Life in the Victorian Age

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Life in the Victorian Age

• A Window into the Christmas Carol by Charles
  Dickens

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Welcome to the Victorian Age

• The Victorian age in British history is named
  after Queen Victoria, who was Britain's queen
  from 1837 until 1901.
• Queen Victoria was born on May 24th, 1819.
• There were big differences in homes, schools,
  toys and entertainments.
• No TV, no computers, no central heating, no cars
  (until the last few years of Victoria's reign).
  No air travel - unless you went up in a balloon!
  Many children went to work, not to school.

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Families in the 1800s

• In Victorian times, many families had 10 or more
  children.
• Sadly, many children died as babies, or from
  diseases such as small pox and diphtheria.

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Rich Families

• Rich families had large houses, with a special
  room for children called the nursery.
• In the nursery younger children ate, played and
  slept.
• Some rich children saw their parents only in the
  morning and evening, and were looked after mostly
  by their nanny and by other servants.
• Most Victorians thought children should be 'seen
  and not heard'.

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Rich Families

• In a Victorian town, it was easy to tell who was
  rich and who was poor.
• Children from richer homes were well fed, wore
  warm clothes and had shoes on their feet.
• They did not work, but went to school or had
  lessons at home.

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Clothing

• Victorian children were usually dressed like
  miniature adults. Boy babies often wore skirts -
  later a boy might wear a sailor suit.
• For parties, lots of little Victorian girls wore
  red cloaks - perhaps because Little Red Riding
  Hood was a favorite nursery story.

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Poor Families

• Poor children looked thin and hungry, wore ragged
  clothes, and some had no shoes.
• Poor children had to work.
• They were lucky if they went to school.
• Some poor children wore second-hand boots or
  shoes, nicknamed 'translators'.

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Poor Families

• Poor people often ate a poor diet. They had to
  buy cheap tea with blackberry leaves added, sugar
  mixed with sand, and milk thickened with powdered
  chalk, meat once a week was a treat.
• Many poor children lived in tiny country cottages
  or in city slums

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Victorian Vehicles

• There were millions of horses in Victorian
  Britain. Horse-drawn vehicles jammed the streets,
  like cars and trucks today.

Water Cart
Omnibus Cart
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Elite Carriage of the Rich
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What Jobs did the Children Do

• Children worked on farms, in homes as servants,
  and in factories.
• Children often did jobs that required small size
  and nimble fingers.
• But they also pushed heavy coal trucks along
  tunnels in coal mines.

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Boy jobs vs. Girl Jobs

• Boys went to sea, as boy-sailors, and girls went
  'into service' as housemaids.
• Girl flower-sellers also sold oranges (when the
  fruit was available, not all-year- round like
  today) They kept fresh longer than flowers.
• Children worked on city streets, selling things
  such as flowers, matches and ribbons.
• Crossing boys swept the roads clean of horse-dung
  and rubbish left by the horses that pulled carts
  and carriages.

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The British Empire

• Britain ruled the British Empire.
• Victoria was Empress of India as well as Queen of
  Britain, Canada (the biggest country in the
  Empire) and small countries such as Jamaica.
• Trade with the Empire helped make Britain rich.
  Some British children emigrated with their
  families to new homes in Australia, New Zealand,
  South Africa and Canada. Children were taught
  about the Empire in school.
• In Victorian classrooms, children could easily
  find the countries of the Empire on a map because
  they were colored pink or red.

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• December 2, 2009

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The Industrial Revolution

• The Industrial Revolution was the era of rapid
  and great change in industry and manufacturing
  with the growth of factories, beginning in the
  late 1700s.
• The Industrial Revolution changed Britain from a
  land of small towns, villages and farms into a
  land of cities, large towns and factories. The
  population grew from 16 million in 1801 to over
  41 million by 1901. Cities grew fast, as people
  moved from the countryside to work in factories.

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Work in the Victorian Age

• Men, women and children worked in factories, and
  in coal mines.
• Factory and mine owners became rich, but most
  factory and mine workers were poor.
• They were paid low wages, and lived in unhealthy,
  overcrowded slums.
• Slum was an area of bad housing, with poor
  hygiene and sanitation

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Victorian Slum
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Factories

• Britain was the first country in the world to
  have lots of factories.
• Factory machines made all kinds of things.
• Machines did jobs, such as spinning, previously
  been done by families at home.

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Most of the factories were located in North of
England

• Most factory workers live in proximity to the
  factories they worked in living in small houses
  near the factories.

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The different types of factories, industries, and
mines that you could find during the Industrial
Revolution in London were cotton mills, carpet
mills, iron works, coal mines, and slate mines
Different types of factories, industries, and
mines
Many children worked in factories in Britain's
fast-growing industrial towns. This is Bradford,
Yorkshire, in 1873
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A Typical day in a Victorian factories

• Factories were noisy. People had to shout above
  the rattle and hiss of machinery.
• They breathed air full of dust, oil and soot.
• Iron and steel workers got so hot that workers
  dripped with sweat.
• Flames and sparks lit up the sky darkened by
  smoke from factory chimneys

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Midlands in England

• The area of the Midlands in England, around
  Birmingham, was so smoky from iron works and
  factories that people called it Black Country.

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The city of Manchester, about 1870. With so many
mills and factories, the air was polluted by
smoke and dirt.
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Why Children Worked

• Many Victorian children were poor and worked to
  help their families.
• Few people thought this strange or cruel.
• Families got no money unless they worked, and
  most people thought work was good for children.
• Many of these jobs were at first done by
  children, because children were cheap - a child
  was paid less than adults (just a few pennies for
  a week's work).

