Of its time as a foundling hospital, "A History of Ackworth School" paints an unflattering picture, in which "disease and death carried off great numbers annually," due to "starvation, and even murder, on the part of nurses who had the care of the infants, and of masters to whom the elder children were apprenticed." This "added to the mortality and, though the evidence is abundant of the untiring efforts of the directors to care for the children whilst in the hospital, and to protect their rights when they were apprenticed, evils and oppressions, unnumbered and insurmountable, paralyzed their exertions and the establishment was given up." Children were sent to Ackworth from London and other areas in which there was a branch of the hospital, with the children made to work as "idleness was the parent of vice," or so it was seen by the governors. In 1759 a "woollen manufactory" was established at the hospital, with children spinning and weaving a cloth that soon became in demand, so much so that in 1762 profits were a significant £500 Meanwhile, other children worked on the farm, and all were taught to mend their own clothes. Whilst at the hospital, attempts were made to place the children as "apprentices" with business owners in the local area. At times the demand for apprentices was so high that the steward of the hospital, John Hargreaves, wrote to the London board asking for more children to be sent. The high demand for apprentices in turn led to checks on those taking the apprentices being relaxed, despite the instruction to ensure that all applicants for apprentices should be tested for suitability. As the demand grew and checks became rarer, "men unsuitable for the trust" were able to obtain credentials and then "treat the children they obtained on the strength of them, with little short of barbarity, and in more than one case murderous cruelty." Some children would be apprenticed as young as 6 and 7 until they reached 24, although in 1768 this changed to 21.