This picture was published in 1840 as part of a novel written by Frances Trollope. The novel "The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy", was centered around the fictitious Michael Armstrong. This novel also demonstrated the lives and hardships that children during this time period endured. As the Industrial Revolution was coming into fruition, unfortunately, child labor was also on the climb. This novel, alongside this famous depcition of child labor, was created to draw awareness to and expose the conditions that factory workers were working in. More specifically and altogether more worrysome, it focuses generally on the conditions that children, ages 8 and even younger, were having to work within.
Sources:
https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/the-life-and-adventures-of-micha…
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/child-labour