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Mill-worker children

• Mill-worker children ate porridge and onions for
  breakfast and oatcakes with milk for dinner. They
  also had to eat standing up.
• Standing for so long at a machine affected
  growing children's bones. It made some boys
  'knocked-kneed'.
• Factory work was dangerous for small girls
  because they had to crawl under the machines and
  could get their hair or limbs caught.

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Children Working a Cotton Mill
Children line up to be paid for their work.
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Start of Child Labor Laws

• People called reformers, such as Lord Shaftesbury
  (1801-1885), argued in Parliament for laws to
  stop child-work.
• Inspectors, called Commissioners, went into
  factories and mines. They talked to working
  children to find out the facts. These are three
  of the new laws passed by Parliament.

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New Laws

• 1841 Mines Act - No child under the age of 10 to
  work underground in a coal mine.
• 1847 Ten Hour Act - No child to work more than 10
  hours in a day.
• 1874 Factory Act - No child under the age of 10
  to be employed in a factory.

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Coal Mines

• Most of the energy we use today comes in the form
  of electricity or oil.
• In Victorian times, energy came from water-power
  (waterwheels), from horses and above all from
  burning coal.
• Coal was as important to Victorians as oil is to
  us today.
• In just 40 years the amount of coal dug from
  British mines rose from 16 million tons (1830) to
  over 121 million tons

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What was Coal used for?

• Steam engines burned coal.
• Steam engines drove factory machines,
  locomotives pulling trains and steamships.
• All this coal had to be dug from coal mines.
  Britain had a lot of coal, deep in rocks beneath
  the ground. .

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Steam Railway Station
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What did a Coal Mine look like?

• Most coal was dug from deep mines. A long
  vertical shaft was dug down from the surface.
• Leading off from it were side tunnels.
• Miners rode in a lift, worked by a steam engine.
  
• In the tunnels, they hacked at the coal with
  picks and shovels.

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Why was it dangerous

• Coal mines were dark, dirty and dangerous.
• The only light came from candles and oil lamps.
• Gas in the mine could choke miners, or explode.
• Tunnels could flood or collapse. Accidents killed
  many miners.

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Canaries in a Coal Mine?

• Some miners took canary birds in cages down the
  mine. If it breathed in dangerous gas, the canary
  passed out (fainted), and the miners hurried to
  safety.

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Who ran the Coal Mine

• Coal mines were owned by the person on whose land
  they were dug.
• The mine owners sold their coal to the factories.
  
• Some mine owners were very rich, but they paid
  miners low wages.
• They did not care about health and safety, so at
  first they let small children and women work
  underground.

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Laws passed to protect Miners

• The Parliament was the law-making body made up of
  elected members of Parliament and non-elected
  Lords.
• In 1842, Parliament stopped women and children
  under 10 years old from working underground.
• In 1860 the age limit for boy-miners was raised
  to 12, and in 1900 to 13.

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Children Working in the Coal Mine

• Some children pushed trucks of coal along mine
  tunnels. They were called 'putters'.
• 'Trappers' opened and shut wooden doors to let
  air through the tunnels. A trapper boy sat in the
  dark, with just a small candle, and no-one to
  talk to.

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A boy pushing the cart and a Trapper
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Working Conditions in Mines

• Some children started work at 2 in the morning
  and stayed below ground for 18 hours.
• Children working on the surface, sorting coal,
  at least saw daylight and breathed fresh air.

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A girl pulling a cart through the mines
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Entertainment

• Victorians made their own entertainment at home
• They enjoyed singing, and a rich family would
  sing around the piano.
• While poorer families enjoyed tunes on a pipe or
  a fiddle.
• Families played card games and board games, and
  acted out charades.

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Birthday Parties

• At birthday parties, a special treat was a magic
  lantern show. An oil or gas lamp sent a beam of
  light through a glass lens and onto a screen, to
  show enlarged images, perhaps of wild animals or
  a story told in pictures.

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Fun and Games

• In street games, children shared toys like hoops,
  marbles and skipping ropes, with friends in the
  street, or in the school playground.
• They played chasing games such as tag and played
  catch with balls. If they hadn't got a proper
  ball, they made balls from old rags, and bats
  from pieces of wood.

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Street Games

• They also played hopscotch. Victorian children
  were able to play out in the street as there was
  less traffic than today. There were no cars until
  the 1880s.
• They crowded around street musicians, wheeling a
  barrel organ, which played tunes when the handle
  was turned.Sometimes barrel organ players had a
  monkey with them.

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More Street Games

• Children played outdoor chasing games such as tag
  (which had lots of other names, such as touch or
  tig),
• Other games like Tom Tiddler's Ground, where one
  player (Tom) tries to catch anyone trespassing on
  his or her ground, shown by a line.
• They also played a version of musical chairs,
  using cushions or old rags to sit on.

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More Games

• At Easter, children played 'Egg-Shackling'.
• In this game, everyone put an egg with their name
  on in a basket or sieve, which was shaken until
  the eggs broke. The last egg left unbroken won.

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Books

• Victorian children were often given books with
  improving moral lessons, about characters with
  names like Lazy Lawrence and Simple Susan.
• A favorite story was Charles Kingsley's The Water
  Babies about a badly treated chimney-boy.
• There were lots of books written specially for
  children, such as Treasure Island (about pirates)
  by R L Stevenson and Black Beauty (about a horse)
  by Anna Sewell.

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• Perhaps the most famous Victorian children's book
  is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
  written by Lewis Carroll.