. J. Mundella, and, in the same year, was passed an act providing for the government inspection of brickyards, and the regulation of juvenile and female labour there.