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УДК 94(420)„1837/1901"-3-284.1 А.П. АЛЕКСАНДРОВА
кандидат филологических наук, доцент, кафедра английской филологии, Орловский государственный университет имени И.С. Тургенева
UDC 94(420)„1837/1901"-3-284.1
A.P. ALEXANDROVA
Candidate of Philology, Department of English Philology, Orel State University named after IS. Turgenev
ЖИЗНЬ ДЕТЕЙ В ВИКТОРИАНСКУЮ ЭПОХУ CHILDREN'S LIFE IN VICTORIAN ERA
Статья посвящена жизни детей Викторианской Британии; особое внимание обращается на детский труд, опасную изнуряющую работу, выполняемую детьми на фабриках и шахтах. В статье освещены некоторые реформы, приведшие к изменению отношения к детям и их образованию.
Ключевые слова: Королева Виктория, Викторианская эпоха, промышленная революция, детский труд, фабрики, шахты, образование, школа.
The paper considers children's life in Victorian Britain; particular attention has been focused on child labour, dangerous, exhausting work undertaken by children in factories and mines. It throws some light on the reforms leading to the change of the attitude to children during this period as well as the change of the attitude towards to children's education.
Keywords: Oueen Victoria, Victorian era, the industrial revolution, child labour, factories, mines, education, school.
Victorian Britain saw the beginning of the industrial revolution. It completely changed the lifestyle of Victorian Britain. Suddenly, the focus wasn't on tilling the soil or land husbandry to make a living. Factories and commercial enterprise was the name of the game. When Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, Britain had already started its transfonnation into a world power. Isambard Kingdom Brunei was a great engineer who helped to change the face of Britain. He designed bridges, railways and ocean liners. The telephone and the light bulb were both invented during the Victoria era.
Agriculture was slowly being pushed aside for manufacturing jobs. More people moved into the cities from the countryside. By the end of the 1800's, 80 percent of England's population lived in cities.
With industrialization, there was more leisure time to be enjoyed. When the railway line from London to Brighton was established, going on holiday began to be a regular part of Victorian life.
Thanks to the Bank Holiday Act of 1871 and the ease of rail travel, seaside resorts such as Blackpool and Torquay began to enjoy great popularity.
There was time to read a novel during the Victorian period. Charles Dickens, Robert Lewis Stephenson, and H.G. Wells are just three of the authors who were popular.
Attending the theatre and appreciating the talents of Sarah Bernliard and Ellen Terry kept the evenings busy. Melodrama was in its hey-day while the music hall was always packed with people enjoying the variety of acts presented.
But life was quite different for working class families. They lived in terrible conditions. Many children were ill
© А.П. Александрова © A.P. Alexandrova
and had serious health problems because of the poor living conditions. Children did very young. In fact, 50% of children in Victorian Britain died before they were five years old. In London slums, more than half of all babies died before their 1st birthday. Parents could also die at a young age so London had many orphans, rich and poor. Orphans who could not find a place in an orphanage sometimes had to live on the streets or in workhouses. Workhouses provided food and shelter in return for hard, unpleasant work. Conditions were very harsh and people would only go to workhouses as a last resort.
A report in 1851 described a house where 12 people were living in two rooms. There was a bedroom and a kitchen, but no bathroom or toilet. People washed in the kitchen and shared a toilet outside. Three people slept in one bed. The house was dirty and the smell was horrible. Babies in over-crowded and damp housing were the most at risk from diarrhoea and tuberculosis. Even those in rich families died because of poor medical knowledge
Dirty water was also a problem. Poor people didn't have running water in their houses. Until the 1860s people in London washed in the River Thames. They also cooked with the river water and drank it. The river was very dirty and many children died from diseases such as cholera, measles and scarlet fever.
Working class children didn't go to school - they went to work. Many children started to work when they were only six years old. Most children worked in factories. They worked very hard and many worked 16 hours a day. They often had horrible accidents while they were working in these factories.
Some people started to notice the terrible conditions of working class families. Authors like Charles Dickens wrote
about these problems like Hard Times and Oliver Twist. Politicians and social reformers wanted to change the lives of poor children. Living conditions and sanitation in towns and cities improved. Thanks to the industrial revolution, Britain became one of the richest countries in western Europe, but the children of the working classes paid a terrible price.
