Poverty In Victorian England Essay Research Paper

Poverty In Victorian England Essay, Research Paper

The Other Half

Victorian England has been dramatized into a blissful time of prosperity and great discovery, for the rich, but then there was the other half. Victorian England grew to fast said Patrick Rooke, it had no laws to cope with its increase in technology and so it fell back upon itself and the class gap widened. (39) Before the Victorian era there was an immense growth in factory production and disease. The later having a profound effect on medical discoveries. Laws could not keep up with new factories and after they became strong parts of the government there was nothing that politicians could do to stop them from making 3 year olds work ten-hour days. Sanitation was also a big problem in London, there was no personal hygiene, disease was the number one killer (Out of eight people seven of them would die of disease and the other one would die of natural causes including violence.) Crime was an outlet for many poverty-stricken families who taught their kids how to steal at a very young age and for a living the whole family went out every day and robbed people on the streets. The courts also needed some help catching up with society, if you stole a loaf of bread you were given the same punishment as a murderer, Death. This unequal way of judging people came around because the only people in courts were nobles who would gladly exterminate any poor person with out second thoughts. Charles Dickens used this as a common theme in his novel, A Tale of Two Cities. He talks about verdicts that are set before the trial takes place and nobles who refer to the poor as ‘rats’ and ‘dogs.’ Not until the end of the 1800s did the upper class recognize that the poor had problems and with out them England could never become the most dominant country in Europe. Finally reforms began to be made as the courts got more power from the nobles and made some changes involving children and working, schools, and voting, Dickens who was a major reformist, but only through his books, died as England was finally coming out of its ‘dark age.’ Dickens represents the poors rise from oppression to having rights, through his books he criticized the government and the nobles and then just as things started to happen he died, so it was as if his whole life was dedicated to getting rights for the poor.

As new factories began springing up all over London working conditions slowly deteriorated until women and children were working twelve-hour days every day. Poor, incoherent laws inhibited the poor because they’re factory workers could treat them however they wanted and make them work for pennies. In the factories whole families worked in joint efforts to make it out of poverty, but with no avail. A constant risk of accidents, a result from uncovered machines, debilitated people and caused them to be very prone to disease and sometimes put them out of work. When someone lost a body part it was a sure sign that you would never be anything more than poor because with a 50 % chance of dying in surgery people were usually stuck being a cripple for the rest of their lives. (Rooke 113) Workers usually worked until twelve p.m. and then went home for an hour-long diner, usually running the whole way because they sometimes lived hours away. They came back in an hour and worked until eight or nine, they then stumbled home in a trance like state only to come back to the dreaded factory in four hours. To top of the conditions the poor had to work in there were their employers. They sometimes beat employees or changed the time on the clocks so that everyone had to work longer. James Leach wrote a book about his experiences in the factories. He said that once his employer turned the clock forward fifteen minutes and then when everyone showed up late by his clock he fined them all 3 pence. (Rooke 42)

Children in Victorian England were often worse off than the animals that were almost nonexistent in London because of the lack of food the poor got. Very few kids ever got proper educations, which was one of the main reasons that the poor people stayed poor and never could rise in class like in Dickens, Great Expectations. Instead of going to school many children went to work, often before they were six. They worked along side their parents all day and many went on later in life to have back problems and lung failure from improper stature and breathing bad air in the factories. Sometimes children were so tired that they fell asleep after everyone had left still doing their jobs in a deep stupor. (Rooke 43) Jobs that children were especially numerous in because of their size and agility were often the jobs that were most dangerous and life threatening. Mining was the most popular occupation because there was no shortage in spaces available and their size let them fit into cracks full-grown men couldn’t. Sometimes children were sent into mines first and if they didn’t come out in fifteen minutes they knew that there was poisonous gas inside and that no one should enter them. Chimney sweeping was another popular one that kids were common in because of their agility. They had to climb up steep roofs and often fell to their deaths below.

Workhouses were the scourge of London, occupants would rather die than be forced to work there. Workhouses were the equivalent to jail, if someone did a petty crime they would be sent there not unlike a slave. Once yo