Where: Candle Factory, Bishopsgate

Who: Child labourers

About all these candles, all these great thick sinews of tallows waiting to be embraced by wax, about all the great steaming basins and the hot air and the flames beneath the basins to keep the wax liquid, about all the little basin moulds and night light moulds and calipers and handsaws and measures, were the lesser things: the odd looking filthy creatures that made the pure white candles. These animals were not white at all, they were threadbare and their hair was burnt in places and so too their arms and much of their skins, all their fingers were red-burnt from their employ and many of them shook terribly. These were the candlemakers in this sweating shop of candle grease, in this misery of light making. Children, girls mostly, burnt, as I say, and filthy and shining with candlegrease, like their own skins were made of that same wax stuff and that their hair was any wick waiting for a flame, and they’d burn up, in no time probably and their light, I supposed, should soon enough sputter out.