Victoria's England was a child-dominated society. Throughout her long reign one out of every tliree of her subjects was under the age of fifteen. The population explosion that occurred during this period was accompanied by a tremendous amount of industrialization and urbanization; by the end of the century, a vast majority of children lived in towns rather than rural communities. Families tended to be large, although the birth rate declined a bit over the course of the century as more information on contraception became available. The rapid growth of towns quickly outstripped affordable housing, leading to overcrowding and shockingly poor sanitary conditions. Coupled with infectious diseases and impure milk and food, these factors contributed to very liigh infant and child mortality rates. [3]
Victorian England wasn't a good time to be a child. Poor children had to work and richer children worked hard at school. For all children, rich and poor, there wasn't much time for fun. While the wealthy children may have been spoiled and had a much better life than the poor children, they also had what would seem to be a sad. redundant and affection-less existence. Children were mostly raised by a nanny who would teach the child what was proper and what was not. Day to day living was nothing more than a lonely monotonous routine and very formal. Wealthy Victorian Children rarely communicated with their parents except for a specified time each day. Parents would hire a nanny or nurse to do the brunt of the child rearing. They would instruct the nanny what they wanted to have instilled into their children such as manners, education, propriety, how to dress and so on. The nanny was in effect a substitute parent.
When we think of nannies in Victorian times it is only natural to think of a cheerful loving young lady who went to the local community college and got a degree in child development. For the most part this was not the reality for wealthy Victorian Children. Nannies were usually older women that had never been married. We can imagine that there might have been a chip on their shoulder towards children since in those days not being married meant no children. Many times nannies were intolerant and very strict and sometimes plain mean. Albeit, there were some nannies who were kind and caring and supplied the only love a child would experience. They would do the extra tilings to brighten a child's life such as playing games with them or fixing special meals on their birthday, etc. [17]
The poor Victorian Children lived a very different life than the children of wealthier families. In the early and middle 1800s, most children from poor families had to work. Children were often forced to work almost as soon as they could walk. This was not something new to the Victorian period as cliildren had always been expected to work for hundreds of years. Although child labor was not new, as industrialization continued it became more visible, as
masses of ragged, stunted cliildren crowded the city streets. Many cliildren were used as cheap labour. Most cliildren had no choice as they needed to work to help their families earn enough money to live. The parents of child labourers knew about the terrible places that their cliildren worked as they often worked in the same place. [10] Since a large part of the poor cliildren had to work public jobs to help support their families many parents thought of cliildren as income, and having more cliildren who worked raised the income of the home. Many parents had 10 or 12 or even more cliildren for this reason alone. Most parents would rather not send their cliildren to work but needed the money the cliildren earned just in order to survive. Many parents would also like their cliildren to receive an education so that they would have a better chance in life. It was quite expensive to send a child to school so only wealthy people could afford to have their cliildren educated.
Life was very hard for most working cliildren. They worked very long hours, starting as early as 5.00am and working through until 7.00pm or even 8.00pm. Standing up all day caused their bones and joints to deform and cliildren were often left crippled before they were adults. The factories and mines they worked in were also very dangerous places and accidents were common, resulting in injury and sometimes death. Child workers were also very badly paid. In 1830, a child working in a cotton mill earned just one tenth of an adult's wages.
Research conducted by Emma Griffin [2] lias shown that the average age at which cliildren started work in early 19th-century Britain was 10 years old, but that this varied widely between regions. In industrial areas, cliildren started work on average at eight and a half years old. As work was often scarce in the country, rural children tended to start work later - typically at 10 and a half years old. The average age for starting work was 11 and a half years old.
The lucky cliildren got apprenticed in a trade. Country cliildren usually worked outside in the fields. Their work consisted of bird-scaring, sowing crops and driving horses. Children from the cities often worked in mines or factories. They were dirty and dangerous jobs and cliildren oftenbecame ill. There were often accidents. The hours were long and cliildren did not get much money. When new types of work appeared with the development of industries and factories, it seemed perfectly natural to use cliildren for work that adults couldn't do: crawling underneath machinery or sitting in coal mines to open and close the ventilation doors. "Chimney sweeping" was a job children could do better than adults. Small boys (starting at the age of 5 or 6 years) would be sent scrambling up inside the chimney to scrape and brush soot away. They came down covered in soot, and with bleeding elbows and knees. The chimneys were usually very narrow (in some cases as small as 30cm) and twisted. Cliildren often got stuck or froze with terror in the cramped darkness - in these cases the Master Chimney Sweeper, would simply light the fire underneath to 'encourage' them to get on with their work. The work was dangerous and painful. Some boys got stuck and died of suffocation. In 1832 the use of boys for sweeping chimneys was forbidden by law, however, boys
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continued to be forced through the narrow winding passages of chimneys in large houses.
