He became famous during the 1830s for his popular autobiography, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an account of his childhood spent in a workhouse.
Blincoe's first job was as a mule scavenger, picking up loose cotton waste from the spinning frames when the machine was working, even in the face of injury.
When Blincoe ran away and tried to flee to London, a tailor who sometimes worked for the mill recognized him and dragged him back.
[1] In 1822, journalist John Brown met Blincoe and interviewed him for an article about child labour.
Brown decided to write Blincoe's biography and gave it to social activist Richard Carlile.
In 1828, Carlile decided to publish the tale in his newspaper The Lion in five weekly episodes between 25 January and 22 February and The Poor Man's Advocate.
But Brown had given his manuscript to a friend, Richard Carlile, who published the resulting book, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, in five episodes in his magazine The Lion in 1832.
In his book The Real Oliver Twist, John Waller asserts that Charles Dickens based his character Oliver Twist on Blincoe, but no firm documentary or anecdotal evidence exists that Dickens had heard of Blincoe.