Importance Of Children In The Victorian Era

During the time period known as Victorian England, the high unemployment rate caused England’s lower class to flood the streets with nowhere to live. Soon after, the construction of workhouses began. Workhouses were built to accommodate the poor people in England. Here, they were housed, fed, and forced to work. Workhouses were some of the most cruel and controlling places in Victorian England.

The way children grow up and are treated by their parents has changed immensely from the 18 and 1900s. Adult perspective of children has also changed. Children are no longer viewed as property, but an actual human being who has choices. New laws and organizations have outlawed and forbid certain acts against children. In the United States, if one is under the age of 18 years old they are considered a child. There is a vast difference between how children were treated in the 1800s and in today’s society; whether it’s child abuse or child labor, how children are raised has changed for the better.

In the 1800s the Industrial Revolution created new jobs for millions of people including children. Many children during the Industrial Revolution were employed in manufacturing and mining. One of the most widely recognized jobs for children was as a “Newsie” or “Newsboy”. This job was held by young children, usually boys, while girls usually worked in mills that produced textiles and paper products. Many newsies had families and homes, and were children who went to school in the day and sold papers in the evening and on weekends to support their families. Many times orphaned, there were as many as 10,000 homeless newsies wandering the streets of New York in the 1899. Some Newsies called “Street Waifs” or children who had been orphaned, homeless,

Living in a poorhouse in the 1800’s was considered normal because poor families couldn’t support themselves. “They are believed to have slept six people to one bed,” (Document 6) which is very disturbing because there aren’t any showers back then or even hospitals. It is a huge negative because of how horrible pollution and illnesses were commonly spread easily and killed off more people. Furthermore children were affected during this time because they had to stay at home in dangerous living situations with no protection. Luckily, this is a positive affect because child labor laws were passed. A huge defect is while they sat home, they weren’t being educated. Another main key point in this writing is children not being able to have an education. Instead of going to school and learning children were forced to work laboriously for a long amount of time. “From six in the morning till seven at night,” (Document 7). I acknowledge the suffering the children had to go through because they didn’t have a regular childhood. They were brought up in the world believing that working just to get by is normal

In the 1800s most families had about seven children, then in the industrial era the families had about three or four children. The reason that the average of children dropped in this era was due to couples waiting longer to get married or spacing the pregnancies out. One of the big causes of fewer children in this era was because of contraceptives. Contraceptives were just discovered and many couples realize that it was a very effective method. With families having fewer children their main concern was getting their children educated and have knowledge about the economy, so they would be successful in the real world. Education became more populated this time in history, about 71% of children ages five to eighteen went to school. Women became

Ignorance - In the Victorian times education was not compulsory as it is today, many children then left school at 14 years old to work and provide food and money for their families. All children now must attend school and gain an education so every child has an equal start in

The Victorian Era was filled of many new inventions but the population wasn’t filled of rich people. Those who weren’t as wealthy as others are couldn’t afford an occupation and/or household, were in workhouses. These people had to maintain jobs in order for them to live in the workhouse. People living in workhouse had various different people including orphaned and abandoned children, physically and mentally ill, disabled, elderly and single mothers. Workhouses were frequently large because it must provide a home, jobs medical care, food, clothes, education for children and training for jobs.

Children in the Victorian times had a different life than children live in today’s world. Child labor was very common in London in 1843. Child jobs included factory workers, scaring birds from the field, and hat making (Victorian Children Organization). The children lived in tiny houses in the poor part of town. The apartments had no plumbing or bathrooms since the people building them did not care about who would eventually live there.

Charles Dickens is one of the most renowned British writers with well-known and widespread work. Dickens was born in England in 1812 and died in 1870. During this time, Victorian England experienced an Industrial Revolution, which impacted his life tremendously. New factories and industrial machinery changed many lives of the lower class citizens. The family grew up impoverished and struggled to maintain a good lifestyle. The family’s financial situation was strained as John Dickens, Charles’s father, spent money that the family didn’t have. These societal factors were influential in Charles Dickens’s life, and the same themes present themselves in his works. When an author creates a work, frequently themes of their life events are incorporated into the theme of the book, consciously or unconsciously. Victorian Age industrial-influenced strife was a common theme in Dickens’s life and presented itself throughout Dickens’s books.

On February 7, 1812 Charles dickens was born in Landpoert Portsmouth. Charles was the second of eight children to john Dickens his father that worked in a navy post office and his wife Elizabeth dickens. Then later in the 1814 they all moved to London due to financial difficulties will they were living in a poor neighborhood in London. By the time Charles has turned the age of twelve his father was imprisoned because of money problems. Charles was pulled from school and was forced to polished shoes and work in a terrible conditioned ware house. This come out of his writing, as Oliver twist worked in a factory so he could get a meal, and somewhere to sleep. Oliver works long days and the meal portions are the size of a fist so the children would starve to death. ’please sir, I want some more’ (chp.2 pg. 12).

My essay will be exploring how childhood has changed in Britain from the 17th century till date. I will be arguing about how the childhood has changed domestically from the 17th century; my four key themes are families, work, education and child labour. I will be exploring the ways in which children’s lives have changed. I will be comparing and contrasting to how childhood was then and how it has changed over the centuries.

Life can at times seem bad, even in the lives of some of the most prestigious, rich, popular people in the world. Bad hair, lack of sleep, abundance of homework, and an absence of money have the tendency to put a damper on some people's days, among other things. Too many times, though, in today's society things are taken for granted. Imagine not having a place to sleep, having no means of education, or having all hard-earned funds taken by the government, not even leaving enough to feed the family. This is how it was for Englanders in the 1800s. The condition of the working-class in 19thcentury England was, without a doubt, disgusting and miserable. The circumstances were spiraling out of control and the working class was

England. Dickens addresses these issues in his timeless masterpiece Oliver Twist. In the story of Oliver Twist, Dickens uses past experiences from his childhood and targets the Poor Law of 1834 which renewed the importance of the workhouse as a means of relief

In a biography journal about Dickens, a passage states that “His early life is a current element in most of his novels. The bitter experiences of his childhood helped him to empathize his topics. The main problems Dickens mentioned in Oliver Twist were the deplorable conditions of children in the Victorian

Many critics today consider Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, or, The Parish Boy’s Progress, as being a commentary of both society’s treatment and view of the lower class in the 19th century. In the early 1800’s a Poor Law was put in place, saying that each parish was required to care for their poor within the area. Many viewed this as the lower class being lazy and lacking ambition. Dickens uses irony to comment on the society’s belief that the lower class were fated to remain in that manner.