Children worked long hours and sometimes had to earn, out some dangerous jobs working in factories. Factory owners at woollen mills they employed children because they were cheap labour and did not have to be very skilled to work on the machines. The job was hard with long working hours. Accidents were common and the impact was deformity of spines and limbs or bent knees and more. In textile mills children were made to clean machines while the machines were kept running, and there were also many accidents. Many children lost fingers in the machinery and some were killed, crushed by the huge machines. In match factories children were employed to dip matches into a dangerous chemical called phosphorous. The phosphorous could cause their teeth to rot and some died from the effect of breathing it into their lungs. The Factory Act of 1878 banned employment of children under ten years of age, but poor families needed the extra money so many children still skipped school. There are at least tliree reasons why children were employed to work in factories: 1) Children were much cheaper than adults as a factory owner did not have to pay them as much; 2) There were plenty of children in orphanages, so they could be replaced easily if accidents did occur; 3) Children were small enough to crawl under machinery to tie up broken threads. [4]
There was, therefore, considerable variety in the age at which children started work, with those in the industrial districts typically starting work the youngest. All children laboured under the same disadvantages, though working for very low pay, performing work that was dirt)' and dangerous, and usually working long hours as well.
Acts by the government to regulate juvenile labour failed till the Factory Act of 1833. It set the mini mum age of workers at 9, the working hours were not to exceed 48 hours a week and it also set requirements for education.
Coal was the main source of power in Victorian times. It was used for cooking and heating, and for driving machinery, trains and steam ships. In order to produce more coal, the mines needed more workers and children as young as 5 years old were used to supply this need. They worked for up to 12 hours a day. The coal mines were dangerous places where roofs sometimes caved in, explosions happened and workers often injured themselves. Here is a small sample of how children were killed working in coal mines [8]:
• A trapper, only 10 years old killed in an explosion.
• A horse driver aged 11. Crushed by horse.
• A driver, aged 14 fell off limmers and was crushed between the tubs and a door.
• A token keeper aged 14. Crushed by surface wagons on branches.
• A screenboy aged 12. Crashed by surface wagons.
• A trapper aged 12. Crashed by tubs.
• A driver aged 12. Horse fell on him.
• A bank boy aged 11. Caught by cage.
• A driver aged 12. Head crashed between tub top and a plank while riding on limmers.
• A trapper aged 13. Head crashed between cage and
bunton while riding to bank.
• Tub Cleaner, aged 13. Fell down the shaft off a pumping engine.
• Boy aged 14, drowned.
• Boy, aged 7. Killed in an explosion.
• Trapper, aged 9. Killed in an explosion.
• Driver, aged 14. Crashed against wall by a horse.
• Screen Boy, aged 15. Head crashed between a tub and screen legs; too little room.
Children worked as trappers and drawers in coal mines. Trappers operated the air doors providing ventilation for the miners. By keeping the fresh air flowing they prevented the build up of dangerous gases. The children would sit in the draft of the doors, cold, damp and very frightened, with little or no light for 12 hours a day. Drawers pulled heavy carts of cut coal to the pits surface with heavy chains around their waists.
Most factory owners and businessmen were very happy to employ children as they did not have to pay them very much, so they could make more profit. Many industrialists denied that factory work was harmful to children, and some even claimed that factory work was healthy exercise, and that the wages saved the children from starvation.
Reformers believed that children of a young age should not have to work very long hours, or in the dangerous conditions that were typical of factories in the 1840's. They helped bring in laws to improve the working lives of children. In 1842 the Government passed The Mines Act by forbidding the employment of women and girls and all boys under the age of ten down mines. Later it became illegal for a boy under 12 to work down a mine. The 1844 Factory Act made it illegal for children under 13 to work more than 6 hours each day, and forced factory owners to make the workplace safer. Reformers also belied that children should be educated in schools instead of working. Supporters of Child Labour were against laws that limited children's working hours, claiming that they would harm businesses and the economy. [10]
Thus, slowly tilings started to change. By 1874, no child under the age of ten could work in a factory or mine. And after 1875, children stopped going up chimneys. But when Queen Victoria died in 1901, there were still lots of older children working in England.
Moreover, thousands of poor children worked and lived on the streets. Many were orphans, others were simply neglected. They worked very long hours for very little money. To buy bread, they sold matches, firewood, buttons, flowers or bootlaces, polished shoes, ran errands and swept the crossing places where rich people crossed the busy roads. Selling cut flowers was a job mainly done by girls. The selling of water cresses was regarded as the lowest grade of street sales. Depending on the time of the year different sorts of flowers were sold.
Children performed in theatres, the circus, or on the street, for instance as pantomimes. Regulations of the work of children in public entertainment only really started in 1879 with the Children's Dangerous Performances Act. It stated that no children under the age of 14 were to perform
dangerous acts, like acrobats, and that special training was required.
With worn out trousers, their legs and feet covered with chilblains, mudlarks waded through the mud that is left on the shore by the retiring tide and collected whatever they could find and what they were able to sell.
