Life in the Victorian Age
A Window into the Christmas
Carol by Charles Dickens
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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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 secondhand boots or shoes, nicknamed
'translators'.

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

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
Elite Carriage of the Rich
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.

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.

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.

December 2, 2009
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.

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

Victorian Slum
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.

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.
Different types of factories,
industries, and mines
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
Many children worked in
factories in Britain's fastgrowing industrial towns.
This is Bradford,
Yorkshire, in 1873
A Typical day in a Victorian
factories

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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
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”.
The city of Manchester, about 1870. With so
many mills and factories, the air was polluted
by smoke and dirt.
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).

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.
Children Working
a Cotton Mill
Children line up
to be paid for
their work.
Start of Child Labor Laws
People called reformers, such as Lord
Shaftesbury (1801-1885), argued in
Parliament for laws to stop childwork.
 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.

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.

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

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. .

Steam Railway Station
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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

A boy pushing the cart and a
Trapper
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.

A girl pulling a cart through the
mines
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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

More Games
At Easter, children played 'EggShackling'.
 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.

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.


Perhaps the most
famous Victorian
children's book is
Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland
(1865) written by
Lewis Carroll.