A builder has shared the disturbing reason he found an old roof tile with children’s hand prints on.
Tomas Nordemanoski, who works with Touchstone construction company in Surrey, was taking tiles off a roof when he eerily noticed the back of each tile had a child’s hand print.
Taking to Instagram, the builder shared the video, which quickly racked up more than 200,000 views.
Tomas guessed that the hand print could have been made by a child ‘no more than seven years old’.
He theorised that the children actually made the tiles in the Victorian era before child labour was abolished.
It wasn’t until 1933 when Britain adopted legislation restricting the use of children under 14 in employment.
In the clip, Tomas said: ‘Stripping this old Victorian tile roof and we’ve found that all the tiles have got little kids hand prints from back in the Victorian days.
‘Kids used to make these.’
Placing his handover the hand print he said: ‘Look that’s the palm, finger tips, for scale look. That is no more than a seven year old. Seven or eight year old.
‘All the tiles are the same look, you can even see the fingerprint swirls.
‘Fun fact, tiles were made by Victorian kids.’
He captioned the post: ‘Kids hand prints on these old Victorian roof tiles. From before child labour was abolished. Crazy times.’
However many rushed to the comments with their own theories, with some disputing that children made the tiles.
One person said: ‘Back then men’s hands and feet were much smaller. They could well be men’s hand prints.’
Another said: ‘It should be noted that earthenware clay shrinks while drying, and then again when fired, sometimes up to 20 per cent.
‘So a finished 16 cm piece could have been 20 cm when freshly made. Same for those hand prints. So maybe nine-year-olds, rather than six or seven-year-olds.’
Someone else wrote: ‘Adults make them. It shrinks In the kiln oven. Seen them being made.’
A fourth wrote: ‘Victorians were smaller people especially the less we’ll nourished working class and clack shrinks as it dries when baked you’ll probably find that’s a man’s hand.’