In 1833 he was appointed one of the commissioners to inquire into the employment of children in the factories of Great Britain, and he was subsequently selected as one of the inspectors. He held this post for 26 years and during this time arguably did more to improve the working condition of women and children in the mills of north England than any other person in the 19th-century and for which he was praised by Karl Marx in "Capital". In later years he devoted much attention to the geological history of the alluvial lands of Egypt; and in 1843 he published his "Life" of his brother Francis.