The complex epidemiology of early manufacturing towns and the wide variety of industrial processes carried out by child workers preclude any generalised statements about the effects of industrial work upon child health. Despite such difficulties, however, it is clear from the diversity of children's occupational health experiences examined in this study that the enduring and often simplistic stereotype of the health-impaired and abused industrial child can no longer be sustained. Working children were prone to a wide range of exogenous factors such as the urban disease environment, social class, household poverty, pre-existing disability or orphanage, and such influences almost certainly proved more harmful to their health and welfare than discrete workplace factors.

This is not to say that early industrial work was not harmful. The complex and protracted entry of children into industrial work, often determined by a child's developing strength, skill and dexterity, involved an increasing engagement with the workplace over several years as well as an increasing exposure to risk. Industrial injuries sometimes permanently disabled children and rendered them incapable of future productive labour. The constantly changing biology of children's bodies also served to amplify the effects of specific chemicals, raw materials and pathogens in ways not fully understood by nineteenth-century medical commentators. Moreover, factors such as the onset of sexual maturity (which commonly took place during the early years of industrial employment) often had a profound influence upon children's work attendance patterns.