WHO, what, where?, former Blackburnian Mrs Joan Grady asked Looking Back about this picture of Victorian workers found in her late father's belongings.

Mrs Grady, now of Bolton, knew nothing of its origins, but suspects her father's father or grandfather might have been among these soiled sons of toil.

Their dirty clothes, caked clogs and the brick clasped by the youngster seated front left -- and, above all, the legend "O. Brothers and Co., Livesey, September 10, 1891" chalked on the board held by one of the workers -- are all clues to their trade and place of work.

For they are workers at the canal-side brickworks of Orlando Brothers that was located in the vicinity of present-day Brothers Street in Blackburn -- which was named after its old-time proprietor who also had a colliery at Livesey in 1879 and had been the engineer of Blackburn Gas Works.

There are different accounts of when the business was founded. One says the 'Livesey Fire Clay Works' was begun around 1835 by a Mr Pickup before coming under Orlando Brothers' control. Another says it was started around 1847 by Brothers himself and was worked by members of his family until 1886, being operated afterwards by the Livesey Brick and Tile Company until its closure in 1894.

A map produced that year show the works standing by the canal on land between Brothers Street and the Green Lane bridge over the canal and being supplied by an elevated tramway with material from a fireclay pit a few hundred yards to the south.

Other than it being put it on record for the photograph, there seems to be no special significance in the September 10, 1891, date. But at the time Blackburn had 13 brickworks -- with one of the larger firms being W. Whitaker and Co. Ltd, of the Brow Brick works at Grimshaw Park, founded in 1876 and closed in 1967.

Despite the account of the Livesey brickworks closure in 1894, it had been absorbed by Whitaker's by 1897 and was still listed as one of their operations in 1901, but had disappeared from its advertisements by 1906.

Apart from giving an intriguing insight into the workwear of late-Victorian labourers -- in particular, the varieties of headwear -- the photograph provides a telling glimpse of social conditions of the day through the employment of child labour.

The four youngsters sitting on the ground appear to have hardly reached their teens, but children so young were bread-winners in many households in 1891 -- so much so that despite the Factory Act of that year having raised the minimum working age from 10 to 11, on the day these lads were pictured a Burnley delegate to the Trades Union Congress was railing against moves for the limit to be raised even higher. If it went up to 12 years of age, he said, very serious hardship would be inflicted on thousands of families.