The cliildren were from very poor families or were orphans and they had little or no education. They had to live in the workhouses. Life there was very hard. There was not enough food and nobody really cared for the cliildren. The workhouse owners often sold the cliildren to men who needed workers. If the money still wasn't sufficient, some were driven to occasional theft. On the other hand there were also cliildren who chose to become thieves, since one was often able to gain more money by stealing from people and from shops than through honest work. In the 1800s, although penalties were high, crime prevention was very low and the hard life of the cliildren softened the threat of prisons. Child crime was widespread till compulsory schooling in the 1870s.
Cliildren working during the day seldom attended school, many did not at all. Their knowledge would not go beyond the necessary tilings they had to know to do their job. Until 1870, mostly only rich people could afford a proper education. Poor children went to diverse charity schools with low fees when they had the time. The Factory Act of 1833 required factory owners to provide schools for their child workers and part of the child's day would be spent learning basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic in what became known as the 'half time' system. State schools only developed in the 1870s and in the 1880s education became compulsory up to the age of 10. Poor people could not afford this and many cliildren still went to work as chimney sweeps or maids. In 1891 this law was changed and schooling up to the age of 11 became free for all.
For most of the 1800s, very few cliildren went to school. But in 1870, a new law changed children's lives. Every child from the age of five had to go to school. Victorian schools
were very different from schools today. Cliildren learned by repeating lines and copying work until it was perfect. Pupils spent a lot of time copying from the blackboard. Often they didn't understand what they were writing.
School concentrated on teaching the three Rs: Reading, wRiting and aRitlimetic. People thought school was more important for boys than girls. Boys had more Maths lessons than girls and studied science. Girls had housework lessons.
Some cliildren left home and went away to school. These schools could be terrible places. The pupils had to sit in very cold classrooms and didn't have good food to eat. They were often unhappy and ill - but the school owners made lots of money. Boys then went to boarding schools. Middle class cliildren went to grammar schools or private academies. Cliildren from rich families had their own private teacher or a private tutor - a governess.
Children who could not keep up with the work, or misbehaved were punished with the cane or made to wear a dunce's cap. Teachers often hit cliildren who didn't listen or who did something wrong. There were often problems with cliildren who didn't want to go to school.
Richer cliildren had easier lives than other cliildren, but they did not often meet or play with other children.
The idea that cliildren have rights that the state should protect may have seemed silly at dawn of the nineteenth century, but by the time Queen Victoria died in 1901, it had gained significant support. Beginning in the 1830s, the Victorians passed a variety of laws aimed at protecting the wellbeingof cliildren at work, at school, or in the home. This activism was motivated in part by a growing acceptance of the Romantic idea that cliildren are innocent creatures who should be sliielded from the adult world and allowed to enjoy their childhood. Yet despite this, real reform did not come quickly. High infant mortality rates, inadequate schooling, and child labor persisted right to the end of the century, suggesting that many Victorians remained unconvinced that childhood should be marked off as a protected period of dependence and development [3].
References
1. Alexandmva A.P. Violence and law in Victorian England. Scientific notes of Orel State University. 2015. № 1(64). Pp. 234-238,
2. Emma Griffin. Child labour, http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/child-labour
3. Marah Gubat: The Victorian Child, http://www.representingchildhood.pitt.edu/ victorian.htmhttp://resources.woodlands-junior, kent. sch.uk/liomework/victorians/cliildren/ working .htm
4. http://www.aboutbri1am.coni/articles/life-iwvictorian-england.asp
5. http://www.bl.uMeanimgMstcitizeiVvictoriaiis/exliibitioii/greatexliibition.htiiil
6. littp://www.bl.uk/roniantics-and-victorians/articles/cliild-labour#stliasli. A116qxZw.dpuf
7. http://www.dnini.org.uk
8. http://www.liiddenlives.org.uk/articles/poverty.html
9. http://www-ironbridge.org.uk/assets/Uploads/resoiirceliistory3.pdf
10. http://www.judandk.force9.co.uk/workliouse.html
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12. http://www.museumoflondon.org.iikyexplore-online/pocket-histories/what-was-life-children-victoriaii-londoii/
13. littp://www.niuseunioflondon.org.iikyexplore-online/pocket-histories/wliat-was-life-children-victoriaii-londoii/liow-liealtliy-were-victorian-cliildren/#stliash.UWrzVVws.dpuf
14. http://www.nationalarcliives.gov.iik/educatioii/victoriaiibritaiii
15. http://www.scholastic.ca/educatioiVniagazines/elt_pdfs/jaiieeyreff-nigni-l-105975.pdf
16. http://www.victorianchildren.org/victorian-cliildren-iii-victorian-tiiiies/
17. https://elt.oup.coni/elt/stiidents/getsniarti1aly/dislessiadevel3/Unit_5_Skills_Reading_p50.pdf?cc=it&selLangiiage=it
18. http: //www. aboutbritain. com/articles/victorian-children. asp
